[geneE]

I started out as an airbrush artist working on leather and automotive. Got into signs and t-shirts with a vinyl cutter and htv a while back.
Using an Epson printer with pigment inks. I like the ability to do full color printing, but not crazy about the "feel" of the dark papers I've tried.
Thinking about airbrushing backgrounds (full color) and applying htv letting over it.
anyone have any experience or thoughts about this? My concern is about durability, etc.
Opinions?

Barring that, maybe htv over dark transfer paper background? Doesn't seem to me like as good an option, but....Opinions?

 

[DrivingZiggy]

Same as with screen printing, you need a white background when working with darker colors. That's why you don't like the feel. You might be able to do a bit better using the laser dark transfer papers.

As for layering HTV over dark paper backgrounds, I think you will be even more dissatisfied since it will be even thicker.

An alternative outlet for your artistic side may be dye sublimation. You would still be printing onto a transfer, but the hand should be better than layer upon layer of substances. Unfortunately, we're talking about only light-colored garments made of polyester. Well, at least partially polyester. But the sublimation will only "stick to" the polyester, so the less polyester the lower the quality of the print.

Or, you could get the shirts discharge screen printed. It could provide a white background without the thickening of a layer of HTV. But if you're gonna do that, you might as well get everything else on it screen printed since it'll already be on the platen. But that's somewhat of a solution if we're talking about 100% cotton, dark colors.