I’ve just released my first t-shirt design – a fun and colourful trio of sardines! I love painting and drawing fish, and after seeing the ‘sardine girl summer‘ trend I was super inspired to paint my own sardines.

I’ve been using a lot of mixed media over the last year or so, and knew that I wanted an expressive and layered look to the sardines. So I drew them with a mix of gouache, highlighters, paint pens, coloured pencil, fineliner pens, and white gel pens.

I was SO happy with how they turned out – just as fun as I imagined! My next challenge was to find the right shirt – ideally pink, a relaxed shape, and either cotton or an eco-friendly blend. After alot of searching I found a great company and ordered some samples of different shirts.

The sardine shirt sample looked amazing and as that fabric type is a special cooling fabric I thought it would be perfect to release in time for the Australian summer.

Now the next part took much longer than actually painting the sardines 😂 the marketing! Photos, videos, editing, social media… lucky I have awesome friends & family who came for an early photoshoot at Southbank to get those ‘summer beach vibes’ photos of the sardine shirt.

After editing the photos of everyone in the sardine shirts, it was so cool to see my idea come to life! It’s been such a fun process, and if you’d like to add one to your own summer wardrobe, you can find all the details in my shop.