Kenney Style Tie Dye with Jon Riley: The Structure Behind the Style
HiChroma: Tie Dye Demystified, Episode 3. This isn't a step by step pattern to copy. Jon Riley of Trip Team Tie Dye explains how he found Paul Kenney's style, how folding a Kenney shirt in half taught him the flow of the nubs, and how chasing a bigger nub became Trip Style. Then he ties one on a white shirt: the sleeve to sleeve mirror fold, where to start the center row, tying nubs on the symmetry line, wide flow or V flow, and alternating rows front and back. He finishes with how to dye it (with the flow, against the grain, or spray and pray) and the positive and negative sides of the shirt. Brent closes with the day Paul Kenney gave them a ride to a Dead show.
Why this Kenney style episode isn't a tutorial (0:00)
Brent: Before we get started today, I just want to set the tone for today's episode. Jon and I talked a lot about this, our feelings about this style, how to represent it and how we want it received. Today you're not going to see a tutorial on a Kenney Style. You're going to see an explanation of the structure and the framework that it is, how you can think about it, and some tips and tricks on how to start.
But we want to treat it with respect. This is a style that has really taken off. There's a lot of people now trying to emulate what Paul has done and what Jon is doing. When we talked about it, I thought there's no better person who has experimented with and explored this style more than Jon Riley. Jon has based a lot of his career on this tie and this framework and how he thinks about it. He's really pushing it to places it hasn't been before, by adding other elements and the way he thinks about depth and options and dye movement. I'm ecstatic to have Jon tell you his perspective on this. If anybody can do it justice, it's Jon.
With that, I'll welcome Jon Riley. Jon, welcome back.
Jon: Thanks, Brent. I'm glad to be here.
Brent: Really excited to have you share what the Kenney Style means to you and what you've been doing with it.
Jon: I'm excited to show it.
Brent: I'm gonna let you at it.
How Jon Riley found Kenney style tie dye (1:21)
Jon: Well, this is Kenney Style. This is a tie here. I first saw Kenney Style five or six years ago, not long after I first started tie dyeing. I came across a Paul Kenney shirt on social media. I looked at the shirt and it was like nothing I'd ever seen. It wasn't like any of the other tie dyes I'd been seeing. I saw that it was called a Kenney Style and that Paul Kenney was the creator of it. Through a little more research I found out he was the innovator of this style, and it was named after him because he came up with it. There weren't a lot of artists making Kenney Style, and there was a lot of mystery around it.
That was the attraction for me, the exclusivity of it. The fact that I was going to have to research, try stuff and learn this on my own, and it was something I felt like I could do. I basically scoured the internet, YouTube, all social media, for anything I could find about Kenney Style and the artists that made it, any interviews with artists that make Kenney Style. And I began an adventure of learning the style and then pushing it as far as I could take it.
Learning Kenney style from a Paul Kenney shirt (2:34)
I bought a shirt from him, and it was very similar to this one right here. I got it out of the box, folded it in half and tried to start making the nubs along where he tied it. That was a breakthrough moment for me, because I realized the flow of the nubs and how the style was really working. It took just buying a shirt from him and trying it out.
How Jon got into tie dye and created Trip Style (3:03)
So I want to say a couple things about me and tie dye. I started tie dyeing a little over five and a half years ago. I was at a place in my life where I had just recovered from a massive heart attack and open heart surgery. That was a couple years before, but it took me a few years to really recover. I knew I couldn't really do physical work, and I had always felt creative but never could find that real creative outlet. One day I bought a craft Tulip tie dye kit, turned on YouTube, and it was over.
Soon after that I came across Kenney Style, quickly got obsessed with it, and then my mind wouldn't stop. I couldn't stop thinking about what I could do with it and where it might go, and I was excited about the future because I felt like I was doing something. I was being creative, I was being expressive.
I wanted to come up with a way that the Kenney Style nub was exploded into a huge section of the shirt. So I started trying things. I wadded a shirt up and made it one giant nub, but it didn't really work, and eventually I segmented it down to a few giant nubs, and with my first try at it created Trip Style. I had been tie dyeing for about six months at that point, so I really didn't even know what I was doing. I put it out there and got a lot of questions I didn't really know how to answer, because I was still figuring it out myself. But it evolved and transformed, people got hold of it and did things with it, and it became its own thing. That was Trip Style. Something born from inspiration from Paul Kenney's original creation, and now part of the tie dye world.
What a nub is in Kenney style tie dye (5:16)
Okay, first we need to talk about the structure of the Kenney Style. The building blocks are the nubs you see tied here. A nub is a small gather of fabric that is bound tightly with sinew or string. What happens inside a nub is pretty neat. Since the fabric is compressed, and compressed in different directions and at different points, you get different types of flow with the dye. Colors move differently, so you can create some pretty cool effects.
How to do a sleeve to sleeve mirror fold (5:53)
You want to start with a sleeve to sleeve mirror fold, and I'm going to show you a quick and easy way to do that. Just stick your hand in the neck and hold it like that, run your hand right through both sleeves, grab ahold of the other one and pull it back inside itself. You want to line up the seams in the armpit, and then line up the seam up here on the shoulder. With your hand inside here, you can feel it. Then everything lines right up and you'll be right in the middle there. Turn it upside down and give it a shake. Just like that, shake it out. You get a perfectly mirror folded blank, ready to rock and roll.
How to start a Kenney style center row (7:03)
Now I'm going to show you how to start a row of nubs and start your string. You'd probably want to clip your line of symmetry here, and probably the sleeve too, just to hold everything in place. It's not necessary for me, because I'm just showing you the start.
The top of the collar, the top of the neck, is a great starting point. You can start anywhere, but this is a great starting point because you're going to make a row down the center, and that's going to bring the majority of your detail. The focal point is really the first three rows of the Kenney Style.
How to tie Kenney style nubs (7:48)
To start the first row, I always grab somewhere in this general area and pull a nub up, just like that. I'm using 65 pound test braided fishing line. It's super easy to work with. I wrap it about four times, holding my finger on the slack end, pull it tight and it locks right down. So I've got the base of that first nub. Then I put some tension on it like that, with chaotic wraps all over, and then go back to the base of the nub.
Grab up another nub right next to it, and from the base of that nub you can wrap right around the previous nub and back around the back of it. Then in between them I give it a little pull, a little tension, and another wrap. Now you've created two nubs as close together as they can possibly be. Back to the base.
Tying nubs on the symmetry line (9:23)
When you're tying the center line of a Kenney Style, there are different effects that can happen depending on how you tie that nub, because it's right on a fold. It's right on the symmetry line. If you grab a nub that leaves a little slack flap right there, like this, that will create two nubs next to each other on the center line of the Kenney Style. If you tie a nub that gathers the line of symmetry, it will create an oblong or circular nub right in the middle.
Wide flow or V flow: how long to make the center row (10:29)
Once you've completed the center row, you can take it down as far as you want to go. If you keep your center row short, just a few nubs, you create a wider flow at the top of the shirt, a wider composition. If you take that first center line lower into the shirt, you create more of a V flow pattern.
How to alternate Kenney style rows front and back (10:58)
This one already has a few rows tied on it, because I want to show you what happens when you get to the end of a row. You can see the alternating rows I've tied here. I'm just going to splice this string back in by wrapping the base of the last nub I tied there.
Okay, so I'm finishing the row. This is the last nub of this row. Now, to get to the other side and tie nubs on alternating sides, you go back around the base of your nub and then just cross it over. Cross it over, and now our nubs are going to flow back up this way, on the back side. Tying the back side kind of gives you guidelines for the nubs on the other side. There's the first nub on that back side. I go back to the base and grab the second one.
This takes a lot of practice to get smooth with it. But by doing this, your nubs are close together in rows, and they're also close together side by side. The rows get close together by alternating sides, and alternating the rows also disperses the detail and color flow from front to back. So there we go, there's the back side row, three nubs on it.
How to dye a Kenney style: with the flow, against the grain, or spray and pray (13:41)
When it comes to dyeing these things, the options are limitless. You can dye along with the flow of the nubs you've made and create a flow pattern with them. Or you can go against the grain. You can do what's called a spray and pray, where you basically get some colors and go to town, squirting them randomly all over it till it's full of dye. I like to create a spray and pray effect without actually doing it, by placing the dye directly where I think it might go.
The positive and negative sides of a Kenney style (14:19)
You can use the two sides of the Kenney Style. I like to look at them as a positive and a negative side. The positive side is the side that generally has the most nubs. It's also the side the center row is most dominant on, and when I tie them I make sure that's toward the front of the shirt, on the front layer. On the positive side you're going to get a lot more detail on the front of the shirt, and it's going to determine the color vibe of the piece, because the majority of the surface area is on the positive.
On the negative side you can do contrasting colors. You could do a red side and a blue side, and it comes out really cool. So there are a lot of fun things you can play with when it comes to dyeing these. There's no limit to where you can go with it.
Why Jon shares Kenney style (15:17)
That's a big part of why I'm sharing this today, because it's no secret that if we don't share, we don't grow as an art form. So I can't wait to see where it goes. I'm still trying to push what I can. I've got some new things in the works for the near future that I'm excited to share with you. Adding airplane fold mandalas is a big thing I'm after right now. I'm trying to tune these in. Brother Brent's been tuning me up.
And I'd also like to say to Paul Kenney, thank you, sir, for your gift to the tie dye community and to art in general. I really hope I do it justice. Your opinion really matters to us, it really does. Hopefully this lightens it up for you a little bit and gets you out there tying some Kenney Styles.
Paul Kenney gave us a ride to a Dead show (16:16)
Brent: Thanks, Jon. It's funny, because I even learned something I didn't expect today, which was how you center a shirt. I've seen it done a bunch of times, and I've never actually seen you do that. Hopefully what Jon did today honors Paul and this tie.
Jon and I have a lot of respect for Paul. We actually got to meet him at GD60. He gave us a ride to the Dead show, which was beyond believable for us. We were like two little schoolgirls. I think Jon looks back at me like, is this happening? Paul Kenney's giving us a ride to a Dead show. It made us giggle a bit. So we have a lot of respect for Paul, and we want to make sure people have what they need to experiment.
And look at what Jon is doing. It's funny looking at this Paul Kenney right here. Paul does spray and pray. I struggled with this pattern, because the structure just threw me for a loop, and I couldn't get myself out of the loop of staying on the structure. Then you see what Jon's doing, and then I saw a video of Paul Kenney just spraying dye on it, and I was like, none of this makes any sense.
But you have to remember, we have a lot of muscle memory, and we talk about practice. Jon had this shirt here last night and I put it on. I was hoping he didn't notice, but he did. He took it back. And I can tell you firsthand, when you first start doing any of these ties, it feels really strange and you work really hard at it. But just like anything else, you'll get it as you go along. So thanks, Jon.
Next episode: the airplane fold and an eight point mandala (17:36)
Next episode we're going to talk about the airplane fold and an eight point mandala. I'm super excited about it now too, because you can see I've been kind of resurrecting it. What we're doing with this framework really allows you to dye some really difficult things, and when I say difficult, you'll see what I mean later. We've got some really thick, challenging things, with liquid, really any kind of dyeing. This framework has allowed us to resurrect it and put some twists on it, in places they haven't been before, or they have and we're just bringing them back. So we're excited to talk about that, and we will see you next episode.
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