Silk resist style painting on spandex

[Mermatron Athena]

I have been throwing over in my mind some out of the box (for me) methods for making a tail... What I have been envisioning is a tail made of thicker light colored spandex material with painted on acid dyes that are done in the style of resist silk paintings made with "gutta resist" and similar methods of wax resist and water color paintings. I haven't seen any tails like this, but since original ideas run sparse, I figured I would ask here :)
i have all the dyes, and am very good with my acid dyes, and my dyes are organic. I have researched the heat tolerance of spandex verses the temp for setting colors, and it's compatible for my methods. I think I will draw or stencil out (shilouette machine stencil, with airbrushed resist and acid dyes) and paint the pattern on my fabric before steaming, cutting, and sewing, unless I somehow come up with the tolerance and space to make a duct tape or plaster dummy. I also have a serger for the seems and was thinking they would look best with an overlock stitch.
I have a wax/oil blend that I like to use for resist on fiber art, and was thinking it might work on the scales, so was hoping to see what anyone else may have done. There are resist guttas made by Jacquard and such, but I was worried about bleed through on a thicker fabric? Also I worry about oils degrading the rubber, but think they might get stripped out fast enough with our chlorinated pool (salt/chlorine hybrid).
Has anyone been doing watercolor type paintings on tails? I hope I'm not in uncharted territory because I hate keeping all those darn notes! I've done something similar and then sealed in the results with latex caulking but that was '06 and my first tail attempts, which were pretty but I never swam in them.
I think having to dye it again if the water fades it wouldn't be a big deal. It's stuff I always have on hand for my fiber arts/spinning work.
Oh and another query would be if anyone has used fine silk to make frilly type fins with. A hand painted silk fin seams like it would look just dreamy! There are nylon substitutes if silk would just get melted by chlorine. Guess I better gather materials and make a patchwork belt and see how things hold up over a few months. Nothing like good ol' trial and error LOL

[ShyMer]

I can't think of anybody ever bringing this idea up before. Mostly people just paint spandex, screen print (surprisingly only companies have done this that I'm aware of) or add sequins.
I know a little about dying fabric, as well as the basic concept of resist methods, but nothing about working with synthetics like spandex. I would love to see your progress as you test it out.
Have you been able to find any info on this elsewhere?

I hope you don't mind sharing. I'd love learning something new, and I imagine other people would like to do this as well.

I like where you're going with the idea of painted fins. I thought about doing something like that but I feel like I lack the technical sewing knowledge that would be useful here.

[Grey Gambit]

I've been tossing the idea around for trying hand dying, but haven't been able to test anything out. It'd be really cool to see how it works out.