ZOMBIES 2: Electric Boogaloo

Not much to say about this pair. Had a lot of fun doing it. I think I drew some killer (har har) hands on the backs. There's a painfully obvious Tony Moore influence, but they say steal from the best, so there you go.

Owls

Fun, simple, colorful, expressive, clean.

One of my favorite pairs so far.

ZOMBIES!

Been away from shoes for a while--working way to hard to do anything but sleep in my free time. Recently I've been trying to scale back at work so I can come home and get some quality chemical huffing time. Nothing really relaxes me like the fumes of brand new shoes, sharpie, fabric marker, and sealant spray.

On an unrelated note, I've noticed that I can't taste food anymore.


Imagine my excitement when an Art Director at Goodby commissioned lil' ol' me to do a birthday present for his awesome wife. I have yet to meet her, but I can infer her awesomeness from the fact that she rocks gory zombie kicks.




The sides are a tribute to the lettering on 1970s Zombie film posters. As a present to myself (justified by an "investment in a project") I bought a massive book on 70s lettering and proceeded to rip off the coolest stuff in the horror and comic book chapters.

The final shoes being modeled by a happy recipient:

Calder's Circus - Evan's 50th Pair!

Beginning in 1926, Alexander Calder created an elaborate piece of kinetic sculpture slash performance art slash toy set which has come to be appropriately known as Calder's Circus. Calder would reenact the circus of old with his wire and cloth scultpures, speaking for the characters and providing sound effects. He built wire trapeze artists that really could flip and catch the swinging bars with their hooked hands. He constructed a cowboy who could flip a lasso around a horses neck with a spring-loaded arm. He built over a hundred different characters, all engineered to perform their real-world skill.


Calder also created extensive sketches prior to building the circus, some of which are recreated on the sides.


I really developed a deep appreciation for Calder, as I always seem to do for my subject material. For more on the circus, make sure to watch the surviving films of Calder's demonstrations:

Album Year: The Remake

These are based on the pair Cam did a while back, only I had to modify them a little bit because Cam has a much steadier hand for intricate detail work. I blew up the images and scattered them around to fit my less detail-oriented style. The results are interesting. It's like comparing the original film to its remake.

More Oceans

I've done several ocean and water themed pairs. Can't complain. I love the subject. It makes me think of some of the best days of my life spent on vacation in Bermuda, San Diego, and Mexico. One day, when I manage to hit it big doing these shoes, I will retire on a beach somewhere and draw oceanscapes forever.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

One of my favorite movies of all time and one of my favorite actors. This was a dream assignment.

I used an extremely limited color palette for this pair--black and three different tones of brown. Inspired by the movie posters for the film, which were printed with muddy brown backgrounds, I left large white spaces that will get dirty and fade as the shoes are worn. First time I've tried something like this--we'll see how they look in a few months.


"There are two types of people in this world, my friend. Those with job security and those who draw. You, my friend, draw."

Carleton College

A friend of the family commissioned a pair of Carleton College shoes as a graduation present for her daughter, who just finished up four years there. I've come a long way from being the artist who was afraid to draw buildings. Now I really enjoy architectural studies. And when the building is really hard to draw, I can just cover the hard parts in snow. Huzzah for winter!

The Jetsons

I love this show. I did before working on this pair, but now I REALLY love this show. You'd think that meticulously scrutinizing cartoons would ruin them, but the Jetsons really holds up for me.


It's counter-intuitive, but line work is not nearly as important in a pair like this as color choice. Choosing the right color palette can make all the difference in creating a likeness of familiar characters like the Jetson family. Imagine George Jetson with yellow hair instead of brown. It's weird, creepy, and ruins the entire likeness. Luckily, I've got a lot of markers to choose from these days, so matching color is possible.

Physicists

I did these ages ago, but I had to wait to put the pictures up because they were a surprise graduation gift. My friend just finished his degree in theoretical physics at Rochester University, which means that, despite his best efforts to explain, I have no idea what he studied.

Because so many of the scientists made their discoveries in centuries past, I wanted the art to have a classic feel, perhaps like a pen and ink newspaper illustration from the 19th century or an etching from the 18th.

Robots for a baby

No, I don't actually think the baby will wear these. The baby hasn't actually been born yet, in fact. This is a present for the expecting parents, who hopefully won't notice that some of the robots cross the line from adorable into slightly creepy.

House with Cracked Walls by Paul Cézanne

Being asked to replicate a painting on a pair of shoes is a difficult task in any case. When the artist I'm asked to replicate is Paul Cézanne, the master of expressive landscape, I get a little panicky.


I think the final shoes came out well, however. There's a few inconsistencies between my replica and the original, but they're minor. I used over 50 colors, a personal record by far.

Turtle Aeronautics and Space Administration

If turtles decided to go to space, sea turtles would definitely be the ones chosen to go. Land turtles would fail miserably trying to navigate in zero gravity. Look at an African Tortoise and try to imagine that thing in a space suit. Yeah right. Sea turtles live in an aquatic environment, and NASA uses underwater training to prepare astronauts for space travel. It makes so much sense. Sea turtles are definitely Turtlenauts.



I tried to give the backs and sides the feel of a spacesuit covered in patches. Turtles wouldn't journey in the name of the United States, however. They would journey for all turtle-kind, hence the change in the flag patch.

Bird Skeletons

I added up the number of finished shoes that I've done in the last eleven months and I realized that this pair right here is number 40. I know the "Finished Shoes" link on the right is a little low--a few pairs never made it on the blog.

Really damn cool that I managed 40 pairs in under a year, almost all of which are on feet and out getting wear in the world.

I'm grateful for all of the support, the encouragement, and everything I've learned along the way.

Golden Age Comics

While this pair may seem simple, it was in fact one of the most difficult pairs I've ever had to do. Because I'm working on cloth, ink spreads if you leave the tip of the marker down too long. If you let colors run into one another, they mix. This can be a cool effect if you want a painterly style with gradients, but it doesn't replicate the stark contrast of old comic books. In order to get clean comic book lines with as little mixing as possible, I had to wait for each color to dry before I started on the adjacent color.

A-One Title Company

This pair marks a first for Art Kicks in that they are a promotion for a business rather than a pair for casual wear. The company is based in my hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, which meant that I was able to depict some classic southwestern images. Particularly proud of the Sandia Mountains on the side of the left shoe.

"Chanel" slip-ons

On the surface, this pair depicts imitation Chanel slip-ons covered in Chanel jewelry. Yet I think they makes some really interesting statements. The juxtaposition between the Chanel logo and the Vans logo raises questions about brand identity and pricing. Does the fact that I drew the Chanel logo on a piece of apparel
make them worth much more than a normal pair of Art Kicks?

Below are a pair of actual Chanel slip-ons, which provided me the base for the design.