Display some killer Halloween artwork you've found or created yourself.
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By GeordieKin
#85510
Hi everyone. I've had a bit of a busy time recently, working on portraits etc., but I see my first pumpkin of the season is ready to plant out. Last year I was late and they weren't ready in time for Halloween. Hopefully this year...

In the mean time I thought I'd like to share a new project of mine -custom shoes. Although I paint all the time, it's my job, this is my first pair of shoes. I like the idea of wearable art, and have painted T-shirts in the past.

Anyway, they are about half way finished, finished enough to give an idea of how they are going to look. I think my next pair will be Halloween Town from Nightmare Before Christmas.

My Gollum Nikes as they look so far:

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A couple of recent portraits:

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By Zombie Pumpkins!
#85511
Beautiful work, you are very skilled. Please continue to share images of your art! Very inspiring.

Love the Gollum and Bilbo on the Nikes. It's cool to see this recent movie scene depicted on shoes. It works well here. I like how much of the color is blue, so that from a distance it almost just looks like it could be a pattern on the shoe, rather than portraits. And then you look closer, you solve the riddle. :)

Halloween Town from TNBC would be another great theme for shoes. Can't wait to see that.
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By GeordieKin
#85512
Thanks Ryan. I'm enjoying painting these. I've wanted to do some for years, but it's only recently that the paints have become available in the UK. Way more than twice the price than in the US, but luckily a friend is on a trip to New York and has emailed me to say she got me some more there. I was glad you spotted that I was hoping the pictures wouldn't just leap out as pictures. I wanted them to be subtle at a distance -but not too subtle. I'm of an age when people around me think I should have left all such things behind! So I'd like it to slowly dawn on them that my shoes are a little bit different.

There's some green in the Gollum ones which hasn't shown up well. The Halloween Town ones will have more colours but of course we know that the scheme works beautifully!

I'll certainly be glad to share the stages, of these and future ones. Gormenghast after the Halloween Town, I think..
User avatar
By GeordieKin
#85562
Well, I finished the Gollum Nikes. It took longer than I expected because I wanted silver paint to do the Elvish script on the inner panels and it took a while to arrive. Anyway, here they are.

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By b2b
#85564
Absolutely beautiful! :thumbsup: One of my favorite subjects portrayed in spectacular artistry! Truly a gorgeous piece of talented work! I think your custom Nikes would be a huge seller in a niche market.
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By GeordieKin
#85566
Thank you b2b! Your comment is much appreciated, and very heartening. Although I paint all the time, this is new to me and I was nervous before I started. I'd seen such beautiful shoes online, and wanted to do a good job. I worried a lot about the prepping, taking off the top layer of waxy coating, because I didn't want to ruin an expensive pair of new Nikes. I've learned so much from this pair, and should be able to do the next ones much quicker. The biggest problem I had was that I couldn't paint over the swoosh like you can with Dunks and Airforce 1's, which meant I had to change my original design quite a bit. I had meant to do larger, more close-up faces.

Still, I think it all worked together in the end, and these were just for me so there wasn't too much pressure.
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By Raven
#85616
Wow! Really incredible work! I've seen a lot of painted shoes on canvass shoes like Keds or Converse, maybe easier to paint those? I hope you do NBC and share your work with us!
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By GeordieKin
#85649
Thanks zombombie and Raven. It's good to know you like them. I'm new to painting shoes so I appreciate the encouragement. I haven't had as much time as I'd like to work on the NBC ones, but they are progressing, so here's an update. Jack and the snowflake.. The other sides will have Sally, and pumpkins!

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By GeordieKin
#85749
Thank you! I haven't had as much time as I'd have liked, to work on these recently, but they are still taking shape, if a little slowly. The inner panels will have pumpkins. I think I've made the fence posts too straight, so I'll do some more work on them..

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Another outside panel has Sally with her hair blowing in the wind. I'm not sure what to do on the fronts yet. Maybe some bats, and the cat on the garbage bin.

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I have my next pair of shoes prepped. Can't wait to start thinking about what to put on them! Wish I'd started doing these years ago.
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By Zombie Pumpkins!
#85830
Those Nightmare Before Christmas shoes are just stunning. Very good likeness, and work with the shading. You have a great eye for composition... a unique challenge I bet, when deciding how to fit characters onto the available space of a shoe.

I'm all for the use of the jack 'o lanterns, obviously! :thumbsup: And I also love the choices for the Sally and Jack shots. Her hair blowing in the wind, his grinning gaze at the snowflake. A bit of trivia: I used those same poses as reference when I came up with this pumpkin pattern:

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User avatar
By GeordieKin
#85832
Thanks Ryan. I'm really glad you like where these are going. I hadn't caught on that the poses were based on the same scenes as your great design, but I see it now. Sorry about that. My choices were based on what I felt would work in the shape available. I'm enjoying the challenge of working on 'canvasses' that are oddly shaped, and aren't flat as I'm used to, but it does throw up a few restrictions.

This pair of shoes was not new, and a very dull brown and olive green...

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..so bit by bit I've been changing the entire thing. I meant to keep the green tongue, and work some colours into the design that would tie it in. But the painted green never looked right with the rest of the design, and I took the decision last night to paint the tongue black, which I think is an improvement. It gives me more choice about the colour of the laces I use too.

I've made a simple start of roughly blocking in the cat and rubbish can. I'm not sure if I should have made it a little more tilted, but there will also be bats flying over from the Oogie Boogie moon that I'm putting on the front panel as well, so maybe it's okay.



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User avatar
By Zombie Pumpkins!
#85834
Sally the ragdoll usually has a very vertical appearance, but the sideways blowing hair makes for a perfect fit on shoes!

You changed the color of the shoe's tongue too? Isn't that area more of a soft fabric texture? How do you go about coloring it?

Cat on the bin is a nice addition, looks good to me so far. It will surely be balanced out with the bats. The beauty of the Nightmare Before Christmas movie is that there are so many little visual elements to pick and choose from.