Have you ever wanted to draw on your kicks? (That’s your shoes.)

About a year ago, today’s project was birthed, but didn’t happen til today; I had visited Old School Shoes in Santa Cruz, CA, and on a whim I asked if they had any “orphan” shoes. Like a leftover single shoe no one had thrown out, but couldn’t sell because there’s only one. They sent me home with a pair that just needed laundered – and thus today, I finally get to share my new kicks!

Tutorial: How to draw on your kicks in alcohol marker

I’ll be using alcohol markers; if you want to use paint, then google for the right kind, I did see there are lots of recommendations out there, but I didn’t feel like buying something new for my shoes.

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Sunflower shoes

This was my first pair; I discovered just how soft the color blends, which is great except for detail, you have to add black pen. Use something waterproof so your shoes won’t run in the rain.

Also – do the color work first. The sharpie did bleed a little when I added color atop it. It’s possible giving it more time to dry would help, but test it to be sure.

Galaxy shoes

This design worked great for the soft blends! Lots of pretty colors make them a rainbow! You can create all kinds of gorgeous blends whether making it a sky or not – do rainbows, soft flowers, whatever you like! For the stars I used acrylic white, in hopes it’s permanent.

My doodled kicks

I’m so excited – I never once owned a pair of hightops! Glad I at least snuck that in under the wire before a full six decades passed. LOL. I used one of my favorite doodles as inspiration for the lines, and colors had to include the trim color on the shows – reds and blues (which I translated as a blue violet). And added my signature yellow.

UPDATE:

I wore my shoes for dogwalks a time or two, but just last night I wore them to an art festival/wine tasting. It was a swankier community so wearing the PF Flyers stood out among the nicer-dressed crowd. One guy ran up to me and asked if those are “real” PF Flyers? And could I run and jump farther and faster now? It was kinda hilarious – but I felt VERY cool wearing my new kicks!

What would you draw on shoes?

If you try it I’d love to see what you make! Tag me on social or email what you create….by the way kids can do this too, it’d make them so proud to wear shoes to school that they made!

Supplies

1. Copic Markers 
2. Copic Hex Chart 

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For something a little different today – a “talkie!” Just chatting, no tutorial, but I hope there’s something in here that helps everyone learn a little bit.  Pull up a chair and let’s chat!

Vlog: HELP! Color selection in Ohuhu markers (hex chart)

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Thoughts from the cutting room floor

Originally this was an even longer video, believe it or not! Gah! Craziness. I apparently had a lot to say!

This is a government/business issue, not a people issue.

The people who live in any countries with the aforementioned terrible practices are NOT at fault. Please do NOT attribute characteristics of the unethical businesses and governments to the average citizens in these countries or in your own. We have enough of that going on. Don’t blame the wrong people for the misdeeds.

Costing us art supply companies

A big thing that I decided to cut because I think it was implied: these companies who steal intellectual property are putting art and especially small craft companies out of business. If you’ve noticed a bunch going under in recent years, that’s often a part of it. These manufacturers are stuck either paying legal bills to try to get these fake products removed from these horrible websites, or they just leave it there and lose customers who won’t come back to shop at their own store anymore, because they only shop from thieves around the world to get themselves a deal.

We can help keep our favorite maufacturers and retailers in business by taking care where we buy from.

Exceptions to every rule

There ARE products made in unethical countries all over the world that ARE clear of the kind of corruption mentioned.  Not everyone is on the take. There are even some products I use regularly that were invented in and sold by companies within corrupt countries—but they came up with something new and unique in the marketplace. I’m not at all against that!

I’m also not an avid researcher of EVERY single item I purchase; plenty of good companies source some portion of materials from unethical places, and mircomanaging everyone’s supply chain is not what I’m advocating. 

But products that should cost much more but carry a dollar store price always do raise my spidey sense. If it looks like a dodgy item, it’s safe to assume there’s more to the story. Feel free to give them the benefit of the doubt if you’re comfortable doing so, but I personally find another product to purchase.

My own policy

I don’t knowingly promote any product that benefits from their Human Rights violations or commits Intellectual Property theft. (I’m not perfect at finding out all the details on every company, and every time Amazon is involved there’s a risk since it’s hard to go track down information.)

I also don’t promote product that I simply do not think is worth you spending your money on—unless I tell you don’t buy this $125 ballpoint pen. You certainly may buy anything you wish, but I don’t need to be part of that food chain, so generally I ignore not-good supplies rather than providing them oxygen.

I get 5-1o emails a DAY from foreign dodgy companies wanting me to promote their stolen goods, and it’s exhausting. Their marketing is insane. Ads chase me on Instagram and Facebook, and I hardly scroll my feed any more because of it! Any company that hounds me that way gets the “talk to the hand” treatment. Ohuhu hasn’t been as bad as others, but they did fall into the too-many-ads category and I had to mark them as spam on Instagram.

If any companies ARE really reading my blog like they tell me they are (ha!)….please just stop emailing me. Engage with my social posts and YT videos in comments, let’s get to know each other, THEN you can email me. Cold emails get you nowhere but my block list. Thanks.

So I can sleep at night…..

Since I do not want to profit from products I do not believe in, I’m doing two things:

1. I’ve donated my set of markers and a bunch of sketchbooks to our family homeless shelter, and I’m hoping some young person with talent finds them and uses them to lift their family out of poverty.
2. I’ll be donating the profits from the Ohuhu Honolulu Hex Chart to Human Rights Watch. 

I think that’ll help me get better sleep.

Ohuhu Hex Chart – Honolulu Set

Purchase a downloadable hex chart for Ohuhu’s Honolulu set of alcohol markers – included are both a blank one to color with your own markers, and a completed one to print for reference.

How to Use a Hex Chart Class

Helpful?

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Do you need all the colors in order to feel ready to make art? In a comparison of marker brands, I tried matching colors by layering, to see if I could make them look right without having the exact colors they called for – by layering.

A word from our “Sponsor”

This post is brought to you (ha) by one of my brand new pages on the art-classes site….the new Hex Charts and More page! If you haven’t visited in a while, scroll through this page, or any of the mediums… they’re no longer just long lists of thumbnails. There’s hidden jokes, helpful videos, quotes to inspire you, and context around groupings of classes.

My goal is to make the content more helpful, motivational, and just plain fun to check out! I’d love your feedback, especially if you find any oopses; I’ve been discovering some copy/paste errors and would love to know if you find others.

Tutorial: Alcohol Markers: Do you really need ALL the colors?

It’s a long one – skim through to the section you want, or just park with a donut and coffee and let’s chill together a while!

• Three brands of alcohol marker – Copic, Sketchmarker, Olo 03:22
• My alcohol marker reference book 05:16
• Alcohol marker conversion charts 08:13
• Red blending test 09:30
• Green blending speed drawing 14:44

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Basic blending test

The markers all seemed to perform the same in blending with two exceptions:

1. Copic retained some hard edges (see the light outline around the butterfly)
2. Copic’s blender pen retained some of the “removal” of color, the others just got very very soft.

Copic’s c0lorless blender has never been something I’ve loved because of the almost pixelly-texture created, but I was really surprised the other brands just melted in instead. This might be the paper or the fact that it’s RED. Hateful red that loves to be a pain. LOL.

Drawing head-to-head test

The greens between the three mediums aren’t apples to apples by any means; but an overall assessment:

1. Copic’s range contains more useable muted greens IMHO. The other brands are generally more saturated, with the exception of the G1s through G3s, which are a nice warm range that I’ve been hoping would show up. (No luck on getting dark desaturated ones, bummer!)
2. Sketchmarker has a lot of greens, or shall we say “G” markers, that are actually blue or bluegreen. Hard to call them greens, but – they were very helpful in layering with their more yellowish greens to create the tones in the Copic version.
3. Olo. Poor Olo with so few greens to play with! The ones they have are nice, and I like the way the color lays down, but I hope their next release whenever it happens will have more range. But even with that – I was surprised I could get the right greens!

Part 2 is coming up Saturday

Now that this one is finished, my attention turns to the neutrals – the browns. So far I haven’t found any gamechangers in that range, though the Red Greys for black-brown hair are pretty interesting from Sketchmarker. But stay tuned – that post will also talk about some colors in both Sketchmarker and Olo that seem to be unique to them, so if you had interest in adding a color or two, I hope to have some suggestions!

Supplies

1. Markers:
   1. Copic Markers 
   2. Sketchmarker Brush Pro Alcohol Markers
   3. Olo markers 
2. Hex Charts:
   1. Copic hex chart
   2. Sketchmarker hex chart
   3. Olo marker hex chart
3. Papers
   1. Neenah Cardstock, Solar White 250pk 
   2. Marker sketchbook 
4. White Signo Uni-ball Gel Pen 

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