Secret Shoes

So my secret project came out. They're custom shoes for Artsprojekt. You can see them here.


I had to keep this under wraps because it's a new collaboration between Zazzle and Keds. They had womans Keds before, but now they have mens ProKeds. I got a pair to customize the old fashioned way, and I had to take a lot of photographs of the process to use in a video that goes along with the launch. I wasn't in love with the colors after painting the shoes and wearing them, they looked too loud, so when I did the painting I went for a more subtle palette. I'm happy with the way they came out. The shoes themselves can be customized in many different ways. This was just the setup I thought looked the best, but you can change all the different rubber parts, the stitching, the laces, etc.

Shoes are one of the only things I don't like illustrations on, which made this an interesting challenge. I typically wear simple shoes. I think it's easy for shoes to look tacky with drawings on them, like Ed Hardy territory. I had to come up with a way to avoid that at all costs. I wanted more of an illustrated design then my illustrations applied to a shoe. I suppose the difference is you want the drawings to be secondary to the design of the shoe, instead of overpowering it. I hope some folks buy these, I get a little cut of each pair sold, so uhhh...tell your friends :)

Featured today on onethingandanother.com

A really fantastic illustrator named Matt Taylor posted my work on this site today. I recently discovered his work through his twitter and I'm really into it. I especially like his film posters and book covers.

I've found a pretty interesting community of artists to talk with via twitter. It's nice to meet new talented artists, even if it's only through the internet.

Working on skateboard sketches today, but I don't have too much to show for now. I suppose my ideas are forming.

Skate deck

I'm starting a skate deck project today. I got an email from the Montana Skatepark Association a few weeks ago asking me if I'd contribute to their art show/auction to raise money for skateparks. I applied, was accepted, and got a deck in the mail a little while later. If you didn't see, I posted a link on my Facebook fan page, and at least one other person was accepted into the show as well. Cool stuff! I haven't painted a deck since I was a sophomore (I think?) in college. It's been a while, and I'm looking forward to making another one. It's not due for a while, but I like to be ahead of schedule, and it's still my most pressing deadline.

More info: http://www.montanaskatepark.org/ondeck/index.php

Shirt Designs

Today I worked on these shirt designs. The final version can be seen and purchased from my store here:www.zazzle.com/jeremyforson/tshirts. I was getting enough requests to make them into shirts that I obliged.

I posted a photo of the large drawings I made to make these shirts. I blew up the small drawings from my recent mash-up piece, and traced them with a sharpie. These are much larger than the maximum printing surface for these digitally made shirts, but I wanted them to shrink down and look sharp. I could have taken the original drawings and put them through a "Live Trace" in Adobe Illustrator, but I really don't like the way vector tracings look. So much so, in fact, that I'd rather redraw them and spend hours cleaning them up. I doubt that anybody else would care...at all...but it bothers me. I also tried redrawing them in Photoshop with a Wacom tablet, but I stopped pretty quickly. I'm still not comfortable with a tablet and stylus; I find them frustrating and slow. I used the tablet to fill in the blacks, and for knocking out large areas of flat color and such I think they are great, but drawing lines kills me.

I'm a little embarrassed about the state of my tracing paper, which I had spilled some inky water on years ago, and you can see how it seeped into the side of the pad. I don't use it that often.

In other news:
My story is up at sixwordtales.com and the sixwordtales facebook page. Check those out. I like Stiles' 6 words stories a lot, they get my mind spinning.

Forrest

I did this painting today as part of my secret project. I'm not breaking any rules by showing this, so don't worry.

2/20/10

Today I was painting stuff for a project I have to keep under wraps. These are annoying because I like showing what I'm working on, and often what I make under such situations never see the light of day, or they do, but after such a long time that you don't care about them anymore. This one, luckily, should be shown at the end of the month.

In the mean time, I thought I'd share this little texture image I used yesterday to complete the sixwordtales.com illustration. I've been haunting design related sites lately, and I'm finding the cross-pollination fruitful. I read this tutorial on blog.spoongraphics.co.uk, and thought I'd give it a try. I didn't really learn anything new about Photoshop, but I did learn a different way to use it and think about layering and light. Basically the first thing this tutorial calls for is a stock image of smoke, which I cannot afford and probably wouldn't buy anyway; I'm more of a hands on/DIY type of artist, and I like the control it affords me. I have a luxury that a lot of graphic designers don't, which is a wealth of art materials and old paper, and a place to get messy if I need to. Usually GD pros or production artists are at a desk all day and don't have the option of making their own textures, so they rely on stock images.

This is a wet-on-wet ink wash, sprinkled with some salt for the white spots. I actually have a lot of textures I've made over the years for use in digital artwork. Spray-paint, spatters, ink washes, all kinds of papers, wood grains, etc. They're always good to have on-hand.

Time ended when Night captured Day

Today I had jury duty, so much of my day was ruined. It's even more inconvenient when you're self-employed. Normally your job would be required to pay you, even though you're not there. Another example of how freelancers are neglected and overlooked. I did get this guy polished today and ready to ship off. Words written by Stiles White, art/design ma'self.