What is SKBG?

When I was in high school, I discovered the Nike Air Force 1.  It was perfect.  It fit my incredibly irregular feet.  They came in a variety of colors, styles, and themes.  While working at a local Italian restaurant, I earned enough money to accumulate upwards of 25 pairs before I came across an artist online who was advertising his services for custom painted shoes that he had designed and created.  I was immediately hooked and quickly wrote to him explaining what I would be interested in and how much it would cost.  He replied that it would cost around $500, and that quickly terminated that endeavor.

Until I began to think: I'm creative, have an artistic background, like to try new things, and I already have an idea of what I want - why can't I do this?  I began scouring the internet for resources, tutorials, forum posts, anything that I could use to learn the process of painting shoes.  I learned about how to prepare the shoes by using Acetone to remove the factory applied finishes before using an oil based acrylic formulated to bind with leather.  I also learned the hard way that painting several thin layers is the most effective way for the paint to adhere and not crack after use. 

The Process

After researching methods for painting leather, I wanted to refine my design process and come up with a way to visualize the design before every opening a bottle of paint.  Having experience as a website designer, I was familiar with Adobe Photoshop and began creating digital templates.  Preliminary templates are full scale line drawing printouts that I use to sketch my ideas out.

  The next step in the process is visualizing the final product in as close to a photo realistic way as possible.  I created digital templates that I could manipulate to create iterations of realistic renders of a final product. Using photos of the white-on-white Air Force 1, I created masks and layers in Photoshop that could be changed to produce different colors and cropping regions.