Hobbies

In the previous post I showed how I painted some sneakers for our grandson Austin as a tribute to Kobe Bryant. This time I wanted to paint some sneakers for my wife Cheryl in the style of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” painting.

Step 1 - Prepare Surface, Tape, and Base Coat

We bought some Air Force 1 sneakers but Cheryl didn’t like the way they felt as they’re somewhat heavier than what she’s used to. We found some less expensive ones at Walmart that fit well and were lighter and went with those.

In the previous post I discussed how I got into this hobby of painting sneakers by painting shoes in the OSU style to wear for the bowl game. I also mentioned how our grandson Austin is a big fan of basketball and sneakers - in particular he wanted shoes that would honor Kobe Bryant.

Step 1 - Design Kobe Sneakers

We went to Dick’s Sporting Goods to buy a pair of white Nike Air Force 1. Then I took pictures of the shoes to use for design on the computer on the Paint.net application.

Our grandson loves basketball and is seriously into shoes and I thought it would be cool to paint him some custom sneakers. I saw some videos on YouTube that gave some tips and tricks for painting shoes, as well as some videos about which paint to use and how to prepare the shoes for painting.

First Project - OSU Shoes

Before diving in too deeply I thought it would be a good idea to practice by painting some shoes that I could wear to the Texas Bowl where my alma-mater Oklahoma State would be playing Texas A&M right after Christmas.