Octopus Canvas Watercolour Shoes with STAEDTLER

The STAEDTLER design team members were all asked to decorate a pair of canvas runners using STAEDTLER art products. This is what happened to one of my pair.

Products I used to create these shoes:

STAEDTLER products:

Mars Lumograph pencil HB

Mars plastic eraser

Karat Aquarell watercolour crayons

Karat Aquarell watercolour pencils

Lumocolor permanent marker in black fine tip

Scotch Gard Fabric and upholstery protection spray

one pair of canvas shoes

Tools I used:

a selection of paintbrushes from small and soft to medium and coarse 

a spray bottle filled with water

a water bowl

paper towels

First I sketched a design onto the shoes. I tried to mirror the design onto the other shoe without copying it exactly. If I made a pencil mark I didn't like, I simply erased it with my plastic eraser. I stuffed the shoes with tissue paper to give myself a firmer surface to sketch on.

I wet a small soft paintbrush and dragged it across the colour of watercolour crayon I wanted to use. The more colour you pick up the darker the colour will be on the shoe. You might want to start with a light hand. These crayons are packed with pigment.

I sprayed the shoe with water to make it pretty wet and started to watercolour right onto the shoe. If you've never watercoloured before, you should know the paint travels quickly. Work on a wet surface to help the paint move. If the surface is dry you will create more of an acrylic paint effect with rigid lines.

After I filled in the background with a water colour, I wanted to create some detail shading so I dipped the tip of a sharpened  Karat aquarell pencil a little bit darker than my background colour into the water and drew right onto the sneaker. I used a short small stiffer bristle brush to push the pigment where I wanted it and blend it out a bit. This kept my lines crisp beside my octopus and allowed me to blend the pigment out on the background edge.

I began to add colour to the octopus by using a wet brush and picking up colour from the Karat crayons. I added pink, purple and orange shades. I left the highlights without paint so the white canvas would show.

I dipped a white Karat Aquarell pencil in water and used it to reinforce the white highlights of the canvas.

Then I used a deep blue to add depth and shadow around the octopus. I blended out the water edge and kept the edge toward the octopus crisp.

After the shoes dried, I sprayed them with two good coats of Scotch Gard and let them dry completely.  It's important to spray the shoes before you use the permanent marker. The spray will dissolve the marker and it will bleed.

After the sprayed shoes have dried thoroughly,  use the fine tip Lumocolor permanent marker in black to outline and give detail to the design. 

These were a load of fun to make. I think I might have to try another pair!

Hope you give it a try too. I'd love to see what you come up with!