So, this time, instead of painting the illustrations for my new book for kids, I thought I would take actual photographs, and then paint over them in Photoshop…

So, hopefully, that explains why I showed you this picture I took of my own size fifteen tennis shoe in the post that started this duo-simultaneous-art-adventure… I mean, it is just an experiment. Something new to try. It should make more sense when I share the poem that I wrote that makes up the text of this book…

Like so many of my ideas, this one began to hit a few snags right off the bat. I thought it would be much quicker and easier than spending days cleaning up watercolor paintings in Photoshop… I have done posts about that, when I did my ‘The Lonely Little Wizard’ book, you might remember… But, and as someone who paints and draws, I am well aware of how important shading and texture are, you can’t just pick one color, one shade, of white, and make a whole shoe. You need a bunch of shades of white and cream and gray and so on, or you just end up with a big white blob.

So, yes, I have managed to turn it into a generic shoe… so I don’t get sued by New Balance… and I have started to simplify the background grass, and paint over the flowers, but at this point, I must admit, I am not sure my idea is going to work… and even if it does, I have a few dozen pictures to take and do the same thing to… pictures of animals and plants and things and stuff… so, uh, this may take a while.

The good thing about art is that you can always start over.