Le Shouvre

This pair of espadrilles were commissioned to match some rather fetching swimming trunks; needless to say they’ll stand out nicely on the beach in the Floridian sunshine, where they’re being sent.

More pics here

For the most recent pair, I was asked to adapt another famous Banksy image to a pair of shoes. Not wanting to cover the entire canvas in off-white cracked bricks, I decided a patchy approach would effectively get the point across, while leaving plenty of blank space for the canvas to breathe.

The initials “A.D.” were painted on the backs of the shoes, as requested by the customer.

More pics here

UPDATE – I only just found this out, but this pair were featured on banksy.org back in December. Should really keep an eye out for these things…

How. Cool. Is. This.

…well, apart from the Age of Empires music in the video. Found through Abduzeedo.

So this is just a quick post about an illustrator I came across while perusing the blogosphere, as you do.

She’s from the west coast of Canada, and basically her watercolours are awesome. It’s a very defined style, and I like the way she’ll stick to a certain colour scheme, and rarely seems to mix hot and cold colours.

Click here to visit her website

Good Lord, it has been a long time since Le Shouvre was updated. It’s all bubbling under the surface these days, so there’s not much finalised content to share. However, I have slowly been keeping up the shoe-painting…

… so slowly, actually, that this pair took me about a month to finish, due to a boatload of other commitments. Whoops! But they’re done now, and looking… well, old? The point was to make a pair of slip-ons that resemble an old pair of lace-ups; an optical illusion of sorts. As such, they are one of the few pairs that will actually look better after they’ve been worn for a few weeks, and have accumulated a sufficient amount of dirt and grime. Not for everyone, I know.

More pics here

Not the most original name, I know, but hey at least it’s informative.

Yet again I was granted sweet, beautiful artistic liberty, so yet again I employed a design idea that I’d had waiting in the wings for a while. Geometry once again becomes the centrepiece, as I explored the relationship between triangles, trapezoids, and isometric cubes.

This sort of design usually lends itself to computer-aided precision; exact angles and perfectly straight lines and such. But I opted for a more deliberate presentation of a hand-drawn effort, and furthered the overall feel by incorporating a strong fade across both shoes. In addition, the progression of the design seems somewhat out of place, almost as if the shoes are being worn on the wrong feet. Take that, computer!

More pics here

This pair were inspired by the unmistakable language of written music. I chose to stick to a black/white combination, given the look of most sheet music, and went for a straight-forward display on the back warping into a more abstract display of familiar symbols on the front.

More pics here

For this pair, I was given creative liberty, on the condition that I use bright colours. As if I wouldn’t!

I’ve wanted to use a tree as a centre piece for a while now, and eager to include the Le Shouvre isometric cubes (as usual), I ended up producing an odd combination of abstract shapes and plantlife. The shoes are somewhat congested, but the colours create enough of a contrast that your eyes can hopefully absorb it all.

Plus, if cubes grew on trees like fruit, I’d totally get my hands on one.

More pics here (the pictures are unfortunately slightly over-exposed, and the bright sunlight may make the colours look a little more faded than they really are…)

Part two of the Peruvian installment, this pair of espadrilles are a bit more refined than their older sisters.

The brief was simple – sun and moon – so I kept the design simple, too. A pair of natural espadrilles, in which the canvas itself acts as a blanket of cloud. Occasionally, poking through the cloud cover, are glimpses of a clear sky – a big bright sun burning one on shoe, and a crescent moon glittering amongst the stars on another.

Once again, I deliberately left large areas of the canvas blank, in order to keep the feel of the shoes as soft and light as possible – they are espadrilles, after all – so the end result is a compromise between design and form… which sounds pretty sophisticated for a pair of espadrilles, doesn’t it?

More pics here

This week a considerable chunk of my time was spent customizing two pairs of shoes, that this weekend will travel the length of the Atlantic, all the way to Peru.

The first pair, somewhat-inappropriately called “Swipes” (it sounded right, even though none of the word’s definitions really fit the design), are bright and eye-catching; swirls of primary colours contrasting with patches of the original brilliant white canvas. They are intended for the upcoming Peruvian summer – months spent sitting by the beach, the great Pacific rollers crashing into the shore beyond your wonderfully playful espadrilles, Pisco Sour in hand, and a tasty cebiche in your stomach. Ahhh, I can see it now…

More pics here