Tennis Shoes

Every summer I spend a good deal of time fly fishing various rivers and streams in western Colorado. One particular river hosts a plethora of Collared Lizards as well as hungry trout. Every year I take photos of the lizards I run across as I'm hiking up and down the river, and this last summer I happened upon this particular lizard whose head was more colored than usual. It seemed a good subject for a painting. As far as the painting is concerned, I took a great of time drawing the lizard, and then masked the entire lizard off. I painted the rock and background, removed the mask and then painted the lizard. The size 32" x 45"-- Winsor Newton and Daniel Smith paints.

Some ideas take time to get on watercolor paper. I originally started thinking about this painting during the fall of 1999. During Christmas of 1999 my oldest son was home visiting, and I persuaded him to use his hand for a model. We stepped out on my deck, and I took a number of photos. I eventually got the film developed and threw the photos on a pile in the corner of my studio. A year and a half later I was filing photos into binders and came across the hand photos. I had been searching for something different to paint and immediately stretched a large sheet of watercolor paper. The painting was started on Thursday and finished on Saturday.

This is a pair of my old jungle boots. They had been sitting in the garage for years, and one day when I walked by and the sun was shining on them, it caught my attention. I ran into the house, grabbed my camera and took a number of shots from different angles. I decided to crop the boots to better fill the picture space. The red shoe laces were in the boots, and I elected to go with that.

Tennis shoes have such wonderful character, they are hard to ignore. But, as I write this (Oct 99), I realize it has been a couple of years since my last tennis shoe painting. I'm wondering where the time has gone. They have been on my mind, but I guess many other subjects have been on my mind also. There is so much to do and so little time!! This painting was commissioned by a couple that just bought a new home--and liked my tennis shoe paintings, but wanted something in green. OK, green it is.

Several years ago I got interested in tennis shoes. It seemed to me at the time that tennis shoes were darn interesting subjects--especially if they were worn for a year or two. The curl of the shoe strings, the lights set against darks just cried for some kind of watercolor composition. I must have thought about my first tennis shoe painting for a year before I finally gave it a go.

This tennis shoe painting worked out pretty well. As good as the web is for looking at images, it doesn't provide the up-close and personal experience you need to see things as they really are. As you will note, the painting is 32" by 44", and if you load this image, it will look the same on your screen as a painting that is 12" by 14". Yet, if you saw them in real life, you would have quite different viewing experiences.

I wasn't sure where I wanted to go with this painting. I wanted to do something with the shapes created by the shoe strings, maybe abstract, maybe realistic, but I was leaning toward the abstract. However, as the painting progressed, the realistic won out.

I wear out a pair of tennis shoes every year or so. Then they become my yard shoes for another year. After they seem to have enough character, I take a few photos--that is what usually gets me into another tennis shoe painting.