Game Changer Customs

Stick around to learn one of my favorite painting techniques that I learned from Leonardo da Vinci himself, and to see all of these tips tied together into a finished custom at the end. If you don't know me, my name is Cassie from Cassie Customs, a sneaker artist who loves to paint designs inspired by nature. You might recognize my work from the Art History Air Force Ones, where I replicated 10 of the most well-known works of art on a pair of Air Force Ones. Well, I can't wait to share some of my knowledge with Let's get creative, shall we? Starting off with tip n I wish I knew this sooner, but you can find free mockup templates for customizing shoes online. Link in description for this one that I'm using. Now you will need Photoshop or Procreate for this resource. Once you get one downloaded and into your program, you'll be able to see all of these pre-made layers for each section of the shoe. With colors of your choice, you can fill these in one by one to get a better visual of how the final custom will look. If you're designing custom shoes for a client, it's important for both of you to agree on this final design. Tip two. Use these all-purpose applicator pads to prepare the surface of your sneakers. When I would use other cotton pads, they would fall apart or leave behind fibers on the shoes, but I find that these cotton pads stay together so well and help you thoroughly strip off that factory finish that comes on all leather items. I Tip three. Always test your paint colors by letting them dry first. Angelus paints dry a little bit darker than how they appear while they're wet, so this is important to keep in mind while mixing up your desired colors. To test my colors, I brushed them on an extra Nike leather swoosh that I have, but it totally works to use paper or paper towels or these leather test swatches from Angelus as well. After they dried, I held them up to the mock-up to compare the colors and see how I may need to tweak them. The terracotta color I mixed was too orange, so I added more vanilla and scarlet to make it lighter and redder. I brushed on these second versions of the paint, and once those dried, I held them up again to compare to my mock-ups colors. Now that I'm satisfied with the colors I mixed and how they look dry, we'ready for tip four. Always use light coats of paint. I picked out a filbert brush for this step because I love how it holds the right amount of paint. You're still going to want to wipe the extra paint off so there's never too much on the brush. Work it into the leather. Be careful of the sock liner. Don't leave white spots in between the stitching, but don't leave puddles between the stitching either. Use a tiny brush to paint those edges. Okay, if you are going to hit it with a juicy, satisfying brush stroke This is what one coat of paint looks It took me about four to five light coats of paint to make sure there's not a single area of transparency on these shoes. And for this terracotta color, it took me about three to four coats of paint. Tip 5. This is a transferring technique that I use for placing my designs exactly where I want. First, I take a sheet of tracing paper and trace the actual surface of the shoe where I'll be painting. I went over these creases so that I could see them when I held them up to my computer screen. But before you do this, make sure both the mock-up and the tracing paper are flipped so that you're drawing graphite lines on the side that will touch the shoe. And because I have the exact dimensions of the sneaker, I can position this tracing paper exactly where I want the design to fall on the sneaker. When I take it off the screen and flip it back over, I can match those panels up again and transfer the graphite onto the sneaker by rubbing it. From here, I filled it all in with a base color. And my best tip for removing the extra graphite around your painting is to take a little bit of Easy Cleaner on a cotton swab and gently rub it off. Since the paint is fresh, a little bit might come off, but we can just touch that up in the next stage. Tip 6 is a painting technique called glazing. And this painting technique is called glazing. Tip 6 is a painting technique called glazing. And this painting technique is used to emphasize highlights and shadows. We can achieve a similar outcome by using washes of paint with tooth in. A wash of paint is basically creating a translucent layer. Imagine you're lowering the opacity of a layer in Photoshop or Procreate. Doing this with paint on a brush helps to gradually build up translucent layers and get smooth gradients. I set up my palette with the colors I used to paint the Colosse Adding tooth in to paint helps you spread it out on your painting surface. It stays wet on your brush for longer than it would if you were using it in its pure form. There'so many possibilities with using tooth in, and it's not just for realistic paintings. Another really helpful way you can use tooth in is to add it to your paint, twirl your brush in it to get it to a fine point, and now you're going to be able to create really tiny details and keep going and going for longer than you would if you were just using it straight out of the bottle. Tip 7. Keep your brush clean while brushing on Finisher. For this custom, I'm going to use my favorite Finisher, the Satin Forecoped. And I'm using a clean angular brush and filling a second cup with Brush Cleaner. Now, just Every couple of passes, I clean my brush off to keep it flexible. If I didn't clean my brush off, the Finisher would start to dry on the brush and build up, and it would get a little sticky when I apply it. So, keeping your brush clean keeps the application of the Finisher smooth. Brush it gently and make sure you don't brush that area too frequently, because we don't want it to react with paint underneath. And just After doing two light coats of this Finisher, I get to call these Roman Empire Air Force ones complete. Hopefully, you will think of them often. I hope you enjoyed learning these top 7 tips of mine. Comment a customizing tip that you wish you learned sooner. Again, my name is Cassie, and you can find more of my artwork at Cassie Customs on Instagram. Subscribe to Angelus Brand and watch this video here if you want to find out just how durable their paint is.