Pop Art Canvas Shoes

Jazz up a pair of white canvas shoes with bold pop art figures based on Keith Haring’s dancing people. If, like me, you have zero artistic ability, don’t worry, all you need to be able to do is trace images and then colour within the lines. These are skills that most 6-year-olds have, so what are you waiting for?

Ideally, start with a new pair of shoes, or at least a pair that isn’t too grubby. But strategically placed artwork is a good way of disguising stains on canvas shoes you’ve had for a while.

A pair of white canvas shoes

Tracing paper (baking paper should work)

A soft pencil (B or 2B)

A pencil eraser

Scissors

A laptop, tablet or phone to display images

A fine black indelible marker

Fabric paints (or acrylic paints and, ideally, fabric medium)

A fine artist’s paintbrush

Paper for stuffing the shoes

A hairdryer

Fabric protector spray (not essential)

Brightly coloured laces or ribbon (optional)

Start by removing the laces from the shoes and then tracing round the part of the upper on the outer side of a shoe, ie the right half of the right foot or the left half of the left foot. (Ignore the tongue for now.) The two halves will be very similar, if not identical, so tracing the outer side is probably going to be enough.

Cut a piece of tracing paper a bit bigger than a shoe and press it around outer side of one. Use a soft pencil to draw in the outline of the canvas from where the two sides meet (or nearly meet) at the centre of the heel to the front edge where it meets the toe cap. Make sure you accurately draw in the line where the canvas joins to the sole as well as the top edges. Mark where the lace holes are too - you might be able to incorporate them into your design, but if not you'll probably want to avoid them.

When you’ve done that, cut around the outline and press the paper shape onto the shoe again to check that it’s a good fit and there are no significant gaps. You now have a template. Try it on the inner half of the shoe too – if the two halves are very different then you will need to repeat the exercise to produce a template for the inner, but otherwise just trace around the template and cut it out to produce a second one.

I didn’t bother decorating the tongues of my shoes, but you could make a tongue template in the same way if you wanted to.

Search for images online that appeal to you. The attraction of Keith Haring’s figures for me is that they have a solid black outline that's filled with a single bold colour, which makes it easy for even the artistically challenged to reproduce them. Zoom the images you find to a scale that’s appropriate for the templates you’ve made, then just lay a template on the screen and trace the images' outlines onto the template with a soft pencil. It helps to turn the screen brightness up to 100%. As you trace, arrange the images so they fit into the shoe template, placing them where you want them to be on the shoe.

I used one of my two templates for the left half of each shoe and the other for the right halves, but I mixed the colours up when I came to paint them to make them different. Stuff the shoes with crumpled paper to make a firmer surface to work on. Transfer the traced outlines to the shoes by placing a template pencil side down on the shoe and going over the lines again with a pencil, pressing fairly hard to push graphite onto the canvas surface. Go over the faint lines you’ve created with a fine black marker pen immediately. Do the transferring one image at a time, inking over each one straight away – there’s a risk that the faint pencil marks will get blurred or smudged if you try to do them all at once.

After allowing a few minutes for the ink to dry completely, rub any pencil smudges off the shoes with an eraser.

Use fabric paints or ordinary cheap acrylic paint of the type kids use for their artwork. Acrylic paint will be less likely to crack and should adhere better to the canvas if you mix it with a fabric medium, but painting fabric works surprising well even without that as long as the paint isn’t applied too thickly. Water the paint down a little and apply two coats rather than one if you don’t have any fabric medium. Just follow the instructions provided by the manufacturer if you are using paints that are intended for fabric.

You need bright, bold colours for this style of art. Decide what colours you’re going to use and plan where each will go. You might want to avoid putting similar colours next to each other, for example. I chose not to have the same colours near the front or back on each side of a shoe, so that you’ll see different colours whether you are looking at it from in front or behind. You can blend two or more colours together to get what you want, just be sure to mix enough because it’s hard to get the same mixed colour twice.

Decide whether or not to leave the crumpled paper in the shoes for painting. I found it easier to remove it and put a hand in the shoe instead to support the back of the canvas in the area I was painting.

Paint one colour at a time. Keep the paint thick enough for it not to spread when you put the brush on the canvas, it needs to stay where you put it or there’s a risk it will bleed beyond the outline. But it shouldn’t be so thick that it cakes the surface instead of sinking into the fabric, so add water and stir well if necessary. Just go carefully, keeping within the outlines.

After using a colour for one image, put that shoe to one side while you paint an image on the other shoe in the same colour. That way, you won’t smudge the first image by putting your hand on it while you’re busy concentrating on the next one. If you can do this in a sunny spot, the paint will be touch dry within a few minutes and you can safely handle the first shoe again by the time you’ve finished painting an image on the second shoe.

Clean the brush thoroughly after finishing painting all the images in each colour before you start on the next colour.

If you make a mistake and get paint somewhere it shouldn’t be, the best thing is to let it dry and then go over it with white paint. Trying to remove paint is likely to spread it and make things worse, because you can’t just wash and rinse a shoe like you can with a piece of fabric. A couple of coats of white paint might be needed. You can see in the last three photos of this step that I started painting one of my yellow dancing people in the wrong colour, but after over-painting the error in white and then applying yellow, it’s hardly noticeable.

Remove the paper stuffing from the shoes if it's still there, so that the air can get to the inside as well as the outside. Let the paint dry for at least 24 hours, or whatever it says on the instructions for the fabric paint or acrylic medium you used. Then fix the paint, again following any instructions for whatever you used. Most fabric paints are fixed with heat and ironing is usually recommended. My fabric paints gave, as an alternative, using a hairdryer on full heat for 30 seconds. If you’ve used plain acrylic paint or you don’t have fixing instructions that are suitable for shoes, then I suggest the hairdryer treatment.

Go over the black outlines with marker pen again if they’ve been obscured by paint anywhere.

Then give the shoes a degree of waterproofing and dirt-resistance by spraying on fabric protector.

Finally, re-lace your new pop art shoes and go show them off!