Kathryn Lillie, advertising and Spanish major, is not your average senior at University of Oregon. Originally from Milwaukie, Kathryn has a long-time hobby which is just recently beginning to take off as her first business venture: painting shoes. She first starting sketching as soon as she could hold a pencil, and her pursuit of painting followed soon after. However, she has never taken a formal art class. In her sophomore year of high school, Kathryn saw a rather unique pair of custom-painted shoes, and decided to try her own hand at the challenge. She painted her first pair of shoes, titled “Night Wish,” based on album art with a pair of knock off vans. Since then, she has painted around ten pairs of shoes, mostly for friends.
She relates the experience as just like normal painting, but just on a miniature canvas; she uses acrylic paint and a protective cover, which depending on the brand quality of the shoes, creates a waterproof, durable, and one-of-a-kind custom painted pair of shoes. She still wears her shoes painted from high school, proving their long-lasting quality. She embraces many painting styles and content, and her favorite things to paint are her personal interests, in novels, television, and other art, such as an Alphonse Mucha design. After seeing her “Night Wish” shoes at work, I commissioned her for a pair of shoes for myself from a pair of old now off-white pair of slip-on Vans. Both of us being avid fans of the TV show, she painted a pair of Doctor Who themed shoes for me. Only afterwards when I interviewed her did I realize the amount of work that went into painting a pair of shoes.
On average, a pair of shoes takes anywhere from 6-10 hours of work, usually done in two sessions. She states that the hardest images to paint are usually realistic portraits of people, which I was impressed with by the accuracy of her painting of actor David Tennant on one of my shoes. After the increasing popularity of her shoes for friends, Kathryn decided to create a Facebook page to try and increase some publicity for her work and maybe start a business. She was surprised by the immediate response, receiving four serious commissions within the first week, either from friends of friends or complete strangers who took a great interest in her work. Kathryn is now working on the next step; getting her work out there and deciding how to handle pricing and shipping and handling costs. She typically charges around $55+ for her shoes, which seems to be under priced for the extent of her work, compared to other pairs of custom-painted shoes that go for at least $120 on websites such as Ebay and personal art websites. For the amount of hours poured into the painted shoes, at minimum wage ($8.95 in Oregon), Kathryn would make about $54 for her shoes, if she worked at her fastest (6 hours of painting). This is still more than most college students are willing to pay, despite the high quality of her work. To get around this obstacle, Kathryn is planning to start buying shoes from Payless and second hand from Goodwill, wash them, and then be able to sell them for cheaper once they are painted. She enjoys painting with a good cup of tea and her music or an audio book. Good luck Kathryn!
Want to check out her work and commission your own pair of shoes? Visit http://www.facebook.com/KathrynPaintsShoes/
Check out her other artwork at http://kathrynlillie.deviantart.com/ or http://kathrynlillie.weebly.com/