Art of Custom Sneakers: How to Create One-of-a-Kind Kicks

Kickz (aka Xavier Crews) adapts his sneaker customization YouTube tutorials to the page in his vibrant debut. He outlines how to prepare shoes for reworking, which requires removing the laces, rubbing the factory finish off with acetone, and taping over parts that shouldn’t be painted. Detailing a variety of methods for transforming the look of leather and canvas shoes, he notes that readers can “draw” with paint pens and shows how to use them to make a tricolor camo design or a Pac-Man–inspired maze on black high tops. He also walks through how to add acrylic paint tiger stripes and create a “cartoon” effect by applying white and black lines “near the stitching in different areas of the shoe.” The creative designs wow, especially the “cut paper collage” made by gluing on cutout comic book panels, as well as the marbled effect achieved by dipping shoes in a mixture of leather dye and shaving cream. However, the use of illustrations in lieu of photographs makes it hard to envision what some of the finished products will look like off the page, and several projects require significant artistic ability, such as the “dragon kicks” featuring a freehand drawing of a pink dragon spanning the length of each shoe. Still, sneakerheads will get a kick out of this. (Sept.)