“Dear Ms Thompson

I´m doing a workpaper about you and your work. I’m a future shoe designer and I have to make a shoe inspired by your work and the materials you work whith. I wanted to ask you if all your works are with pencil and Photoshop, or if you use any other link ink, oils, paint etc...

Sincerely Miguel”

— Miguel Pinheiro

Hi Miguel! Firstly I have to say I am pretty excited to hear you're designing a shoe inspired by my work, I would love to see it one day! Secondly, thanks so much for your question!

When I first started out I used a lot more mixed media in my work, and generally experimented much more often, this was primarily because everything was new, I hadn't discovered what I loved and disliked, and I also had much more time on my hands to just play around.

 I was inspired by other artists and found myself working on wood and playing with all sorts of textures and different mediums. Some of my earlier pieces had much more variation in the tools that I used.  Lola (featured right) was one of my very first illustrations, she was entirely done by hand. At the point of creating Lola I'd moved on from wood and various paper types and she was my first illustration using recycled cardboard - the cardboard she was drawn on was pulled off the back of a paper pad.  I'm not sure if you can tell from this file, but her hair, lips and skin were all done using acrylic paint, and then I drew over the top with everyday B pencils.

Lilli (below) had her dress coloured using watercolour paints and then I drew the detailing over the top, she was one of the first pieces that I took into Photoshop to colour her skin and do general clean-ups. 

Now basically everything I do is created using recycled cardboard, Faber Castell Polychromos black pencils, Faber Castell Pitt Pastels and Photoshop, this is mainly because they are tools I know work for me, and these days when I work there isn't much time to experiment! One thing I have started to add recently are pre-scanned pieces of inks, paints and watercolour which I then arrange around my illustration in Photoshop. I just keep a huge file of splodges and various lines and then when I want to use them I drop them into a file and manipulate them, changing colours and arranging them to fit, you can see this in the Ginger Illustration below. The peach and white paint work was added in Photoshop, not painted on the physical page.

I hope that helps with your project, all the best with your shoe designing! 

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