Update: finished "War and Peace" shoes

I was asked to paint a pair of Vans with the theme War and Peace.  These are from my "swallow" series (even though its a dove.) I just sort of let my pencil do the talking and sketched out this design. My first inspiration was the classic image of a soldier pulling a grenade pin with his teeth, and the rest followed.

I repeated the design from the front panels here on the ouside panels, to tie the shoes together, and to tie them in with other pairs of shoes I made inspired by these shoes (They are interchangable.) (see- Candy and Bombs and War and Peace II)

On the inside of the shoes I painted a grenade pin and a chewed lollipop stick.  I kept thinking of the concept of the "business end" of both these have their "explosive" impact (flavor, taste/ destruction/shrapnal) and the other end of these things are benign and discarded. I thought it was so interesting that they don't even really hint at their purpose. 

On the back panels of the shoes I painted the names of the shoes, "War and Peace." Eventually these shoes will be able to be interchangeable with the shoes "Candy and Bombs" and "War and Peace II." War is spelled out in bones and Peace in feathers. 

Here is a close up look at some of the shoe's images.  (side note- I had a heck of a time finding a good reference for the soldier pulling the grenade pin, I couldn't find any! so I took a picture of myself biting on a lint remover, traced it and replaced the lint remover with a grenade, squared the chin to make "him" look more manly and there I had my soldier!) Funny thing is, he looks exactly like my Brother now!!