ShoeStories Coloring Book by Claudia Lynch

As you know, adult coloring books are the latest thing. This time, you’re the artist! Instead of just mindlessly filling in the usual geometric patterns, you get to have fun creating dazzling new color combinations for Claudia Lynch’s original ShoeStories™ designs.


All the original stories – complete with witty puns, lots of innuendo, and the occasional intentional typo – are included. Feeling even more inspired? Design your own unique shoes… elegant, pretty, sexy or silly… using the templates inside.

About the artist
Claudia Lynch has enjoyed a multifaceted career as theatrical costume designer, tutu maker, milliner, author, publisher, artist and illustrator. She relishes the variety of the artist’s day, completing projects as varied as corporate brochures, fashion illustrations for a sewing magazine, faux Andy Warhol prints for a film, and ShoeStories™. ShoeStories™ have been featured in a number of locally shot films, HBO’s Treme, and the CW’s series The Carrie Diaries.

Why a shoe?
The graphic shape of a shoe, particularly without the constraint of functionality, lends itself perfectly to unusual architecture and applied embellishment – whatever is necessary to express a character, a situation or an entire story. Proportions are exaggerated, heightening the sexual connotation that has historically surrounded women’s shoes.

Why a typewriter?
In traditional illustration, a picture illuminates, explains or expands on the text. Here, the situation is reversed: the text illustrates the pictures, so it had to be an integral part of the work. The vintage pulp fiction that inspired ShoeStories™ featured quick, witty repartee with lots of “You-get-it-you-get-it-You-don’t-you-don’t” innuendo, and would have been written on a beat-up old typewriter. As luck would have it, I happened to have one of those in my basement.

How are the originals made?
ShoeStories™ are painted with gouache (an opaque watercolor paint) on watercolor paper. The stories are typed directly onto the paintings with an old typewriter.

ShoeStories™ Coloring Book
24 Pages + Cover
Softbound
ISBN 9781944248482
$15

Find your ShoeStories Coloring Book here.