How to Paint on Canvas Shoes

Download and open the printable banana template and the printable pineapple template on your computer. Print each template onto card stock, scaling the artwork down to roughly 8 percent, although this may depend on the size of your shoe. Use scissors to cut the template down to a small rectangle, leaving about 1 inch of paper border around the fruit silhouette. Carefully cut away the black part of the fruit printout with a razor blade or craft knife.

Lay the cut banana template on top of your canvas shoe. Trace the outline lightly onto the canvas using a black fabric marker. Lift the template, lay it on a different area of the shoe and trace again. Leave about 3/4 inch of space between each banana. Repeat the steps until you have achieved the desired pattern, turning and flipping the template as you go to create a random look.

Squeeze a bit of yellow fabric paint onto a plastic paint tray. Use a detail paintbrush to fill in the center of each banana template, from the stem all the way to the bottom of each piece of fruit. If the ink from the marker bled a little bit during Step 2, paint up and over the line a small fraction with yellow pigment, thus creating a crisper black outline. Do not let the paint dry before moving on to the next step. You'll have about 20 minutes before the paint starts to dry out, so work within that timeframe.

Before the yellow paint has a chance to dry, squeeze a bit of green fabric paint onto the plastic paint tray. Use the same detail paintbrush to add a bit of green on the stem of each banana shape, beginning with the first banana that you painted yellow. Start your paintbrush at the top of the stem and gently sweep down. Because the yellow paint is still wet, it will naturally blend slightly with the new green paint, giving the illusion of a real banana's graduated coloring. You do not need to clean your brush in between, because the idea is to blend the colors slightly. When finished, allow the paint to dry for one hour.

While the banana fruit shoe is drying, pick up the second shoe and begin repeating the steps, this time with the pineapple template. Lay the template on the shoe at random angles and trace the edges of both the round section and the leafy section with a black fabric marker. Then, go back and paint the large round section of each pineapple yellow, and paint the leafy stems green. There is no blending required with the pineapple, so clean your brush completely with water in between colors. Allow the paint to dry for one hour.

When the yellow and green paint on both shoes is completely dry, use the black fabric marker to add details on top of each piece of fruit. For the banana, start your marker at the end of the banana and slowly draw an arched line toward the stem, stopping it just before you get into the stem. Connect the line with the edge of the banana just beneath the stem. Repeat on each banana. For the pineapple, create a diagonal crisscross pattern across each round pineapple section. Repeat on each pineapple.

Allow the black ink from the fabric marker to dry completely for one hour, and then the painted fruit on each shoe will be waterproof and ready to be shown off outdoors.