Shoe Scape

My assignment was to create a drawing of a pair of shoes of my choice (I picked my soccer cleats) and I had to pick a specific part of the cleats to draw with a viewfinder. Additionally, I had to make a background of a place that I love, so I picked a picture I took of a pier off of Dowses beach in Cape Cod, where I go every summer. I had to make it using pure contour lines—solid lines with no shading—and I created it with varying line weight (dark and light lines).

I began this drawing by lightly sketching the outline of my cleats, using the viewfinder to pick a certain area of the cleats. I ended up including most of the cleats in the image. After that I lightly drew the details. First I did the laces, and then did some of the designs on the sides of the cleats. When I was done with my light sketch and was confident in the shape of the drawing, I started making the lines bolder, trying to make a contrast of line weight. I tried to make the lines closer to me darker and the lines farther away lighter. When I finished the cleats, I had to make a backround. I decided to put it in the area between the shoes, to try and use up the most negative, white space. Looking at my picture of the pier for reference I drew the pier lightly, and then filled in some of the details of the ocean waves. After that I started to make the lines of rocks making up the pier and the waves in the ocean bolder and tried to show a contrast of line weight there as well.

The reason I picked the cleats as my pair of shoes to draw was because they are important to me and I also picked them was because of the very interesting designs on the body of the cleats. I decided to include most of the cleats in the drawing because I loved the design of the cleats and I wanted to include as much as possible. I thought the position of the cleats provided good balance in the drawing because they were symmetrical on each side of the paper, but not quite because one was on top of the other. I picked the pier to be the background because it is on a beach that I go to every summer in cape cod, so it's very important to me. I liked the details of the rocks and waves and thought it would look good in the space between the cleats.