Abstract Shoe Drawing

To begin the process of this project, I used concepts from previous projects such as contour line drawing and principles of negative space to make three contour line drawing of one of my shoes: a front view, a side view, and a birds-eye view. I used my right converse because I thought it had the most interesting lines out of all of my shoes. After using light pencil to make sketches of the shoes and then softer-lead pencil to make more solid lines, I moved onto the next stage, the zoom and crop. After drawing 3 equally sized boxes on a 12x18 piece of paper, I used a viewfinder to focus on one area of one of my shoe views. I chose the section where the laces curved away from the shoe in the side view because I liked their shape and angles. I then copied what I saw in the viewfinder into a larger scale drawing, the first of my three boxes. Next, I focused on a smaller portion of that drawing, choosing the place where the top lace twisted around to magnify even further in my second box. Finally, I zoomed in one last time on that spot to fill the entire third box. Now, I had the option of choosing any of the three boxes to turn into a full 12x18 drawing that I would add to to become an abstract art piece. I chose the first and least zoomed-in section because it provided the most information which I thought would make a more interesting picture. For my final abstract art piece, I used black pen, watercolors, and tape to keep the borders clean. Originally, I planned to make each section of the piece separate as that is what I had seen on most of the example art pieces. However, as I played more with what I wanted to do with my project, I decided the shapes would lend themselves better to all being a part of the same picture. Once I figured out what I wanted the theme of my piece to be, I was sure of this.

In this project, I used elements of art such as line, color, value, form, and space to integrate various principles of design. In all of my three pieces, I used line to draw the objects following the line contour method. Color and value created the movement of water, and again value added weight to some of the lines of my shoes so they became more 3-dimensional (I did this with a few of the animals in my final drawing as well). In the third art piece, the value of the blues gave emphasis to various parts of the page. I used the form of my top shoelace to help show the movement of the fish. Also while drawing the shoes, I payed attention to the negative space around the shoes to form a more accurate depiction of them rather that what I thought I saw.

For my final abstract piece, I decided to paint and draw an ocean scene. Originally I considered making something fall related, but many of the projects we had just finished had been focused on fall, so I decided to go in the opposite direction. I used the laces in the drawing as outlines for schools of fish, and drew in various sea animals around them. I also hid small pieces of trash around the drawing (a water bottle, plastic bag, and wrapper) to acknowledge the pollution in the oceans. My method of drawing the animals, primarily line contour as we had been practicing, left them transparent. This alluded to the death of many animals due to ocean pollution and the instability of the ocean's health. This project relates to my life because growing in Maine, I have always loved the ocean, and its pollution is a matter I care deeply about. In my final piece, I am proudest of how the pen drawing of the whale turned out- I really liked the stippling effect and was happy with the accuracy of its proportions. I was also pleasantly surprised by how my shoes turned out, although they did take a very long time to finish. I struggled with painting in the water, as almost every time I try to use watercolors for a background I end up using too much water and the paper wrinkles. However, I learned that this may just be a result of the paper I was using more so than my technique. To fix it, I attempted to use less water and to flatten out the paper after it had dried. I also struggled in drawing in all of the fish, as they took much longer to make than I anticipated. I decided to experiment with leaving portions of the schools white/transparent instead of filling them in so I could work faster. I actually liked this better than if I had colored them all in as it helped show the depth and movement of the schools, so I continued to use this method throughout the piece.