Pure Contour

Artist's Statement

I titled one of my shoe drawings, “Combination Shoe.” This is for a reason. When I started with this drawing, I was working with my sneaker, and I had gotten to the outline, added some detail, but not yet the laces. The problem was that I had to move from one parents house to the other while I was working on this project, and as a result, my shoe got left behind. As I hurried to finish it, I found that my Step-mom’s shoe is quite similar to mine, so I used her shoe instead. This means, that that shoe doesn’t actually exist, and instead it is a combination of 2 different shoes.

For all of my Pure Contour drawings, I used graphite on paper. I did not use a smudger, as it is pure contour, and I found this surprisingly difficult. When I wanted to make there be “shadows” I couldn’t, instead, I had to make the line weight heavier. By using 4,6, and 8 B pencils, I would make the lines darker, therefore making it seem like that area had shading.

My process started with a basic outline. Then I added any major lines that I saw on the shoe. After finalizing the outside a bit more, I started on the laces. These definitely took the longest time. It was difficult to make the shoelaces lineup on each side of the flap. After working on the laces, I went over the outline and major creases in the shoe with a thicker pencil to finalize it and then did the same for the inside. If I were to do this again, I would spend more time making certain lines have more value and adding more texture to the shoes. *How did your project evolve?