Abstract Shoe Drawing

Artist Statement

This unit was a three step process, initially beginning with our shoes. After having completed a pure line contour drawing of our hand in a previous unit, we had to do the same with one of our shoes. Keeping the lines clean and using no shading, I drew the front, top, and side of my low top converse. We had to draw all of the lines and shapes our shoe made, for the most part to scale, without adding shadow or making it too "sketchy." For this first drawing, my medium was a graphite pencil. The process continued with the zoom and crop drawing, for which we used a view finder. I chose a piece of my original shoe drawing, and after having drawn the 1" border, copied what the section while looking through my viewfinder. After having completed the first drawing, I now zoomed in on it with the viewfinder. After having finished the last zoom and crop drawing, all of which was done in pencil, I chose my favorite to expand on. Now, using the same size paper as the past drawings, I chose the second zoom and crop I drew, and started on my final abstract shoe drawing. I decided to make the eyelet a porthole and the shoelace hanging out of it a towel. To switch things up from my past drawings I decided to not use cross hatching for shading, and rather the dot method. After having sketched out my idea I realized that there was too much space toward the top of the painting. I ended up drawing a strip of gray and white and added some letters to make it look like the ships name. After having added all of the detail in black micron pens, I went over the whole thing with watercolors. My final project evolved from simply being a realistic drawing of a shoe, to a painting that told a story.

In my first two drawings, the three views of a shoe and the zoom and crop drawing, there weren't many elements of art except for line and texture. The main principle of design this created was emphasis, as we were told to make certain lines darker and others lighter rather than shading. In my final product I included line, shape, color, value, and texture. The texture came from my watercolor technique, which worked out really well to give the drawing a rugged look. By using the dots instead of straight out shading, I added value. The principles of design created through this include some contrast, balance, and emphasis, as well as unity. I created a bit of contrast by having my towel be red and white striped and the body of the ship blue, while the rest was mostly gray. I created some unity by having my color pallet be neutral but vibrant colors. The color of the porthole and some by the letters of the ships name were very similar to create unity. Also, I used a little bit of a light red, pinkish color on the letters, which can be found again in the towel.

Although there is no evident story visible in my painting, I think it can be interpreted differently. I really like how the text goes off the page to show that there is a bigger picture. Also, by not having the full name on the ship the viewer can think of their own. This art does not completely relate to my life, as I don't spend a lot of time on ships. However, every summer my mom, brother, great grandmother and I go to the Baltic Sea. I see a lot of ships there, as well as towels. The color scheme I used in my art reminds me of the coastal town we always go to, so some inspiration came from my own experiences. I am very proud of how I was able to make the porthole look realistic and rugged, as if it had been at sea. However, I had a lot of trouble when I first started coloring my drawing. The watercolors were to saturated, covering up all of the detailed dots I had spent so much time on. To resolve this I simply had to draw all of the detailing and dots all over again. All in all, I am very pleased with how it came out, yet I feel like I could have made it more interesting by having the blue watercolor be more pathy and worn.