All about
Portrait Drawing

learn to draw step by step portrait drawing

Learn to Draw Lessons
Subscribe Now!
It's FREE!
No obligations whatsoever and your info is always kept private. It is never shared, sold or rented. Ever.

Name

Email

Get your free drawing lessons via RSS feed ... here's how
Add to My Yahoo!

Running shoes require laces. Until now you may have been wondering why I have been drawing the shoe in the right-hand side of my paper: the reason for this is now apparent. Drawing is as much about planning ahead as it is applying contè to paper.

Don’t wait until the shoe proper is fully rendered and then adding the laces as an afterthought. These laces, a trifle frayed and twisting, play a large role in this ‘drama’ of the shoe.

learn to draw - beginner drawing lessons

It is the diegetic elements such as the shoe laces that tell the story. [Diegetic is a contemporary art term, initially used in film and photography critique, It refers to the interplay of all the components of a scene (image) to the narrative as a whole. Diegesis means “recounted story”.]

Initially sketch in the shoe laces lightly taking careful note of their placement, proportion and rhythm. Contè, while a beautiful medium, can be quite temperamental when it comes to erasing – it smudges and can be the devil to lift out cleanly.

Learn to draw - beginner drawing lessons

Now that the shoe laces are placed I return to the body of the shoe and work up the secondary elements such as the design and logo. Running shoes can proffer indepth discourses on contemporary consumerist culture. Drawings and paintings of old shoes can also express political sensibilities. An example of this is Van Gogh’s painting of old work boots that speak of poverty in 19th Century northern Europe. A more contemporary example is the urban American

practice of throwing tied shoes onto an overhead electrical line: this is a definite political/cultural statement.

Note how I have used lighter, more delicate lines to render the creases of the shoe’s leather. For the shoe’s toe I used a heavier line to bring it forward thus creating an illusion of concrete 3-dimensionality.

learn to draw - beginner drawing lessons

Copyright © 2009 Artacademy.com. All rights reserved.
Bookmark and Share