This one was pretty painless. In looking at the list of options to draw, straight away I was excited at the idea of drawing a shoe. When I first did art classes as a teenager, my favourite teacher had a tradition that at the beginning of every year, every student had to pick up a HB pencil and draw a shoe. It was something that was the right amount of simple and complex, with different textures and challenging shading, and is a very good barometer of drawing improvement over time. It’s still a challenge that I try to repeat at least once a year.
Here’s my drawing for the exercise:
There’s definitely a few areas to improve. The overall shape of the shoe is off. It’s too narrow in the middle. The laces and rubber sole could have been rendered more carefully, paying more attention to the different textures and more complicated shapes. The light and shade on the leather parts of the shoe look okay, but again, could be rendered more convincingly. It’s not a bad attempt, but still lots of room to improve.
Josh Robbins OCA Learning Log 