1. How to Draw a Shoe
Derek Merck
Spring, 2006

2. Derek’s first sketch of shoes in ‘98
Draw a Shoe in 25 Minutes
Drawing is not just talent
Observe a shoe
Contour drawing
Shading
Evaluation
Derek’s first sketch of shoes in ‘98

3. The Nature of the Beast How do shoes group? Purpose, terrain
Owner, time, social class, wear & dirt
Characteristics, material, stitching, fastenings, sole
What kind of story?
Blahnik
Van Gogh

4. Observe Your Shoe Drawing is observation
Take off your shoe and put it on the table
How would you distinguish your particular shoe out of the entirety of shoe-space?
Partner and take 2 minutes each to describe your shoes to one another
DVS
Westwood

5. Blind contours focus local detail at the expense of global structure.
Draw what you see, not what you think you see – Reggie Coleman
Plan to throw one away – Fred Brooks Jr.
Don’t look at your paper
Don’t lift your hand from the paper
Hand follows your eye as you examine the object
Spend 2 minutes doing a blind contour of your shoe
This shoe tells the story of how bored Derek was in a meeting yesterday.

6. Contour Your Shoe
Contours are curves where the surface normal is orthogonal to the view direction
¾ view probably easiest at first, why?
Types of lines: use point or side, push hard or soft, thick usually = close
Spend 5 minutes contouring
Make it life sized and detailed
Probably easiest to work from global to local
Paul Doelman
John Curtis

7. Tone Drawing is technique
3 Values
Drawing is technique
Take a minute and shade three, five, nine value scales
Keep your hands out of there, gray-man – Reggie Coleman
Tone from texture: cross hatching, points
5 Values
9 Values
John Curtis

8. can have specularities
John Curtis
Shade Your Shoe
Light usually = close or specular, toward viewer
Dark usually = cast shadows
Outline lightest, darkest tones on your sketch
Shade from dark to light
Leave lightest tone unshaded (paper tone)
Shade for 5 minutes
Evan black objects
can have specularities
Boots.com

9. Evaluation Scramble the shoes and pictures
Can we figure out which shoe goes with which drawing?
Look at line and tone in each drawing
Lost Shoe Installation
Still the Gray-man.

10. Homework Drawing is practice Find a new shoe and do a blind contour
Do a double-blind contour. With your eyes closed, draw only what you feel
Do two 10 minute renderings of the shoe from different views
Derek’s second sketch of shoes