Still Life: Shoes

Last month, my students did a still life project of their shoes. The success rate was HUGE and they learned a lot about drawing from life, Emphasis, and Rhythm.



The key to their success was trying to train their mind to draw with their eyes! We started with a contour line of their shoe from TWO different view points that looked something like below. An outline of what they see with NOTHING in the middle. Then they use that as a reference to fill in the lines for the rest of the shoe.

We talked about how to listen to your eyes, not your mind. For instance, their mind says to draw a circle for the laces holes, but in reality it is a “C” shape because the lace overlaps the circle. 

Then we learned about EMPHASIS
I asked them what was emphasis and showed them some photos of how emphasis can be created with..
Clarity Texture
Light Line
Color
Space/Shape/composition
Then when I asked if the shoes would still have emphasis if they colored them the same color as the background. They said no because they would blend in and camoflage.


Their backgrounds had to have PATTERN and also create RHYTHM