The Brief:

For this exercise I was asked to draw an item from the following list: Shoe, Umbrella, Pair of trousers, Pair of glasses, Hat.

Take an item from the list provided, and explore it visually to become aware of its textures, physical qualities and function. What is item for – what does it do?

Using a pencil or fine liner do an objective drawing of your subject and an A4 sheet. You are trying to achieve a drawing that has a high degree of visual accuracy and is technically controlled. Be analytical and use drawing to clearly convey this visual information.

You are trying to record what you see in this drawing, so be aware of the relative scale of different elements of your object and position of component parts. Use marks that describe the texture of the object and vary line quality to suggest its contours. You may find that if you place your item on white surface. You can observe it more easily. Colour is reflected by white and you will be less distracted by background contrasts.

I chose this vintage shoe that I have as i really like this the design of this shoe and the different textures it has, with the suede, the textured leather and the smooth leather of the shoe.

I am very happy with my final drawing, though I do see a slight error with the positioning of the shoe and I think this was because I was too close to it when I was drawing and seem to have changed my view half way through, so the shoe looks like it is slightly twisted to me. This is something that if I was to do it again, I would be aware of and correct. However, overall I am very pleased. This is the first time I have drawn shoe in such detail and also the first time in a long time that I have drawn anything in pencil to this standard, as I have mainly been working on developing cartoon styles and watercolour techniques. Pencil drawings are one of my favourite to do therefore I did feel quite confident doing this exercise. I think I was able to capture the textures quite well and was happy with how they came out, especially as this was the first time I have tried to draw leather and suede. I placed the shoe on a white sheet of paper and lit it with a small spotlight lamp. I started with a contour drawing and then shaded the shoe using a to 2B and H pencil. I did not shade the actual smooth leather of the shoe as dark as I could have to show the colour. This was because I liked the way it looked being lighter and also because of the amount of light hitting the shoe, it did look a lot lighter where the smooth leather was reflecting the light.