Contour Drawing with Shoes

Contour Drawing with shoes is a great activity for developing drawing skills, for any age or level of ability. Of all the fun contour drawing projects you can do with kids, this is one of my all-time favorites. You’ll find this activity (and 5 more!) in in my TPT resource, “Learn to Draw with Contour Drawing”.

This works best as a two-part lesson… one session to draw the shoe and another to outline and fill in the background. Be sure to leave some time for “shoe autographs” at the end!

Objectives:

Students will use techniques of contour drawing to draw their own shoe.
Students will do a texture rubbing to add “visual texture” to their background.

Vocabulary:

Contour drawing – a drawing of the outside edge of an object, a line drawing without shading
Texture – the way something feels, or looks like it would feel (visual texture)

*Materials:

9×12 heavyweight white construction paper
#2 Pencil with pink eraser
Magic Rub eraser
Black UF Sharpie
Crayons, broken in half, with paper removed

Directions:

Explain or review contour drawing. (My “Learn to Draw with Contour Drawing” resource, in my TPT Store, has 6 well-loved contour drawing activities – including this one! It’s a really fun way to teach this important skill.)
Have students remove one shoe and place it on their desk.
Show them how to plan their use of space by making light pencil marks to indicate the where the toe and the heel will go. This helps ensure that their whole shoe will fit on the paper! Then have them sketch the basic outline of their shoe with their eraser first. I call this “eraser sketching” and it’s super helpful… I use this all the time for my rough layouts.
When satisfied with the size and placement of their shoe, have students slowly trace over their eraser lines very lightly with pencil. This is just to get the overall size and shape, and make sure their shoe will fit on their paper at the size they’re drawing it. Then brush away the little bit of eraser debris.
Using that as a guideline, have kids slowly, carefully draw the entire contour (outside edge) of their shoe. Tell them to move their pencil across the paper at the same speed that their eye moves along the edge of their shoe as they study it.
I like to start at the toe, move across the bottom, up the back edge, across the top, and then return back to the toe again. Try to go slowly and include every nook, cranny, bump, and bulge. Remind kids to spend as much time (or more!) looking at their shoe as they spend looking at their paper. Add any interesting details, like laces, grommets, straps, stitching where different sections are joined, etc. Do not add any shading, to keep this a true “contour drawing”. Drawing slowly and pressing lightly is the key!
Next, have students trace over their pencil lines with a black UF Sharpie.
Then use a Magic Rub eraser to remove any pencil lines that are showing. They’ll be glad they didn’t press too hard!
Finally, have kids lay their finished drawing over the bottom of their shoe to do a “texture rubbing” in the background. Then rub with the side of a crayon to transfer an image of the shoe’s textured bottom onto the paper. They should fill in the entire background with this “visual texture“, working carefully around the edge of their drawing.
Now students have a complete record of their shoe, including the tread on the bottom!

BONUS ACTIVITY:

Some kids think this is the best part of this lesson….. When everyone is finished with their shoe and background, leave shoes and crayons on desks. Then give students a separate piece of 9×12 paper and have them walk around making shoe-bottom rubbings from each of their classmates’ shoes. We call these “Shoe Autographs“!
EXTRA BONUS!

It’s easy to create a crowd-pleasing bulletin board with your students’ fabulous shoe drawings! I’ve done this and titled it, “Walk a Mile in My Shoes”. Have students write a one sentence “life lesson” to go with their drawing, that begins with, “I’ve learned that…”. (ex. “I’ve learned that you can’t hide your broccoli in a glass of milk.”) Kids will naturally come up with the funniest things they’ve learned! This makes a great bulletin board for any time you’re expecting visitors to your classroom, especially for Open House and Back-to-School Night!

**Affiliate links were used in this post*. When you make any purchase on Amazon through a link in my site, I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting Teach Kids Art!

Contour Drawing with Shoes