Introduction

Hi, I’m Valedany Arts. Today I’ll show you how to draw shoes. First, I’ll show you some basic anatomy of the foot, then some common types of shoes and finally a demonstration, where I explain my rendering process.

Link to the short video

Basic feet anatomy

One cannot draw a believable shoe without knowing feet’s main volumes first, because the shapes of the shoe are based on those of the feet. Also, understanding its shapes is key if that shoe reveals some part of the feet, like the ankles or the toes. It will make you able to create a customized pair to any character.

The phalanges (or the toe bones) have a length of around a fourth of the feet, but they are covered by skin, so the toes seem shorter.

The metatarsal of the little finger sometimes produces a bump on the side.

 

The tibia and the fibula form a hinge joint the talus grabs onto to rotate forward and backward. The curved formed by the bones becomes flatter toward the toes.

 

Don’t forget that these proportions are a guide, so not every foot fits them a hundred percent, and there are different types of feet. Some have the toes more aligned horizontally, for example.

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Drawing sneakers

• Leave some room in the front for the toes, as you would with any real shoe.

• The joints at the base of the toes do not form a straight horizontal line; they angle diagonally downward from the big toe to the pinky toe. This is visible sometimes in shoes where laces apper tilted slightly downwards.

Drawing the seams

You can use Clip Studio’s Dashed Line tool in Decoration (tool group) -> Ruled Line.

Chunky shoes

Chunky shoes give the impression of being very thick and have intricate details.

Give the sole multiple layers, which will look like a staircase. This makes the silhouette more complex and visually interesting.

Remember that the front and the back part of a sneaker sole is usually rounded.

 

Overall, just break the sillouette and the monotony of the basic parts with actually simple smaller shapes that seem complex together.

Drawing high heels

The sole narrows under the arch because weight is split between the ball and heel. The sole's outward shape reflects the foot's contact area.

Rendering high heels material

To draw its reflecting material I will first show how it works in basic 3D shapes to make it easier to understand.

Formal Dress Shoes

The sole protrudes from the front of the shoe in the above view. It sometimes

They usually have 4 or 5 blind eyelets, which means they are stitched under the vamp to look more elegant, mininimalist and formal.

Drawing boots

The sole is like a scooped out oval or a U shape filled with geometric patterns. Also, just as with the formal shoes, the sole is slightly curved.

Drawing laces outlines

You can adjust the thickness and color of the line.

The Border Effect affects the whole layer, so don’t forget to create a new layer to use it.

If you want to edit it as a normal layer for some reason (such as wanting to delineate individual laces), just rasterize it.

Knee high boots

This is a type of boot with a soft leather that forms a lot of folds.

I like to think of this type of folds as if they formed a web, interconnected in a way that every fold affects the shape of the other. In the upper parts of the boot the folds are shallower and bigger, and in the lower parts they are squashed together and deeper.

The folds have shapes similar to a rombhus or triangle, but try to create small variations and not make them look perfect.

My rendering process

In my process, I use only two layers, so I paint all lights and shadows manually in just one layer. I lower the opacity of the sketch layer to use as a guide, and as the drawing progresses, I keep lowering it until I just hide it completely.

First I fill in with the bucket tool the layer under the lineart. If it left some blank space I paint it with a hard brush. Then I block transparent pixels to keep my lines from going over the edges.

I start out by blocking in a very basic light and shadow set up. Since the light comes from the right, one shoe will cast a shadow over the other.

Next I add a lighter and warmer shadow which will make a smoother transition. This will be more saturated, so I just move the color up and right in a square color wheel. I add the shadow of the wrinkles and soften everything out with the Blend tool.

 

 

Since the boots are under a warm light I will pick for the light a color closer to yellow . If you overdo it, it will look fake, if realism is what you’re aiming for. I chose a soft brush to soften the light.

Because the shadow area reflects light, it will rarely look completely dark. It reflects colors from its sorroundings, such as those coming from a wall or the sky. To make the reflections look blue, we can select the shadow color and then move it all the way to the left.

Think more in terms of cool/warm colors instead of just hue. If you literally use blue for the shadows the the mix might look jarring, but if you add gray first (it will look blue in comparison) and then a little blue inside or next to it, it will look better. Gray creates a nice transition between colors that otherwise might clash.

Conclusion

Drawing correctly the shoes of your character grounds your design in reality, whether your they live in a realistic or a sci-fi world. Understanding its main parts and volumes will make you capable of exaggerating them for aesthetic purposes and let your creativity flow more freely.

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