INTRO

Shoes and feet in general are a subject often avoided when drawing characters for several reasons. A lot of character drawings and illustrations don’t show the feet, instead focusing from the waist up, and even when the shoes are drawn, they tend not to be the main focus, so they become an afterthought.

This tutorial is to help you understand how to draw shoes better, so that you don’t feel like you have to avoid them and can instead use them to show more of your characters.

THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF THE FOOT

Before drawing shoes, you’ll need to understand the basic structure of the foot, since that’s the main thing that will give structure to the shoe.

You don’t need to feel overwhelmed thinking about how to draw detailed and accurate feet. Since the focus of this tutorial is on shoes, you only need to focus on learning the basic structure of the foot and its general proportions that will help you as guidelines.

To start with the general proportions, the foot is roughly three times as long as it is wide and tall, so you can start by simplifying it into a 1:1:3 figure, or just 3 cubes together. If you have trouble thinking about how big the foot should be in comparison to your character, a good general rule is that the foot tends to be slightly bigger than the head (this obviously can vary depending on the style you’re drawing in).

It’s just a general guideline, but it already helps us understand several parts of the foot, for example, the part at the back is the size of the heel, the middle one is the middle of the foot, and the front one is the toes.

It’s important to remember that the section for the toes covers them up to their base, that is to say, the point where the foot will flex when standing on your tip toes or wearing heels, so the fingers themselves won’t look that long.

It’s also important to remember that generally the foot only is able to extend to a point where it forms a straight line with the leg and only about 20 degrees when moving up. Any more than that might be possible but will start looking unnatural.

Once we understand those proportions, we can move to the basic shapes, the part that we’ll be using the most when drawing shoes.

1- Starting with the heel, that section will need to be a bit narrower, since the foot is wider at the front.

2- Then for the middle part you have to think of a more triangular form that gets wider as it moves from the heel to the toes.

3- Lastly, for the toes, the shape is roughly that of a semicircle with a bit of thickness to connect to the previous form.

I draw the whole foot just for clarity, but you really don’t need to focus on the details like fingers, just the main structure, since you need to be able to draw that structure in the angle or perspective you want to be able to later draw the shoe on top of it. The only type of footwear where you’ll need to pay more attention to the details of the foot and the toes will be on things like sandals.

TYPES OF SHOES

There are many different types of shoes, so it might sound intimidating trying to learn how to draw each one of them. In reality, you only need to learn some characteristics that shoes of a specific type share in common, not every detail of every variation of shoe. 

So for example, you don’t need to learn how to draw every variation of sneakers, you just need the shoe to have the rough shape of a sneaker for people to recognize it as one, same for loafers, sandals, boots, etc.

SNEAKERS

A common step that you might find useful when drawing shoes of any type is to start by thinking of the shape of the sole, since that will affect some of the shapes of the shoe.

For sneakers, the shape of the sole is rounded at the toes, with a bigger curve on the inside than on the outside

For sneakers in particular, the sole tends to be thicker than for other shoes, keeping a constant thickness and curving upwards slightly at the toes

For the collar, sneakers tend to have a downward curve at the ankle that goes back up at the heel. The shape can be a bit complex but it doesn’t need to be perfect

Sneakers often have varieties and combinations of shapes and logos done with stitching that can make them look more complex than they really are. Just divide the shoe into sections like the heel and toes, and add some shapes that follow the general structure of the shoe. As long as those shapes follow the structure of the shoe and have the correct perspective, it will look believable. To some extent, this also applies to other types of shoes.

SHOELACES

Shoelaces are an element that can look complicated at a first glance. A common mistake is to focus too much on the laces, trying to make them perfect or very detailed. As long as you have a sense of how they are tied, you can generally just simplify them and they will still look fine. 

There are 2 main things to keep in mind with shoelaces

1- They are tied in a crossing pattern, always going diagonal, and not straight across, at least until the end, so just look at the holes where they go through.

2- Since the shoe is curved at the top, you also have to maintain that curvature when drawing the shoelaces from different angles or perspectives

Depending on how much detail you want to add to your shoes and how much will be visible, there are several methods to draw them that can make it faster

If the shoe is far away, simply using a thicker line for the shoelaces can be good enough without needing more details.

However, if you want to add more lines to them (In case you want to color them), instead of going line by line, you can use the border effect on a separate layer.

However, if you want to add more lines to them (In case you want to color them), instead of going line by line, you can use the border effect on a SEPARATE layer. Go to layer property, and select the border effect, as well as the color for the line and the border

If you feel like you need more details, you can use more layers with that same effect on top of each other. For me, I think 3 layers is more than enough for details. Since the laces cross on top of each other, use 1 layer for the laces of one side, another layer for the laces of the other side, and a final layer for the knot. Here I show each layer with a separate color for clarity, but all 3 of them should use the same color.

FORMAL SHOES

The type of shoes that would be used when wearing a suit or something more formal.

Taking the sneakers as a base, we can get the shape of these shoes with a few adjustments.

For starters, these type of shoes tend to be a bit longer (or have a longer sole). This changes the overall shape, since it raises the toes a bit more, and makes the shoe look a bit more flat. On top of that, the heel tends to be raised a little

The tip of the shoe also is different. Since it’s longer, the tip is usually pointier, sometimes with the very tip ending on a flat edge.

As a note, some formal shoes have shoelaces but just as a decoration, so they don’t have a knot tying the shoelaces.

Those are the main changes in the structure, apart from that, what sets them apart from other shoes is the shine or texture, but I’ll explain more of that in the coloring section.

BOOTS

For boots, you can think of the basic structure of the sneakers, and then modify it a little, specifically, the heel, the sole and the shaft.

1- The heel tends to be higher than with sneakers, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot. 

2- The sole can also be thicker depending on the style of the boot. 

3- And lastly, the shoe goes higher up the leg, which is the main characteristic that makes it look like a boot.

Depending on the type of boot, the tip at the toes can be pointy or rounded.

Usually, the collar tends to be a simple circle, as opposed to the sneakers that have some curves. This is because the shoe isn’t stopping at the ankle joint.

Now, instead of just shoelaces, you can also use belts, zippers or buttons. Each variation can give it a slightly different vibe

SANDALS

Sandals are the simplest type of shoes since they consist of basically just the sole of the shoe and something to strap it to the foot.

After drawing the foot, draw the sole under it (the same shape used for the sneakers). For sandals, the sole is usually thin.

After that, you just need to add the straps. Depending on the type of sandal, there can be different straps, but usually they attach to either the toes, wrap around the foot, or around the heel. The thickness and shape of the straps doesn’t matter that much, what’s important is that you keep in mind the curvature and perspective of the foot when drawing them so that the foot doesn’t look flat

COLORING AND MATERIALS

Lastly, the coloring.

For this step, there’s nothing special, you just need to color them with the same rendering style you’d use for the rest of the character. Unless the shoes are a focal point of your drawing, I’d recommend not to get too absorbed adding details to the shoes, usually 1 or 2 colors is enough with some minimal shading

A single layer with the blending mode “multiply” can be enough to shade it there’s no need for more details.

However, there are some shoes that are particularly shiny, so those are a bit trickier to color.

For those types of shoes, you need to focus on 2 things

1- Give them a very high contrast, if the shoe is black, make the highlights pop more. This constant switch between shadows and highlights is what gives them the glossy or shiny look

2- Make sure your highlights follow the shape of the shoe, otherwise the shoe might lack a distinguishable shape.

CONCLUSION

There are tons of different types of shoes, but in reality all you need to know to draw them is the basic structure of the feet and the general characteristics of the shoe in question, this will help you draw not only any type of shoe you see, but also to come up with your own designs.

Since shoes are rarely a focal point on drawings, you don’t need to be afraid of not getting it completely perfect, so I hope this tutorial helps you. Look at references and try to practice from imagination and you’ll quickly develop a general sense on how to draw them better and faster.