Shoes Still Life #2 | Posted: Nov. 11, 2016, 1:32 a.m.

Media: Oil paint on stretched canvas

Time: ~10-15 hours

I love oil paints. They are excellent for blending, and the heaviness of the paints allows for thick, constructed textures.

The amazing works of Wayne Thiebaud served as the inspiration for this piece. During my senior year, we were studying Wayne Thiebaud's style in my art class. One of our assignments was to paint our shoes based on what we noticed from his work.

Along the way, I realized that my piece was more different from than similar to Thiebaud's works. The two "controls" (or elements that are kept constant between my piece and Thiebaud's work) are the media and the texture. Thiebaud often drew multiples of objects (think of his famous dessert pieces), whereas I drew one set of shoes. Thiebaud used cool, pastel-like colors, whereas I used warm, high-contrast colors. His works featured smooth, hard surfaces like desks, whereas my work presents wrinkled textures like fabric.

I had a fun time working on this piece. I absolutely loved building up the texture in the background with a palette knife.

It first started off as experimental, since I imagined I would smooth out the background to achieve the true look of fabric. However, I liked the fantastical nature of the ridged texture in the background, and I realized that Thiebaud's work also had fantastical elements (subdued colors; white backgrounds; thick, built-up shadows; etc.).