Matthew Midgley

This is a observational drawing of a blue converse shoe by Matthew Midgley. Matthew Midgley is a freelance illustrator working in West Yorkshire. Midgley graduated from college, in 1992, with a degree in English and has developed his style of work by working in a series of sketchbooks. Midgley's influences come from modern illustrative artists who focus on urban life. I feel that this drawing could be used in a magazine but feel that Midgley has drawn this as a sketch just for his own personal use to be presented in a sketchbook or his portfolio.  This illustration is called 'Converse Boot' and was posted on matthew midgleys blog on may 20th 2012. Matthew Midgley drew this because he bought a new pair of converses and felt to just draw the shoe over the period of a week.   

Matthew Midgley drew this converse on a simple white background, I really like how he has done this because it makes the audience focus more on the fine detail of the shoe and the different techniques he has used. Matthew Midgley has focused a lot on detail on the converse shoe such as stitching and scuffs on the shoe and also using lines on the shoe to create different tones and texture. Especially round the logo on the converse shoe, near the laces and at the bottom of the shoe a lot of heavy lines are used to create heavy tone and shadow on the shoe. I really like how he has done this instead of just leaving the blue part of the converse plain and adding small bits of shadow. 

Matthew Midgley drew the outline in 0.8 unipin, then used 0.1 unipin to draw in some of the finer defining lines. He then used a black ballpoint to shade in areas and blue ballpoint to shade in the main canvas of the sneaker. Finally he then used a payne’s grey colour wash over the sneaker to aline it closer to it’s darker blue shade. Taken from: Matthew Midgleys Blog.

Matthew Midgley: "I like the immediacy of working outdoors and the opportunity to feel closer to the subject". Working outdoors is a strong influence on midgley's choice of materials. Midgley prefers to work directly onto paper using ink, fine liners, waterproof pens and sometimes biro or marker pen for effect. Black ink gives a crisp edge to his illustrations. 

My Matthew Midgley inspired observational drawing work: 

This is an observational drawing of a flower. I had 1 minute to draw this using a fine liner and coloured pencils. Im really pleased with my observational attempt in the style of Matthew Midgleys work. I used fine liner pen instead of pencil like Matthew Midgley but used different techniques like cross hatching. I also used coloured pencil and tried shading to create different tones. I really like how I used shading with the coloured pencils and feel that if I had more time I could've made the cross hatching much neater like Midgleys work.