Converses

I'm rediscovering a love for Converse trainers (there's a pair I'm drooling over at the moment with waves and sun rays on the ankle). It's a company I'd love to work with as an illustrator. 

This drawing started about 8 years ago as an exercise to keep my skills sharp. Afterwards it became a watercolour (which looks a bit weak now), and now finally it's a digital drawing. 

I wanted to give the impression it was the shoe version of a bag of sweets; the colours were most important, and I learned so much about different shifts of hue in the shadows. Also the marks had to stay fresh and lively, so I had to pull back from getting intense about detail and neatness. Sometimes if the habit of being neat is calling I have to hold the pen like a brush and have the screen upright like an easel. Weirdly, this makes my mind shift from hard concentration to a more relaxed and painterly way of thinking. 

Looking at the piece I can't help seeing that it's a bit too detailed at average size, it would work better scaled up to over a metre wide. But for medium sized drawings, roughness is something to experiment with, how far can it go before falling apart as a recognisable object?