What Will They See in an Old Shoe?

My thirteen year old son has enormous feet. They rip through sports shoes in a matter of months. Tripping over one of his castoff, man's size 12 shoes last week gave me an idea for an end of the year art project. At first I thought I'd stumbled over one of the two cats in our house. The shoes are that big and our cats are that fat! It was dark, 5am, I was barely awake. I looked at that shadowy shoe, at its creased and molded shape, it stared back at me, daring me to challenge its right to front stage center on the stair landing: a 3D Rorschach test that NEVER gets put away.
Old shoes do have character which is why the "Draw an Old Shoe" pencil project is a classic that's been around for decades. A nice, quiet, clean end of year project! At first I thought I'd just bring in a few shoes, set up a still life at each table and assign the pencil drawing, but one of the issues I have in teaching drawing and gradual tone shading is that a lot of kids can't get past the colors, logos and details of an object to see the form. They just don't "read" highlights and shadows very well at first.
So, on Wednesday, while students were wrapping up a printmaking project, I got out some old yellow house paint and proceeded to paint a shoe to see if making it monochrome would help reveal highlights and shadows. As expected, it did, but unexpectedly the painted shoe, or rather the act of painting the shoe, was what really caught the students' interest. "Can I do one?" they asked hour after hour as they caught sight of my mustard yellow transformation.
Out the window, like a birthday balloon, went my idea of a quiet end of the year drawing project and in the art room door came boxes and bags of old shoes. The pile grows daily as teachers and parents respond to my email request. Gallons of leftover house paint have joined the swelling, smelly pile of worn out shoes. Eager art students ask me daily, "When're we gonna paint the shoes?"
What will my students see in these shoes? Not the house cat, I'm sure. We're stepping into new territory and we're going to figure this project out together. What I do know is that the pile of shoes has captured their imagination and THAT is one giant step toward a successful end of the year project.
p.s. After we paint the shoes (all 50 or 60, rather than the 5 or 6 I had intended!) I will have them do that ol' stand-by: the pencil drawing. What happens with the shoes after that?...check back and I'll let you know!