In the drawing guide which I'm using shoes appear to provide a really popular subject for students. I don't know why exactly but maybe the combination of strong shapes and textures really hits the spot? Anyhow I've been wearing sandals on holiday and these are just full of character:
Rather than stick with pencil lines and shading I figured that this would be a great candidate for a pen-only sketch with all of the clear textures and strong lines. However firstly I put together a light pencil outline as the one drawback of pen is that you only get one shot at a line and no re-tries! This gave me a simple but accurate enough template to work from when going over the key lines in ink:
The pleasing part of this process came when I added in hatching for the strap textures; for once I didn't feel the need to try and capture all of the shading everywhere (which happens with pencil). Definitely a case of less is more as the texture which I do have contrasts very effectively with the plainness elsewhere. This may well be an approach which I use again for objects that don't have much tonal variation but do provide texture in specific places.