Heather Shoemaker Wyoming: Legal Doodling

Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming is a Cheyenne attorney who specializes in civil rights and criminal law. She practices out of an office in the downtown area.

Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming is also a skilled artist. She has had some instruction during her life but for the most part is self-taught. Heather Shoemaker is good enough to have had many of her drawings displayed in a local gallery, including a show that she called "Legal Doodling."

"It really was just a lot of doodles, but the gallery owner really liked them," she says. Heather Shoemaker says that she is a compulsive doodler. "When I'm on the phone, when I'm interviewing a client, and especially when I'm in court," she says with a laugh. And with the help of a curator at the Flat Mountain Gallery on Front Street, she selected fifty sketches for "Legal Doodling." The framed collection, several of which have already been sold, opened in early 2014.

And sure enough, each of the sketches is on paper from an 8x14 inch yellow legal pad. A few of them were done in black ink, but most of the sketches are in an ordinary #2 pencil. "That's the same as an HB pencil," she says, naming a medium hard, common sketch pencil.

The drawings in "Legal Doodling" range from simple sketches to more complex drawings that feature a lot of detail, including extensive shading achieved through a technique called cross-hatching. "Those were slow days in court," laughs Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming. There are portraits of judges and jurors, opposing counsel, and court officials like bailiffs. 

There are no sketches of defendants, however. She has sketches numerous defendants – she says she sketches just about everything, and almost always has a pocket sized sketchbook with her – but felt it would be wrong to include them in "Legal Doodling."

Heather Shoemaker Wyoming: CrossFit

Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming works hard at her law practice. The work can be draining, especially when she has complicated cases coming to trial. Heather Shoemaker says she learned a long time ago that it helps her stamina and concentration if she gets regular exercise, so she rides her bike to work when weather permits. She also participates in a CrossFit class at the Flat Mountain Recreation Center two nights a week.

 

CrossFit is an intense exercise program that features dynamic exercises like plyometric jumps and Olympic lifts. The class that Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming takes part in also uses non-traditional weightlifting equipment like kettlebells and sand-bags, which she says are fairly common in CrossFit. 

The Flat Mountain CrossFit program challenges its participants to do a certain number of repetitions in a workout in a certain period of time, says Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming. She says she does it strictly as an intense workout in a short period. "It's more bang for your buck, as the saying goes," she says. But some of the people in her class enjoy competing against each other to see who can complete the workout first. "It's the men who like to do that, not surprisingly," she laughs.

The great thing about CrossFit, says Heather Shoemaker of Wyoming, is that if you stick with it you are just about guaranteed to get fit. "CrossFit workouts are really challenging, so they trigger plenty of fat loss and muscle development. The composition of your body is going to change for the better. It has to, really, because you're doing so many different, athletic things."