The New Picasso?
Before I started the course, I’d heard that whilst AutoCAD and SketchUp are extremely important, they don’t do away with hand drawing. The latter is essential to convey ideas effectively, selling them into clients and contractors alike. And although I studied art at GCSE, that was well over 10 years ago now and I’m pretty sure I spent 95% of the time coffee staining paper. So, let’s be clear, I am not a confident drawer.
For this very reason, I started preparing early. I bought a sketchbook and pencils (as well as a rubber, of course) and started watching videos on YouTube, focusing specifically on one-point perspective. From there, I tried to practise sketching daily, drawing different household objects to get my eye back in. Then, on the course, we were given various tasks to hone in on different skills - line work, scale, shading.
We were also encouraged to sketch in our project books as much as possible…
Before actually drawing our designs…
In tandem with this, we also learnt how to hand-render. Now, studying Geography, this is something I had a bit of experience with (ha ha). Armed with as many Pantone pens as possible - which are now sitting in my cupboard, unused - I tried to put into practise the following:
Nothing is right or wrong, as long as your drawings are cohesive with the rest of your body of work.
It is all about layering different mediums in order to achieve the desired effect.
Pencils are quick and easy to use and you can combine colours by blending them with a rubber.
Pantone pens are also quick to use and good for a modern scheme since they have a strong graphic quality. They work best on harder paper but can look flat. Oh and always have a piece of paper underneath (I learnt the hard way).
Watercolour paints work well with traditional schemes. Here, it is best to work with the medium, allowing for splashes and spills. However, it can be fiddly to transfer your image onto the right paper.
Always add light and dark - consider how both artificial and natural light hit an object. Convey the depth, weight and solidity of items and always ground furniture.
Be careful with patterns, as they are so much smaller in drawings. It is sometimes better to simply give an impression of them rather than trying to replicate them.
Finally, you can use different styles of rendering - from a strip render, to just outlining objects.
Despite being apprehensive at first, I really enjoyed getting back into drawing. And when things were getting stressful and deadlines were piling up, hand-rendering/colouring in provided a bit of respite.
