Drawing and Sketching

The language of skilled ideas

Fawlty Towers

Spaghetti Challenge #1

The importance of sketching can be illustrated in our first challenge.

You are to building a skyscraper out of 25 sticks of dry spaghetti.

Situation: You are to build a structure that reaches as high as possible without collapsing. You are to use only the dry spaghetti given, and a 2"x2" cube of plasticine.

Research: All truss-style structures would be worth of research

Materials:

25 sticks of dry spaghetti,
a 1"x1" cube of plasticine.
2 human brains

Evaluation: Simple, the highest one wins. 40cm+ gets you a level 3

A) Sketches

We sketch to convey ideas quickly. Sketches can be quick and lack detail, or be elaborate and show a lot of detail - often in what are called 'callouts' - or annotations designed to bring attention to an area of your sketch and explain/show it in more detail. Some sketches are quick, others require rulers and are more technical (if you're using strict terminology, even "regular drawings" are quite neat, drafted ones are done with specialty equipment and are immaculate). Often sketches involve perspective and shading to imply such.

Tips to Sketching

from: DesignSojourn.com

One of the greatly misunderstood concepts of design is that a good designer must be a good sketcher. Sketching can be self-taught and doesn't need to be perfected in order to succeed. There have been famous designers who have created terrible sketches but end up with great designs, and great sketchers that are hopeless designers.

Essentially you would only need to draw or sketch well enough to communicate your concept on paper without you having to explain what it is. You don’t have to win the beauty contest, but you WILL have to do well enough so that a fellow designer (or if you want it to be tougher on yourself, a non-designer) can understand what you are attempting to communicate. Notice the key word here? It’s not drawing, draw, design, or sketch, it’s communicate. A good sketch communicates an idea clearly and succinctly.

Sketching is also one part of the design process that makes up a successful design. Strong understanding in proportions, colors, and manufacturing processes are other important elements that can make or break a design. So don’t despair if your sketching ability, at this time, is not up to par, as you will have a chance to refine it in the downstream design process.

Before we go on lets take a look at the different kinds of sketches so as to not confuse yourself when you go crazy over somebody’s apparently great work.

Even if you aren't good at art, there are tricks to sketching:

sketch from the elbow
strike light, adding emphasis afterwards.
move your paper

techniques:

squares
circles
arcs
tricks to lettering

Thumbnail or Napkin sketch

A thumbnail sketch is a very basic sketch that has an almost child like quality to it. This type of sketch is mainly about getting your ideas down on paper as quickly as possible without too much care about proportions and beauty. Its often pretty rough focusing only on the key“big” idea.

Thumbnails sketches are often the most frequently used sketch technique used to communicate ideas.

Information Sketch:

The information sketch is perhaps the level at which what most designers, whom are worried about their sketching ability, should aspire to. It’s the minimum type of sketch level that would allow other designers to understand what you are trying to draw.

Practical Exercise:

grab paper, try 5 squares, circles, ellipses, stars DON'T USE A RULER
Use bounding boxes that are all the same size. Come up with your own font by making the rectangles different sizes and fit the letters of your first name in each box. Determine if you want to have solid or empty letters.

Practical Exercise:

Sketch your house from memory - have it assessed for technique once done

Fawlty Brydges

Spaghetti Challenge #2

You are to building a bridge out of 25 sticks of dry spaghetti.

Situation: You are to build a structure that reaches across a gap without collapsing. You are to use only the dry spaghetti given, and a 2"x2" cube of plasticine.

Research: All truss-style structures would be worth of research

Materials:

25 sticks of dry spaghetti,
a 2"x2" cube of Plasticine.
2 human brains

Evaluation: Simple, the team that gets the longest span (increased in 10cm increments) wins.

Rulers and Measurement

Imperial system vs. Metric system

The metric system is a very straightforward system where units of measurement for length/distance simply operate on factors of 10. E.g. 1000 m = 1 km and 1000 mm = 1m. Your whole life you've been taught metric - however, there are industries around the world which use the IMPERIAL system of measurement.

For example:

the LUMBER industry uses FEET and INCHES instead of cm and m!
the AVIATION industry uses miles instead of km!
many people know their WEIGHT in POUNDS, not their MASS in kg!

Here is a look at the IMPERIAL SYSTEM, as it is used to measure LENGTH (or distance):

1 MILE = 1760 YARDS (= 5280 feet = 63360 inches)
1 YARD = 3 FEET (=36 inches)
1 FOOT = 12 INCHES
1 INCH can be broken into 1/2ths, 1/4ths, 1/8ths, 16ths, 32nds etc...

Some common examples of these units include…

1 YARD: slightly shorter than 1m: the width of your classroom door or the height of your kitchen counters off of the ground

1 FOOT: about 30cm: the size of a (size 12) shoe or roughly the height of a piece of paper.

1 INCH: about 2.5cm: the length of a small paper-clip or the diameter (width) of a quarter

The division of ONE inch (and thus any inch) is broken down into whatever divisions you want. Mostly commonly we break down into halves, quarters, eights and sometimes in this course sixteenths.

B) Perspective

When considering perspective we consider 2 possible vanishing points in this course. A vanishing point is one of possibly several points in a 2D image where lines that are parallel in the 3D source converge. We typically only examine 1 and 2 point perspective in high school (1 vanishing point or 2).

1 Point perspective

1-point perspective setup

1-point perspective drawing

Try this!

tdj2o_1point_1.png

Setting up your canvass by determining scale, and overall dimensions

Step 1:

Set up your canvass. Make sure you know the MAXIMUM EXTENT that your drawings will occupy (e.g. make sure your objects fit in the overall box). After this make sure that you draw your vanishing point lines. Not all 1-point perspective drawings have vanishing points in the dead center of the drawing, but if they do, you can simply make a large 'X' and the crossing point is the vanishing point.

Step 2:

Place your faced objects at the appropriate coordinates (sometimes it helps to further subdivide your page into halves or even quarters to ensure placement of the objects is correct. All X and Y coordinates are face-on to the viewer with NO perspective. All Z axis (i.e. going into the distance) lines disappear towards the vanishing point. Ensure all lines are light so that when you erase eclipsing lines you don't have heavy traces over your page.

tdj2o_1point_2.png

Setting up your objects of interest

Step 3:

Carefully erase all lines that are eclipsed.

tdj2o_1point_3.png

Erasing eclipsed lines

2-Point Perspective

Assignment #1 - Draw the following pictures

A) 1-Point Drawing

CATEGORY

Sketches

Superb choices in line-weights and angles that best illustrate the object. Drawings are free from distracting elements

Good choices in line-weights and angles that best illustrate the chosen topics. Drawings are defect-free but may contain a few unwanted features

The sketches have some defects, but still portray the object

The sketches have many defects or are poor quality.

1 point perspective drawing

Lines merge seamlessly at the VP. There are no flaws in the drawing.

Lines merge at the VP with few flaws in the drawing.

Lines generally at the VP.

Lines merge but with much room for improvement.

Use of Time

Used time well during each class period (as shown by observation by teacher, and documentation of progress in journal) with no reminders.

Used time well during most class periods (as shown by observation by teacher, and documentation of progress in journal) with no reminders.

Used time well (as shown by observation by teacher and documentation of progress in journal), but required reminders on one or more occasions to do so.

Used time poorly (as shown by observation by teacher and/or documentation of progress in journal) in spite of several reminders to do so.

b) 2 point drawing

CATEGORY

Sketches

Superb choices in line-weights and angles that best illustrate the object. Drawings are free from distracting elements

Good choices in line-weights and angles that best illustrate the chosen topics. Drawings are defect-free but may contain a few unwanted features

The sketches have some defects, but still portray the object

The sketches have many defects or are poor quality.

2 point perspective drawing

Lines merge seamlessly at both VPs. There are no flaws in the drawing.

Lines merge well at both VPs. There are generally no flaws in the drawing.

Lines merge at both VPs. There are flaws in the drawing.

Lines generally merge towards the VPs. There are multiple flaws in the drawing.

Use of Time

Used time well during each class period (as shown by observation by teacher, and documentation of progress in journal) with no reminders.

Used time well during most class periods (as shown by observation by teacher, and documentation of progress in journal) with no reminders.

Used time well (as shown by observation by teacher and documentation of progress in journal), but required reminders on one or more occasions to do so.

Used time poorly (as shown by observation by teacher and/or documentation of progress in journal) in spite of several reminders to do so.

Non-Perspective

The other view that we examine in this course is that of NO perspective which can be useful in attending to either measurements or detail. Non-perspective drawings we will consider are orthographic drawings (simple 2D of the face of an object with absolutely no perspective) and isometric drawings (which show 3 dimensions, but with no perspective).

Orthographic projections and Elevations

An orthographic drawing is one where there is no perspective and you are only showing the face of an object. Often labeled as the elevation (e.g. front/top/side/back) orthographic drawings usually come in a 3-pack Front/Top/Side which together form what is called the orthographic projection. These are used quite frequently in manufacturing of objects since each face can be shown in some detail without the distraction of perspective.

An elevation simply looks like this:

The Front/Top/Side of an object together form the orthographic

Lecture 3 A Isometric And Orthographic Sketching 2009Isometric & Orthographic Sketching Engineering Design GE121 …

Here's why we do this

Orthographic projections from isometric source

As we said earlier, one of the benefits of working on an orthographic drawing is that there is an unchanging scale as long as you continue to work in the same units. To that end, you need to understand measurements and scale.

Rulers and SCALE

measurements worksheet.pdf

Imperial system vs. Metric system

For example:

the LUMBER industry uses FEET and INCHES instead of cm and m!
the AVIATION industry uses miles instead of km!
many people know their WEIGHT in POUNDS, not their MASS in kg!

Here is a look at the IMPERIAL SYSTEM, as it is used to measure LENGTH (or distance):

1 MILE = 1760 YARDS (= 5280 feet = 63360 inches)
1 YARD = 3 FEET (=36 inches)
1 FOOT = 12 INCHES
1 INCH can be broken into 1/2ths, 1/4ths, 1/8ths, 16ths, 32nds etc...

Some common examples of these units include…

1 YARD

slightly shorter than 1m

the width of your classroom door or the height of your kitchen counters off of the ground

1 FOOT

about 30cm

the size of a (size 12) shoe or roughly the height of a piece of paper

1 INCH

about 2.5cm

the length of a small paper-clip or the diameter (width) of a quarter

Imperial Units

Examples

6 feet

6 ft.

13½ feet

13 ½ ft.

13½' OR 13' 6"

8 inches

8 in.

3 ¼ inches

3 ¼ in.

3 ¼ "

The division of ONE inch (and thus any inch) is broken down into whatever divisions you want. Mostly commonly we break down into halves, quarters, eights and sometimes in this course sixteenths

Scale

Sometimes when we draw, if we were to draw everything in the real world on paper we'd have to use a GIANT sheet of paper (for example, a FRONT ELEVATION - see below). Because the scale of such drawings are often smaller than life-size, an architect's scale features multiple units of length and proportional length increments.

Common scales in architecture are (note: the two columns do NOT show equivalence in measure):

Metric (SI)

US Imperial

1:5

1:4 (3" to a foot)

1:10

1:8 (1.5" to a foot)

1:20

1:12 (1" to a foot)

1:100

1:16 (3/4" to a foot)

1:500

1:48 (1/4" to a foot)

1:1250

1:96 (1/8" to a foot)

This house is probably drawn at 1:50 or 1:100 (SI) or 1:48 (imperial)

Try this: on a blank piece of paper

Assignment #2 - Orthographic Projections

Complete the following orthographic projection worksheets using the 1 square is equal to 1/4 inch.

3D sheet 1.pdf

3D sheet 2.pdf

Evaluation

CATEGORY

Lines

Superb choices in line-weights Drawings are free from distracting elements

Good choices in line-weights Drawings are defect-free but may contain a few unwanted features

The drawings have some defects, but still portray the edges of the object

The drawings have many defects or are poor quality.

Hidden lines

All hidden lines present

Hidden lines present but with occasional errors

Hidden lines occasionally present

Presence of a hidden line or two, but generally most in the wrong place

Use of Time

Used time well during each class period (as shown by observation by teacher, and documentation of progress in journal) with no reminders.

Used time well during most class periods (as shown by observation by teacher, and documentation of progress in journal) with no reminders.

Used time well (as shown by observation by teacher and documentation of progress in journal), but required reminders on one or more occasions to do so.

Used time poorly (as shown by observation by teacher and/or documentation of progress in journal) in spite of several reminders to do so.

Assignment #3 - Crafting Your Name

Now you have the fundamentals of sketching 1 and 2 point perspective as well as how to look at objects in one plan form you are going to create your name (or something meaningful) on paper in 2 point perspective, then in orthographic view. Afterwards you will etch your plan onto a piece of pine and cut out the name.

Components:

A TWO point perspective drawing. The height at the corner where the name begins is 3" tall. The thickness is to be 5/8 thick on the first letter. The horizon will be roughly on the middle of the paper put in landscape orientation. The vanishing points will be at the edges of the paper on the horizon line.
An orthographic drawing at a 1:1 scale of your word. The height will be exactly 3". The width will depend on your word. Target around 8-11" in width. The name will be cut out on paper, then transferred to your wood (of rectangular dimensions exactly like that of your drawing).
Your word will be transferred to the 3" pine and cut out on the bandsaw and scroll saw. You will then get rid of all saw cut marks (within reason). You will apply preservative to the product (likely linseed oil).

CATEGORY

2 point perspective

Drawing is flawless, neat with clear lines and no smudging

Drawing is as expected with clear lines and few distractions

Generally the drawing conveys the design. Some mistakes are present

Many mistakes in the perspective, stray lines and/or smudged lines

orthographic drawing

Drawing is flawless, neat with clear lines and no smudging

Drawing is as expected with clear lines and few distractions

Generally the drawing conveys the design. Some mistakes are present

Many mistakes in the perspective, stray lines and/or smudged lines

construction quality

Lines are clean, no cut marks, edging is superior

Lines are generally clean, few cut marks, mostly good edging

Lines are often clean. Some cut marks and chipped edging

Lines are somewhat clean. Many cut marks and/or broken and missing pieces.

Use of Time

Used time well during each class period (as shown by observation by teacher, and documentation of progress in journal) with no reminders.

Used time well during most class periods (as shown by observation by teacher, and documentation of progress in journal) with no reminders.

Used time well (as shown by observation by teacher and documentation of progress in journal), but required reminders on one or more occasions to do so.

Used time poorly (as shown by observation by teacher and/or documentation of progress in journal) in spite of several reminders to do so.

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