design sketching again..

Meaningless doodling and rendering without purpose is good for exercise and self development. Yesterday I tried to be hard-working again and made some sketches on the iron-man project and just a design language exploration sketch for a motorcycle. see for yourself, and please, comment!

design sketching afternoon...

Today I had no lectures or anything, so I decided to sketch a bit and look at some new techniques for sketching. I made a sketch on the Mercedes SL and also some on the iron-man project. This new way of taking scanned images further is quite nice!

Tool no.1 - Design sketching vol 2..

since blogger accepting only mini posts...

More info about sketching techniques can be found in many places: car body design, car design news and also by looking at what others have made for example at coroflot, even though it tends to be mostly of 3D and photography. Don't forget the Design Sketching -book where techniques are well explained.

My own sketching skills are built up a bit by bit. I use mostly pen, but sometimes I change for my tiny wacom and try to create nice renderings. With wacom, one can quite easily and fast create nice pictures. However, the speed still is far from the one reached with traditional media, if no special diamonds are needed.

pencil and markers - a fast sketch

Ideation sketching

Tool no.1 - Design sketching

If one is into (strategic) conceptual design, the tool that you use the most is a pen. Accompanied with some markers, the pen and a sharpener, you make a terrific team together. As an industrial designer is a professional in visually explaining the creativity and it´s outcomes, The designs need to have a fast and reliable means to be presented in the team and to the clients. Therefore one has to know how to master the basic sketching techniques. It is not quite enough just to be able to draw beautiful pictures but there has to be rules in making the sketch so that everyone understands the meaning of the sketch, without the designer explaining what is going on. The works should present themselves.

In my educational oven at the university of Lapland, sketching was not appraised enough and the workshops did not require sketching. Everyone was going for the 3D and no sketches required for the completion of courses. I assume that it is one thing that separates us from the top schools. During Last spring, when I was applying to DesignworksUSA, I realized that the sketches are the essence of design profession, at least in consultancy world. Also car design includes heavy sketching and rendering. Somehow I think that during my studies, the sketching was just something expected, not looked after. If there had been more workshops on basic sketching and rendering, perhaps it would have been easier to get internships etc.

However, there seems to be a gap also in the presentation of sketches and the real world. No one shows the crappy doodles even though they are the ones mostly done and looked into when working. I didn´t want to show my first sketches because they were not flashy or beautiful enough. However, the sketches are there to tell something, so show them!