Transcripts
1. Introduction: Good morning, good
afternoon. Hello everyone. Let's review together
some tips and tricks that most sketching teachers don't
mention. I'm Tanguy Prevot. I'm an industrial designer, and I'm going to share eight tips alongside
the anecdotes on how I learned those tips that will help you
be confident in your sketching that
will help you get in the flow and
eventually will help you sketch like a
designer. Let's go.
2. 1/ Body posture: Tip number one body posture. Sketching is a sport. So just like a tennis player
must pay attention to their footwork because
the balance of the entire body
matters in their play. It's the same for sketching. So what does it mean? It means sit straight. Your back can touch the back rest of your
seat, but not rest on it. You're not slouching,
leaning, whatever. Completely laying over the
table. No, no, no, no. You sit straight, you use
your core and you are stable. Feet flat on the ground. The knees at the width
of the shutters, the legs at 90 degrees. Basically what Jack Black
would call power position. That is so that you are stable. Your entire body is playing the game and your
shouter, elbow, wrist, fingers are working together synchronized to make your
line quality and your sketch. They need to be relying
on a stable base. That's why you have
to sit stable. Now, the chair is adjusted so that your feet
are flat on the ground, but also relative to the table. And the table is
adjusted so that your forearm, the elbow, and the wrist together are able to hover just at the
surface of the table, maybe a millimeter above it, but really just hovering
without any obstacle, being able to make
ample movements, your entire arm working
on your sketch. Just at the surface
so that if you want for a detail
to be precise and to rest your elbow and wrist on the table
and do something small somewhere and then start sketching big lines
again, you can. It's just about resting
or not resting, but your forearm has to be able to hover just
above the table. This is how you make
sketches like a designer.
3. 2/ Time boxing: Tip number two, time boxing. Speed is going to be the
driver of your confidence. It's going to be the driver
of your line quality. You just don't have
time to hesitate. You just have to practice
fast, fast, fast. The faster you go, the
better you sketch. The story goes like this.
Back in the late 90s, I was a student in Sweden, and we had a teacher
called Ola Stenega. He is now design director
at Indian Motorcycles, and the guy is a sketching guru. And I remember he
arrived at school that Monday and started teaching
us sketching techniques, doing demos, sketching in front of us basically most of the day. And it was really amazing. At about four in the afternoon, he tells us that we
have a homework and that he wants each
of us to sketch four A three pages with
perspective views of the cars in full color for the next
day that everything has to be on the wall at 9:00
A.M. We all did our best. We all did the homework,
and of course, on that Tuesday morning, we are all completely exhausted. Ola got angry at us because he basically said, you're
not going to survive, you're not going to be
able to stay healthy for a two years master's program if you just sleep
3 hours a night. You just have to be faster. I actually kind of
pushed back and said, I don't know how to be faster, that it takes me hours to
do each of those pages. And he said, Take a timer. So I went to the nearest
supermarket during lunch, and I bought a timer, you know, like a cooking
thing for boiling eggs. The principle that he taught us is that you
know your process. You know that you're
going to have first some main lines for setting up the
perspective of the car. Then at some point, you're
going to put some marker, then some pastels,
then some fixative, and then some pastels
again, then fixative again, and so on, blah, blah, blah.
You know your process. So for each step
of your process, you time box it. You define how many minutes you're going to
use for that task. So if you decide, for example, 6 minutes for sketching
the perspective, 6 minutes of marker, then 3 minutes of pastels, 2 minutes for the fixative
to dry, and so on. Okay, so 6 minutes
for the perspective. Sketch for 6 minutes, you do as fast as you can
as efficiently as you can. You build the perspective
of your product, and when the 6 minutes are
gone, the timer rings, you drop the pencil and
you take the markers, and you move on to the next
phase of that process. Of course, it means
that the first one or maybe the
first few are going to be less good than what you
wish for, but that's okay. That doesn't matter.
That's practice. So just keep going, force
yourself to fit your work, your task into those 6 minutes or whatever time
you decide to take. And that's going to
help you prioritize. That's going to help you get rid of the things
that don't matter. It's going to help you
be extremely efficient. Also, again, speed to sketch
fast, you need to move fast, and that's just the
best way to make straight lines or to
have good line quality, no wobbly things that
look like you are shaky. If you're fast, you don't
have time to be shaky. So time box every step, practice, practice,
practice, practice, practice, and a bit more. The more you drive, quantity, you're going to
get quality out of that simply because
just like for a sport, you need to train
and practice again, again, again and again.
4. 3/ Music boost: Tip number three, music. Just like people
who go to gym or go jogging are putting
music in their ears, something usually
kind of like a beat, maybe some dance or techno
music that is around 90 BPM, because it helps them
stay in the rhythm, stay focused on the performance, and it just is part of
the experience for them. Well, the same goes
for sketching. If you can do the experiment, try cruising on a
highway without cruise control and
listening to jazz music, and then do the same highway, try to cruise listening to
heavy metal, for example. You're going to notice
that you're not driving at the same speed and
you don't have the same steadiness
of your speed either. So for sketching, we want to sketch fast and
stay in the rhythm. So choose some music
that is up beat again, around those 90 BPMs and that's going to help you
stay focused on that speed. If you slow down too much
because you are wasting your time on some little
detail in your sketch, you're going to be
off rhythm and you're going to feel it because of the music, you're
going to feel it, you'll be aware of it, and the music is going
to help you get back into the rhythm and the
speed of your sketching. Now, as I just mentioned
with the highway story, that music is
influencing your mood. So when you choose
your music, first, choose something
you like, because the point is that you need
to be in a good mood. You're there to enjoy it. You're supposed to
enjoy sketching. Something you like,
something that is upbeat or fast to keep
you in the rhythm. And then maybe something
relevant to the project, something relevant
to the target group or something that
has something to do with the topic that you
are sketching because you can find something you
like and that is fast, and you can still
choose from dance music to metal to punk
rock to hip hop. There's all sorts of
choice that you can make. And so that puts you in the
right mood for sketching fast in a mood that is relevant for your
project. Enjoy the music.
5. 4/ Touch & Feel: Tip number four, touch
with your hands. Patrick Lacheman
who was at the time the vice president of
design at Rana once said in an interview that a beautiful car is a car that
you enjoy washing by hand, literally, like with a sponge and the
foam and everything. And the point is really that you enjoy feeling and
touching those surfaces, those curves, those sharp lines, the rhythm of the product. You get a really enhanced
understanding of those shapes. My personal experience related
to that is in the mid 90s, I was a student at Espas
Barro in Switzerland, and we were creating
concept class. At some point in the year, I spent weeks and weeks, months sending the
full size model of the Altar romeo Isima. That means literally spray, then sending paper with water and maybe spray
again and so on. I spent weeks
caressing the surface, trying to feel the wobbliness, trying to feel the defects, and trying to smooth things out, trying to control the lines, looking at that object, that car from many angles, looking at the reflections, trying to understand if
there was something to fix, but at the same time,
I basically got a better understanding
of that shape. After those months of
workshop, manual work, I thought I'm probably
completely rusty and my sketching skills must
be a disaster by now. I started sketching again, and to my surprise, I was actually
better at sketching in perspective than
before that break. Obviously, it's not the lack of practice that made me better. It's the fact that
I had improved my understanding of the
object that I was sketching. I had deepened
that understanding with more data than
just looking at it. Actually found an
article written by a car designer that was
pointing at the fact that when design directors enter the studio to review a
full size model of a car, they always have the reflex. First thing they do is they go to it and they touch the car. What it does when you touch the car is that it tells
your brain how far you are from the object and it helps understanding
the scale, the proportions, and
all the details. What you're looking at. Touch
is enhancing the picture. It's enhancing the data that
your brain is processing. So that's my advice. Touch the object that
you are sketching. Whether you are sketching
coffee machines, vases, candles, cars, sofas, it
doesn't matter. Touch them. Feel them, caress them, get a full haptic tactile understanding of
those objects because that's going to help
you sketch them better because it's going to give
you a deeper knowledge, deeper understanding
of those shapes, deeper understanding
of what is expected, and of course, the freedom
that you have to change that. Touch. Touching is a way
to be better at sketching.
6. 5/ X-ray vision: Tip number five, X ray vision. I had a teacher called
Nikola Grammatoplos. He's now still working
at Gili in Barcelona, who was teaching sketching, and he would, for example, put an audio tape or another object on the
table and tell us, Okay, now you have to
sketch that object in perspective in the
angle that you see, but you have to sketch
it in transparency. Meaning, if it's a cube, you have to sketch the
six faces of the cube. You have to sketch, obviously
the object as you see it. And you have to add into
your drawing into your sketch the edges and
faces that you don't see, like the hidden
side of the moon. So it was not nice, really difficult to do for us complete beginners back then. It was a challenging exercise, but it was really teaching us
something valuable because if you can't find that
hidden corner of the cube, that means something is
wrong in your perspective. You have to do the perspective right to be able to
complete the sketch. So you sketch the object and the parts that
you don't see of it. We just to do that
as an exercise, it's really good exercise. Take an object that
you know well to start with or an object that
is maybe rather simple, like boxy kind of
rectangular or cubic kind of thing, and try that. Sketch it as if you
can see through it, every edge, every surface. That forces you to find
the theoretical corners. Even if there is a
radius somewhere, you still need to imagine how it would be if there
wasn't a radius, that is the theoretical corner, and then you build your
perspective and then you add the radius later. Really interesting
exercise. I recommend.
7. 6/ Mirror reveal: Tip number six, Mirror reveal. Let's say you're sketching an
object, you're enjoying it, you're having fun, sketching
something that you like, and it looks pretty good. But if you don't
have classmates or teachers or someone colleague around to give you feedback, how will you know if
it's really correct? Well, there is a simple
trick. It's the mirror. Hold your sketch in front of a mirror or flip
this sketch over on the table or in front of a lungs like a lamp or
against the window. By seeing it flipped, it will reveal if the
perspective is right or wrong. When you're sketching,
because you're enjoying it, because you are
doing it yourself, your brain is getting used to that image that you are in
the process of creating. So it gets harder
and harder through the process to find
what's wrong about it. But when you flip it, when
you look at it in a mirror, you actually shock your
brain with a surprise, and that allows you to notice what's wrong
in your perspective. Adjacent idea is to sketch on semi transparent paper like a vellum paper or even
on tracing paper. So you do your sketch, and then at some
point you flip it, you notice what's wrong
in your perspective. You can make marks on the back, lightly sketch the corrections, come back to the front face, and adjust your
sketch accordingly. It's very simple,
super effective. Work at night, same story. You don't really need a mirror. As I said, you can hold
it against a lamp. At night, if it's dark outside, your window is a mirror. Anything that is
reflective enough to let you see the main lines, the main structure of your
sketch, just flip it, have a look at it, correct it, and enjoy going on. Mirror reveal always works.
8. 7/ Daylight: Tip number seven,
get some fresh air. That same teacher that
forced us to draw things in transparency actually also took us to the parking
lot of the school, and he pointed at the
red car and asked us, so what color do you see? If you look closely,
if you pay attention, then of course, you notice that, for example, in that
case, on a sunny day, the roof of that car that
is facing the sky is blue, not red or a mix
of those things. Then there are other reflections
on the side of the car, lower, it's facing the ground, so it's reflecting the ground. On the sides, you have things that are reflecting the horizon. All these colors are
playing together, mixing in some way or
replacing each other. If the car is black and clean
on a bright sunshine day, the car is going to behave
pretty much like a mirror. If it's white, much less. So observe things, look at things with curiosity
and look at those colors. We talked about
touching things to understand the shapes
and proportions and the structure of the shape. Well, for colors, you really
need to just use your eyes, but think about it, actively try to spot the different colors
and recognize that, yes, that car is red. But actually, if I want
to sketch it or make an illustration that is
kind of photorealistic. I'm going to have to put
some blue, some yellow, some gray, and whatever
else is in the environment. You're going to
have reflections of the next car in it and so on. Be curious. You can do that
obviously in the office. You can go on Internet, found a picture of the object
that you want to sketch, and then take a color picker
in a photo editing software, and you're going
to find out that those RGB coordinates keep changing and that
your color wheel is staying in that same hue, it's going to change
because there will be colors from the lighting. There will be colors
from the environment. There will be the base
color of the object. The different levels
of glossiness, of course, will have
an impact on that. A piece of chrome is
literally a mirror, so you have everything in it. Something that is matte
is going to mostly show its base color and
much less reflections. But still, the lighting, if the lighting is warm or cold, it's going to give different
nuance to that color. So can do it indoor,
but my advice, go get some fresh air, enjoy the blue sky,
look at things outside. Whatever that is,
doesn't need to be cars. You can be on a terrace of a restaurant and look
at the tableware, look at the furniture
in the sunshine and notice the colors.
Go get some fresh air.
9. 8/ Candle contrast: Last but not least, tip number eight, hold
on to the candle. About 25 years ago, I had just started a job in Sweden and I had
found an apartment, but I hadn't yet managed to get sorted with a contract
with an electricity provider. So I had an apartment
that was very nice during the day and very
dark during the night. So I bought a few
candles just to be able to function
in the evenings. And because I was
obsessed with sketching, I just kept on sketching in
the evening with candlelight. So just one candle sketching with black bullpen
on normal paper. I noticed the second day in broad daylight is that
those sketches that I had done during the night
with just a candle as a light source were
much stronger. They had a lot more
contrast in them. I had unconsciously really
boosted the contrast, probably just for the sake
of seeing what I was doing. I really had to press harder, insist more, pass over again, more times on the lines. Just to see what he was doing. So if you're one
of those who are a little bit afraid
and always hold back and sketch very lightly and don't
use black marker and really avoid to go too punchy
because you can't undo it, well, a way to
force yourself into that is to set up the
environment, dim the lights, even use just a candle as I did, and it's going to make you bring contrast because you
will not have any choice. Just to see what you're doing, you're going to have
to boost the contrast. Do that a few days,
a couple of weeks, just to train yourself once you do it and achieve
it and see it works well. Of course, then it's much
easier to accept that it works and just there doing it and
repeat it consciously later. Go back to normal
lighting because obviously that's much
healthier for your eyes. But as a practice as an
exercise for a short while, playing with the lighting in
your office can really help you overcome your blocks and boost the contrast
on your sketches. Always have a candle at home.
10. Summary: So let's summarize what
we have learned today. Tip number one, body posture, number two, time boxing
and number three music. Those three were about efficacy. It was about you
remembering that this is a sport that you
sketch with the whole arm, shoulder, elbow, wrist fingers, that all that requires
a strong core and a stable base speed because
it gives you confidence, it avoids hesitation, and
it guarantees line quality. Music to maintain the speed, keep you in the rhythm, and
enhance the experience, make you feel better about it. So all this was,
let's do it right. Let's do it fun, efficacy. Now, we talked about touch, washing the cars and
touching objects to have a full haptic
understanding of those shapes. We talked about sketching in transparency to
force you to build your perspective
properly because otherwise if the perspective is not coherent on your sketch, you're not able to actually sketch the hidden
faces of your product. And we talked about using
a mirror or flipping the image to check if your
perspective is coherent. This was more about really the understanding
of the object and the understanding of the sketch and geometry that
you are sketching. Then we talked about colors and observing how light
source, surface treatment, reflections and base
color are playing together to give a result
that is not a simple, white, red, blue, plain color. We talked about using
candles or dimming the lighting to help you boost your contrast by
forcing you to do something contrasted
because otherwise you don't see what
you're sketching. These, of course, are not the
fundamentals of sketching. To be good at sketching, there's first of all, a lot of practice
to put in place and a lot more advice to take
in from various teachers. These were just those
extras, those litter things, those experiments or incidents that I've been through
where I learned something that was not
necessarily really about how to hold the pen and practicing
in Natalie to sketch a lot. And I think that there is
something to find in there. I hope it helps you. I hope it helps you have fun sketching. I hope it helps you practice. Just keep going and do the exercises with
the transparency. Send it to me. Let's have fun, and let's enjoy sketching. Thank you. Good luck.
Tanguy Prevot, Industrial Designer / Educator
