Quick Sketching - Learn to sketch like a designer

1. Introduction: Good morning. Good afternoon. Hello everyone. You're here to learn how to sketch like a designer. Well, I'm TonkiPrevo. I'm an industrial designer, so you are at the right place. I split the class in a few topics. For each, I give a demo on paper so that you see what I'm talking about. I hope you'll enjoy that. Let's go. 2. Sketching tools: Alright, so first quick note on the equipment, what do I usually or most often use? A ball pen, you know, the classic big. A gel pen from supermarket, cheap stuff, gel pen, and then pencils indigo blue, which I use a lot and then black. Other than that, yeah, you can use markers or digital tools, where there's occasionally a ruler, if you need something straight, curve templates, or what do you call that French curves. These are very big from the time I was catching on A three cars. These are almost 30-years-old, but they can be handy. And then Ellips templates, this kind of stuff, right? You use it to sharpen the ellipse after drafting it by hand. And I have two sets, small ones, big ones. That's what you use. That's basically it. Why would you use those things? So indigo blue pen, lighter, I very much like working with that if I'm looking for shapes and not quite sure what I'm doing and just experimenting and trying to find something. I want something that can disappear when I need. I don't use erasers, that's for losers. I just use a blue pen as tolerant enough so I can experiment. It also is nice because you can choose, if you really want to do some very intense things you can that depends on the brand of pencil you're using, obviously. I don't even know if these are still available on the market. Sanford very thin. I'm not sponsored. I just learned in the 90s that they were great, and I haven't looked eversewhere since and because I don't use pencils that much at work, these pencils are decades old and they are wonderful. Now, why would I use a black one? Well, that's probably this one is shorter. I'll use it more. That's probably because I am a bit more sure what I'm going to do. So if I feel like I can go for it with black, why not? It's kind of like something a bit I don't know. Some days I feel like using black. So days I I feel like using blue. It doesn't matter up to you. But it's going to be harder if I go dark on some you can get a really strong contrast easily. And obviously, you're not going to erase that anytime soon, but it's nice. Same story. If I press hard, I get strong lines. If I go easy, it's light, I can you know, So black pencil. Gel pen. That's if I'm thinking in terms of pictograms or something. I I'm wondering if I should make something like a box or if I should make it like a half box and then maybe half circle. Literally when I want to do something where the graphical impact is more important, like a pictogram, W I'm trying to decide whether I'm going to stack my three components like this, or shall I place them like this, discussing your product architecture and the benefits of dimensions versus another set of dimensions, right? So that's more about explanation, pictogram kind of stuff. Very difficult to change to contrast. I mean, it's either black or very black. I can't make the gray with that. And then the ball pen, also a matter of mood. This one, kind of like a black pencil allows to go very light if I want. And obviously allows to go super dark if I press hard, if I increase the density of the lines, right, can go smooth. The problem is it's depending on your skills and style, it's revealing more the defect. If your curve is not perfect, it shows immediately. Well, the indigo blue pencil, for example, is much more tolerant. People are going to feel like the curve is smooth. And that's maybe because it gives me a bit more friction, which helps me control the movement of my arm. As I said in another class, I use shader, elbow, wrist finger. If I want to do something accurate, obviously, I have my hand on the paper and I'm basically just using my hand but when I shoot lines, it's the whole arm. You can basically spend hours practicing shooting lines like that careful the edge of the paper may cut your little. Trying to shoot curves and trying to shoot them consistently. Like, if you become a plotter, then you are real expert. There is a shape that emerges here. Nice. Now I'm going to need more contrast here. This would be a hole. I'm going to press harder. You see, that's where having a black would have made things clearer, faster. Some thickness here. That's for the materials, gel for pictograms. You can, of course, for example, see, I didn't lift my arm. You can have a total black. I don't know if you see you change the density of lines, but each line is black. If I use a pencil, which one is the blue? Let's take the black one if I use a pencil, You can really also go pretty black and then have a smooth gradient. So you choose your tool for what you want to do, obviously, practice all of them, and then follow your guts, follow your mood. 3. Perspective - part 1: All right, so perspective, what does it mean? What is it for? Let's start with this. If I do this little square, that kind of roof on it. And you say it has a door, and it has a window, that's a house, right? Now, is that a small house or is it just far away? How do we know that? Okay, let's say, now I make a bigger one. A square, where kind of roof. And it has some kind of door and a window. Is that a big house or is it just closer to me? Right? So now I want to put a third one halfway between them. And if I assume that this one is far away and this one is near and somewhere in between, it's going to be a third one. How big do I need to put it and where do I put it to be in the middle? So let's say we're going to build construction lines, perspective lines. If I connect that corner to that corner, that gives me one axis, right? Let's say I connect the top of the roof there, that gives me another axis. Now, if I, for example, take that vertical line here, and I make diagonals, you know, when you make a rectangle in flat, not in perspective. You have a flat rectangle. You want to know where is the middle of the rectangle, you shoot the diagonals, right? And where the diagonals are crossing, that's the middle. So this distance is the same as this distance, right? And then this, if you do it accurately obviously is the same. This is the middle. So by drawing those diagonals, I find that this is the walking from here to here is the same as walking from here to here. All right? So now now, I know that my house is there, but how big is it? Okay, I'll take that corner and that corner and connect them. And then here's the width of my house, okay? That corner and that corner, right? So that's going to be my house is going to be something like this. With a roof. I'm not building everything. I'm just doing it quick and dirty. The point is, I just explain to you why perspective matters. I now have three identical houses because I'm in the UK, and that's a joke. I'm not in the UK. And now I know that those distances are equal and they have the same size. It's just this one is far, this one is near, and this one is halfway in between. So first, why do we sketching perspective? Now, I was cheating, obviously, I made those houses like they are some kind of cartoon panels. But the principle is the same. So now if I sketch a cube, which is the base of the house, right? If I sketch a cube, I I have a corners near me and I have a corner somewhere that is far away from me, like 10 meters away. So this would be the edge of the roof and they said this would be the ground. And what I do is that actually those lines, if I would extend them on the table and far away they meet over there, they're not parallel. Personally, the vertical lines, I tend to make them parallel because that's not correct, but it's a convenient shortcut because the things I design are rarely skyscrapers. So if an object is extremely tall, then you're going to have converging perspective lines because it's a long distance. But for example, I mean, I studied car design, right? So cars are relatively quite low and quite long. You will have more perspective effect in the length of the car, not so much in the height. So the shortcuts I make is that my vertical lines are trying to be all vertical and parallel. But then the lines that represent the length and the width, I make them converging. That means that this piece of line, this one is shorter than this one. And likewise, this one is shorter than this one. Now, if I do it wrong, if I would sketch something like, okay, here's a I'm taking similar proportions. But if I do something like this, and then something like this, you may wonder why these distance are quite similar while this one is much shorter. This is going to give you a sense of lens a little bit, the actual where you see it and if it has a fisheye effect in your lens or if you are using a zoom. A zoom would make things more equal and a wide angle lens would make things more extreme. But this starts to look like I made a mistake. If this is converging that quickly here, then probably that one should also converge a bit quicker. Then we're back to having correct proportions. There will be something about proportions in the class. So another trick is that I mean, I have some years of practice. How do I know that that line is this and not something else? Well, they're all trying to converge to a point that is somewhere in the other room over there. So it's kind of like, I guess, practice and good feeling, but one trick is that you can when you were sketching, you put your pencils on those lines. Right. And let's see if this one was like this, I would see that something is wrong in my perspective, right? So I need to have them converge. Okay. So so my house, we said it has a roof. So the roof is in the middle of the width of my house, and that's the width, right? So again, I'm going to shoot diagonals that point. I'm going to shoot vertical. I said why Because it's my habit. And then what were the proportions. The roof is not even height half of the height, right lower somewhere there. And so I'm going to have a roof like this. Then the edge of the roof is horizontal in reality, which means it's going to converge in the same way with the same logic. This one, I'm going to shoot it parallel and my house starts to appear here, right? So this is sketching, doesn't matter. We're not talking about millimeters. Actually, when you build a house, 10 centimeters accuracy is pretty accurate. So quite frankly, on a sketch of a house, nobody cares. It just needs to feel right. Okay? So again, about the proportions of your perspective, that's the middle. Let's say that the door is in the middle of that half. So I can again, you know, draw my construction lines here is the middle. So that's going to be the middle of my door. So the door is bit on each side, right? And there, I'm not going to bother measuring because I'm just too lazy. But the top of the door is also in those converging lines, right? Perspective lines. I sketch the window a bit higher, so I'll be somewhere somewhere along those lines, I guess. And do I need to bother? Okay, I will. So this is the middle. So my window is going to be something like this, I guess. The verticals are verticals. Now, in reality, the verticals shouldn't. There should be three points. So these should be converging on the other room above there, and this should be converging over there, and this should be converging over there. As I said, I have the long habit of using verticals as verticals because it's a shortcut that people understand and easier makes it easier for me. Made the roof stick out a little bit here, which means that there would be a shadow, probably, but that's another part of the class. So perspective. Now you know why we are using perspective. We know what it's giving is the distance, is the depth and the proportions. If I'm a small little guy standing next to the house, right, what is going to happen then? And I'm going to have that corner that is near me, but I look at it from below. So I'm going to have the ground. I I'm an ant on the ground, my horizon is just the floor is the nearby floor is the horizon, and then the house is going to be somewhere converging like this, right? So then. You notice that because I'm just there to explain and this is not going to be an art piece. It's not going to be on my wall. So I don't care if sketches overlap as long as I keep track of what is where. So the middle of my front facade, right? So my door is going to be somewhere around here, the window is somewhere around here. And the roof, we said it's a bit less than half. So if that's half, let's say the roof is here. I'm going to have my roof like this. Where was the corner there? So interesting, because of the angle I have chosen now, I don't see the roof anymore. I just see the edge of it. Yeah. So I just see something like Whatever. Not great, but you get the point. So this would be the under edge of the roof. The door is a third of the width, I just go like this third should be looking bigger than that one. Always keep track of when you use big dimensions, you need to make those differences when it's about two things that are very close to each other. Nobody has the eyes sharp enough to know if you are doing it really accurately or not. But you see it's not that bad, I guess, the top of my door, something like that. Yeah, right? So the window, how do I know, something like that, I guess. Oh, rompen. So this would be the half of the height. And we said the window, maybe it is actually here. So now that window is here, and So the window is going to be something like that. Suddenly, you see that my square window, this one wasn't square. It's now looks like a vertical one, like a portrait type of thing. And it's just because the perspective is shrinking the proportions. Right, so that's about perspective. You have your object, whatever it is, and horizon line, and everything is converging somewhere on this side, everything is converging somewhere on that side. And to make it easy for yourself, stick to verticals as vertical. But in theory, they should be either converging up if you're an ant on the floor or converging down if you are in a helicopter looking at something from above. But because the things I design are not big enough, I just stick to that. 4. Perspective - part 2: What happens if I have a cylinder or something circular? Let's say I'm sketching a cylinder, from top you, it's a rectangle, then from front, it's a circle. How do I sketch that in perspective? Well, it fits in a box. That circle fits in a square. Let's imagine that I have a square in perspective along I'm back to my verticals. So this is the bounding box, right? This is the place the box in which my cylinder is fitting. Let's say something like this. Now, where is my circle? I'm back to the diagonals to know where the center. That's a good starting point. Then so that's the center, right? More or less. Obviously, my square is not right, but I found the circle, the center of the circle and that axis is shooting this way. I work in perspective, I see through the box, that's vertical, that's going to be aiming somewhere like that. Should be let's see if I can sketch. That should be aiming somewhere like that. So that's my box. So if I take the diagonals of that face, which is hidden, but I see through it. Now my center that is here and this is the same axis. It's the axis of my cylinder, right? Now, what you need to know is that if I sketch an ellipse, whatever position, a sketch an ellipse, an ellipse has two axis, the long one, it's supposed to be symmetrical that way and the short one, which is going to be, I guess, something like that. From here to here, the short one, from here to here, the long one that's an ellipse. Now, I need to find out what's the ellipse here. I know that this is the axis of my cylinder and I know that the long axis of the ellipse is going to be perpendicular to that. If I even chief, I just found an archaic square angle. But it does the job? This this will become the long axis of my ellipse. I'm going to have an ellipse here, something like that. It's going to reach those edges and the orientation is perpendicular to the axis of my cylinder. What you also notice is that this square is more squeezed than that one. So here, if I go perpendicular, and the other end of my cylinder is also an ellipse, it's a little bit more open, a bit more circle, closer to a circle than that one because it's like, plain plain spins. And so my cylinder is now going to be this. So here's my cylinder. This is sketchy. We're not doing a technical drawing here, so accuracy is relative. It's a matter of impression and understanding that whether I'm trying to sketch is a cylinder. All right. There we go. What does it mean? What I was trying to explain about this, if you have a say a car, if you sketch a car, usually what you do is you start, for example, if I start with the rear wheel, I'm going to make an eletors quite tight. Then I have my floor. I took proportion in another video, but basically something like one, two, three. The fourth one is my front wheel. And I sketch it wider than that one. Then you see that somewhere here is my horizon line. So this one now starts converging that way. Then I have the width of my car and I'm going to just indicate that somewhere here is the wheel and converging, starting from here, and then going this way, I'm going to find that the last is hidden somewhere here, right so I have a car. Okay. So another thing about perspective besides ellipsis is that it really depends on how you look at things. So if I look at a car from the top, I'm a helicopter and I'm looking down on a car. It's not a rectangle, right? So I have a basic rectangle that is a bounding box, the car fits inside the box. The reality is that it's see that one wheel is here and another wheel is here, right? So the car is going to have a shape like first of all, truncated corners at the front, then probably some curve, maybe it has kind of flared fenders and truncated back, right? And still kind of curved back. And then the windscreen would be something like that. Keeping it simple. And a little at the front. Now, if I look at the car from here, my eye is here and I'm looking at the car. What do I notice is that here I see pretty much all in one place. This is the back wheel. And then I don't see what's behind the back wheel, basically. And here, I see this as the end of the picture, not the theoretical corner of that rectangle. So when I look at the car, I said I see the back wheel and nothing else. I'm not going to sketch further here. And here, I see that if I was looking at the wheel, I would I would see that. If I was looking at the box, I would see that, but I see something in between the front of the car is probably a bit further than the wheel, but not much. So that gives you now, the middle of the wheel of the car, sorry, the middle of the car. I look at that corner and that corner and look what I have here and I look at the middle of the car. This is bigger than this. Even though first of all, I cannot rely on the wheels, I need to rely on my corners which are this and the middle of the car is not exactly the exact same distance, it's further away. The middle of the car is probably somewhere here. That would be the front of my car is somewhere like this, the bottom somewhere here, the side is not flat either, so there's some movement. I mean, my logo is going to be somewhere here. My logo is maybe a little bit tilted towards the sky kind of thing, right? So it's like the axis of the cylinder, so the axis of the ellipse is something like this, and my logo is going to be something like that, assuming that there's a logo on the nose of the car, right? And then you would have, I don't know, some kind of rail. Maybe this was just like a logo that sticks out a bit from the shape Right. I don't know what Brenda is. Doesn't matter. You get the point? Same thing for talking about distances, the wheel. If I look at the wheel from top, let's say that my tire is like this and then the rim does something like that, for example, and whatever, maybe even further in the center and tack the tires. But the wheel does something like that. If I look at it from here, I'm going to see the edge of the tire, the edge of the rim. And then I don't see that one. It's all hidden in that. But on the other side, I see the edge of the rim and I see that surface, which is hidden here. Same thing here. To show the depth, I'm going to have my ellipse offset. That means the axis of my main ellipse, the outside of the tire maybe here, but as the axis of the ellipse that does the rim is offset, right? And not visible here. That's how you make the ellipses for wheels. On the back wheel, you really don't see it's going to be something like that. So something here, the body has some kind of curve. It's not just a flat side panel. All right. So important to know for ellipsis, the long axis of the ellipsis is perpendicular to the axis of the cylinder. And if you have different depths, you just shift that axis and your ellipses become partly visible or not. And that's basically it if you have an old school photo camera, it's a box. And in the center, so I take diagonals to find my center. In the center, I have my lens that starts. I I sketched my box like that. That means my axis of the cylinders like that. So perpendicular to it roughly, and eye sketch Wow, that's not good. Sometimes turning the page or even choosing to rotate, you see either I go clockwise or counterclockwise. I cannot explain to you why. Sometimes it just feels right one way or the other. When it's too small like this, my accuracy gets really low. But you get the point. The ellipse, Remember those? The button, the axis is like that. So the long axis is like that, and that's the button. 5. Shading: So now we saw with perspective that we were able to basically visualize distances dimensions, giving the object kind of three dimensions, right? But also helps, of course, is shading. So let's start with a cube. Again, I'm making a box in perspective. And why not make my verticals little bit convergent just to make it look like it's a big object. If I do that, then I need this one too. Mm hmm. So let's I have cube or some kind of locks rectangle. How can I enhance the three D perception of it? Actually, an interesting thing is that you can use the thickness of the line, right? I mean, if I make a very strong line at the bottom, that helps my box to somehow sit on the ground. Now, shading. So the trick is one, two, three. It's completely arbitrary. You choose. You choose where the light comes from. Let's say that in this case, the light comes mostly from top but a little bit from left, like this. So what does it mean? It means that there will be a lot of light hitting the top surface. It's going to be one. And then kind of some light hitting this side, so it's going to be two. And that the three is kind of in the shadow, right? You can place it as you want. We often tend to sketch things as if they were outside outdoor. And then the light source is the sun, which is at lunchtime very much at the top. If it's sunset, it's very much horizontal. So you could have one, two, three, for example, and assume that the light really comes from the side can come from the other side, and then you just basically decide that one is the pace that gets most of the sunlight. Why what does that mean? One, two, three? It means I would leave that surface basically white because it's hit by a lot of light and it's one. The two has a base color. And the shading, the shadow on an object or the intensity of the color of an object is its base color, then the lighting, and then the reflections. We're going to talk about reflections later. For now, we talk about how much of the base color do I see. On the top, I see the light. It looks white. On the left, I'm going to see my base color, which is number two. And so I'm going to shade it. But not pushing too hard, right? Just giving you the feeling that it's a gray surface, for example, with a certain density of lines and certain pressure on the pencil. And then the three is in the shadow because the light comes from here. So the three is the shadow, so I'm going to be much stronger in shading it. That's it. Basically, that's how it works. So what does it mean? It means if I have a more complex shape than a cube, let's say, I have a second one next to it. So I have an object that is going to be like L shaped object. What am I doing? This is in the other direction. So I have an L shaped object, and I apologize. But let's not stress too much about that. The point is one, two, three. So I'm going to have one, two, one, two, three, right? And so it's going to be like this, I'm going to shade lightly those two faces. And then I'm going to do something that's darker. What's nice with the pencil is that you can really control the intensity, the pressure that you put is going to give. You can make it a bit more lively by making it kind of gradient. But the value basically need to remain that one side is in the shadow, can contrast it with the edges, right? And then some faces are not completely in the shadow, and some faces are really blasted by the sun. Now, let's quickly look at what it's like for a cylinder. For a cylinder, what's going to happen is that it's still one, two, three, but the transition smoother, right? So if I have a cylinder, And let's say that this time the light comes from here. So I'm going to have one. So how does it work? Let's take it into the first. My cylinder, if I see it from the front is a circle. And I have light coming this way. So this is going to be one, right? This is obviously three because it's on the other side, it's completely shadow. So if this is the direction of the light, this is three. And then this is one. And here, I'm going to have some two and some two kind of gradient. So one two, three. So that means I'm going to have here a zone that is going to be kind of one is. And then I'm going to have a zone this is going to be two. This is going to be three, and this is going to be three, right? So the face of the cylinder is in the shadow. We don't need to care. Now, if I here I'm going to have a bit of darkness, and then it goes white. And then it starts getting darker and darker and darker. This is not about reflections for now. It's only about lighting, right? I'm not reflecting the ground, the horizon line or anything like this. If you look at if you go outside and it's a sunny day and you look right above the sky is going to be super blue, the bluest, like the most intense blue. And on the horizon, if you're not downtown, if you are in a place where there is horizon, the sky is going to be almost white just above the horizon. Then obviously, under that, it's the ground. So we will see that for the reflections how it matters. What happens if my cube has rounded corners? I need to sharpen my pen quickly, my pencil gonna get shorter. So I have a cube with rounded corners. Let's quickly do that. I have a cube. I exaggerate the perspective. And I want rounded corners. So how am I going to do my shading when I have rounded corners? Basically, each corner is like a piece of cylinder that is merged into your cube, right? So I'm going to have here that's going to behave like a cylinder. Right? Like dice when you're playing. So that means if I decide that I decide that I have one, two, three, it's all the same. It's just that maybe I'm going to have even more highlight on this one. So I'm going to have a very, very light one. Then I'm going to have a two. Yeah. It's going to turn into a three there because it's down there. So this is going to be three. And then from a sketching point of view, I might even cheat a bit and intensify this. You can also find your own style in this. Like, one thing is reality, the physics of light and another thing is your signature moves, right? So do you think So maybe I'm gonna Alright. So I hope that helps. You have one, two, three. Just keep that in mind. You choose where the light comes from. So, you know, if it's a cube and the light comes from here, then maybe you have one on the top, two, and then you're going to have three on the back. Now, if we talk about that, we can talk about the cast shadow, so the shadow of your object onto the table or the floor. In this case, we see it comes from here, so I have a shadow or something like that. It doesn't matter if it's accurate, just make it dark. It helps really sitting the object on the table. And again, sometimes just the line thickness is just making the object exist, right? One, two, three, similar thing we said, so I'd have a probably just something like that. But we rounded corners, doesn't matter. If you really want to know, you can take a picture or something and try to be accurate. Again, in terms of sketching, often it's about indicating, giving an impression. It's not about being accurate. Shading simple one, two, three to reveal the depth or the dimensions of the object. H 6. Reflections: So let's start with reflections on a cylinder, for example. So we said a cylinder. Okay, we have a cylinder. That cylinder seen from the front is a circle, right? Let's pretend that's a circle. So when I'm looking at it from here, I see this, that cylinder sitting is on the floor. So how do reflections work? Well, if you play Snooker or billiard, then you just know. The reflection is basically how the light is traveling, okay? So when I look at when I look at the center of my cylinder, what I see here is myself. If I look at another place like here, at that point, you need to take the tangent to the circle, perpendicular to that tangent, that's basically coming from the center, right? That angle is the same as where the light comes from. So when I look here, I see the reflection of something that is far away there, probably the horizon. When I look if I look here, I just see nothing. I see the reflection of the ground. If I look here, let's see what happens. So I'm looking at that part. I have that line that comes from the center and then that angle is going to be the same. I do it by hand, be tolerant, but that means what? That means I see the ground. The image of the ground is traveling like this, bouncing on the surface and coming into my eye. Here on the cylinder, I'm going to see the reflection of the ground. Somewhere here, I'm going to see the reflection of the horizon. And then here I see myself if I'm visible. If I look at this point, so same story from the center. That angle is going to be the same on the other side. It's really like if you play a snooker, the ball comes here, hits a wall, and goes back the other way with the exact same angle compared to the perpendicular to the wall, okay? So when I look here, I see the sky, right above the cylinder. And as I said in the previous video, if you go outside on a sunny day and you look at the environment, somewhere not in town, somewhere in the field, what is right above you is the perfectly blue sky, the deep blue sky. What is just above the horizon, the sky looks almost white. So what I see here is a reflection of the deep blue sky. And if let's say I'm looking at here and I have that line from the center, so I'm looking at that point, from angle of view, I'm going to have that angle reflected the other side, something like that, I suppose. So so there, I'm going to see the reflection of the sky, which is less deep blue than that. And then progressively somewhere, I'm going to see something that is white horizon, and then I'm just going to see nothing like the ground on the other side of the cylinder. So if that makes sense, now, what does it mean? When I'm looking at this, we said, somewhere here, I see myself, somewhere there, I see the blue sky, right? So if I somewhere in this zone, I'm going to see the deepest blue of the sky somewhere at above that. So somewhere around here, I'm going to see the horizon, the reflection of the horizon. And there I just see the ground. Somewhere around here, I see all this is the ground because the horizon is there. So here I'm going to have some white sky, and here I'm going to have some blue sky and then some white sky, but very thin line and then nothing. So if I compare here I had just shadow because there is no light arriving no light from the light source directly from the light source arriving here. But the light that arrives here is reflected by the ground. So let's say that this is my horizon and there is a mountain or some kind of hills and stuff. I'm going to see if that cylinder is chrome or glossy surface, I'm going to see that there is a road right? Suddenly, I'm going to see those things reflecting here. And here, I'm really going to see the texture on the ground. And here it's just going to be the horizon vaguely identified some building, something, right? Now, the blue sky, I'm just using a black pencil so it doesn't really matter, but what it means is that I'm going to have kind of some kind of blue, some kind of shade, going to nothing. And here, I'm just going to have the edge of my cylinder. Well. Does that make sense? So this is a flat surface, for example, then I would see, well, if I'm looking from here, I'm going to see what's happening there. If my horizon is there, probably I'm still going to the horizon is there. And I'm going to see something like that, probably, I guess, hope and the sky. Okay? So that's how it works. If you combine those things, this is a mat cylinder. This is a glossy cylinder, but you can combine them, basically, but you need to decide because here, the mat is showing you light color from the sun. The sun is blasting here, and here is showing you that the sky is reflecting here. Maybe the sun is somewhere lower. Again, it's not really about accuracy, it's about expressing the shape and expressing the surface, if it's mat or glossy. So an object that is maybe not a cylinder, but's the side of a car. So I have the rear wheel, the ground, constriction. Is very quick without wearing too much. So the side of the car. You have the bottom of the car. I see you have feature line and some shower here, right? And Isctionapar, something like that. Come on. So I have side of the car, something like that. Coming in and looking like that, and then positive shape. Let's have a shading or the reflection. All this is going to be reflecting the ground. So it's going to be dark. But probably, I mean, I'm definitely going to make the bottom match dark. So now, this surface here, Is reflecting the sky. This one here is reflecting down, it's going to be darker. Sorry for the line quality. Now, if we imagine that it's sunset and the sun is coming from this side, probably I'm going to have here some shade because of the flare. But here's brighter. And then here I'm going to have some of that sky smooth thing going on like you have here. Now, the window, this is probably reflecting the ground, as in this is the horizon line. This is the edge between the metal bodywork and the window. This you're going to have some sky reflection. So this is about reflections. At the same time, we know we have shading, right? There is some cast shadow going on. Tires are black and matte. So clearly, there's not much happening there. Hope that makes sense. So it's kind of a choice. When you sketch cars, you go for the reflection kind of thing because it's pretty cool. So for example, this would be the white of the sky that is reflecting the horizon, the blue sky. Actually, that's probably kind of bluish the whole thing here, but a bit less. This is the stronger blue. Then this is reflecting the body itself or the ground. This is reflecting the sky, but we will assume that there is a highlight because the light comes a little bit from the back and we want to express that there is this depth here. So we're going to make this slightly darker than that part. And the horizon is maybe let's see that it's doing something like that. We have our mountains and stuff. And maybe we have a road reflecting in the side. But here, it's all round reflection, so it's pretty dark. If you have some kind of rear view mirror, Same story. We have the horizon and the ground reflected in it a bit of sky. But it's going to have a shadow, so it's going to cast a shadow on the body of the car, which is going to be helping you to also indicate the shape of the car. So glossy item, a lot of reflections and some shading. Matt items, shading one, two, three, always works. All this just with one pencil. This is applicable obviously. If I was using markers, I could use nothing or a gray one or gray two, gray four, five, gray six, seven, and pitch black for the cast shadow for markers that would work. And here for colors, then I would have let's say that the car is red. So I would have some red marker in that zone that is reflecting. And then I would use maybe pencil or pastels to give some other tone, maybe to it or gray marker on the back of the paper to give some tones to it. But this would be blue from the sky reflections, this would be left white for highlight or maybe slightly yellowish if I'm really counting on some kind of sunset that comes low, the light source. Same thing here. I would have some highlight or some transitions along the horizon. And then here I would go there would be a red base, but I would bring some gray in it to really show that this is shadow, right? 7. Contrast: I'm going to sketch with a pencil. What I didn't say when I talked about the tours is that, of course, you can combine them. So I'm going to sketch with a blue indigo blue pencil, and then we'll go with markers. So for markers, same principle as one, two, three, except that this time is three, five, seven, and then the black. And I'll have a blue light blue just to bring some sky thing in it. I have a black pencil, a white pencil. So we go back to the shapes we had something similar to that car that we had before. So let's just quickly indicate that we are sketching a car. It's not like I'm obsessed with cars. It's just because it gives a bit of softness of shapes and some complexity of shapes, so we can have a bit it's more useful than just cubes. Right. So we're quickly making something up. Doesn't matter. Shooting the perspective with the blue. So it's, you know, it's not too strong. If I need to fix something I can Okay. So let's see if I flip the paper, as mentioned in the video with the tips about sketching, I can see how my perspective is going. I can see that something's wrong here. Yeah, it's more or less here. So if I want to sketch that front, I'd use that to make corrections. But I'll just stick to the side for now. So we have some indication of the shadow on the ground because that matters, actually. So now, if I instead of shading like I did here with the pencil and going with a lot of what's it called hatching, I can use markers. And then start on the back. So I can use that seven, which is the value three on the other sketch and just go just, you know, planting put in there the shadows. Just don't worry. It's a sketch. We're not here to be accurate with anything. So we can also indicating, nobody said that everything has to be finished. It's often enough to just indicate and the brain of the person who's looking at it is just knowing what to do with the information. We just good at reading shapes. So here I'm going to have some wheel arch thing probably here as well. Like this, maybe something going on in the headline. So on the other side, now I have this kind of gray. It's not black. It's gray. I can go back with the black. So with those markers, you can use the fat tip and just by rotating the tip, you decide if it's fat or if it's thin, right? So I can just go like this. So again, so now I have that shadow underneath the car, and it really makes the car sit on the ground. It exists now. I go with lighter gray in these parts here. The marker has been diluting my blue pencil, but I don't mind. And then you can always start with a light gray and come back later to make it darker. So remember, we had careful do not put your hands in wet black marker. So I'm going to avoid trouble here using my other sketch as a protection. So we had that zone here that was because the light comes a bit from the back of the car. Mm. I said I would use some blue. It's because as I said earlier, here we're going to have some blue going on the reflection of the sky. I can probably come some blue here maybe. I can come on the back to reinforce something here. Also we have blue reflections here, right? So by working on both sides, I'm giving depth to those layers. I'm going to come back with some gray. These are reflections in the glass. The glass is kind of like mirrory. So the reflections are going to be strong and crisp. So no need to be too light on that. We're going to somehow define the edge. Also, indicating means you don't need to do the whole thing. It's enough to have some hints and the viewer's brain does the work. As we the five. So I might come with the seven again here to give it some but I'm not going all the way. Just maybe should I? Yeah. Probably with the five coming here, So you get the point. You build your things. You don't need to come back on the whole surface everywhere, in some places, you build some indication that something's going on. Right? So that's one thing about contrasting your shapes. Another trick about contrasting is that let's say that we have a door. We have a door line. So I'm going to have a door that comes like that. Right? Somewhere here as well. Same story. It doesn't matter. So that door, I can give it depth by using a black pencil and a white pencil. So if I use my black pencil everywhere just because obviously the door gap is just shadow. I mean, it's a gap between the two panels, so it's just black. But now what I'm going to do is use the white pencil and come parallel to the white. So suddenly I'm indicating that there is a highlight. Now, you need to think because at the bottom, for example, this horizon, I can actually use I can use a French curve to have some crispness here. So I'm going to go up a little crisp. And then I'll just go underneath because the sun is still from above, right? So I'm going to have this like that. I also have a highlight here, and I probably have a shiny white edge here. Those things may seem not really visible, but they do the work. They really help your brain understand the shape. Contrast, don't be afraid of combining tools. For example, here, I have another blue pencil that I can then use if I want to somehow Increase some of the intensity of the reflection on that area. You can smudge it with my finger. Any technique does. There's no wrong technique. There's just you trying experimenting, figuring things out. Right? So yeah, maybe that blue can help me bring a bit of extra shadow here somehow. Right. I'm liking this. Giving a more sketchy feel to it, just for fun. So don't be afraid of black. Go for contrast. That's just going to make things clearer. So if I would finish this sketch, I would definitely come here with some black. To separate the body from whatever the wheel that I didn't sketch. Yeah, so contrasting, you can use a gelpin if you like, where's my gelpin in some places, and then you're going to have a really strong black that you can use to really increase that depth. Have fun there experiment. It only cost a piece of paper, so nothing to lose. You don't need ten shades of gray. You need three and a black and some blue things to give it some life. Of course, if the car was red, I would need to bring something in. But you could, for example, um What happens if I take this? Does this marker work? Yes, it does. So by the way, yeah, I just wanted to show 357, that's your one, two, three that I showed in the shading page, Black or the strong shadows. Now, let's see what happens if I start putting some body color. I go on the back and I That's not what I wanted. Well, let's see. Suddenly, I have a car that has all those grays that give the volume, but my orange here, it's called I don't know. Chinese orange, it's called. I can use that to indicate that the car has a certain color, a fun experiment. 8. Proportions: Okay, so looking back at this, either that's a very small car or it's a very big door, if it's a very big door or if it's a small car and that's a very small canopy. I just want to talk about proportions and scale. When you sketch. Even if the perspective seems right and even if you have the values and so on, the credibility of it will very much depend on the proportions and on the scale or how you express the size of your product. So be careful about that. For vehicles with wheels, Um, the size of the wheels and the position of the wheels is the way people perceive it. And it's important in general, for products, when you work with a product, you start understanding how people perceive the size. If you have a photo camera, the old ones with the Zoom thing in the mirror and so on. Imagine if you have a very small box and a very big zoom, but it kind of has in mind the shape and size of a zoom lens. So the size of the box relative to that Zoom is going to give you the understanding whether you made something very compact or not. When it comes to vehicles, let's say I do this All right, what is this? What do you think this is going to be? Yeah, you already know, right? That's a tractor, correct? So now, let's say I do this there's something wrong with it. That's like a drag racing kind of thing. But even if I, you know, this is not a tractor. This is what is it called Professor Peabody. The wheels are the same size, the wheel base is different and this time it doesn't work, you intuitively know that there's something wrong with this sketch. It's not a proper tractor because the proportions are wrong. Careful with that. Try to keep track of proportions. About scale, it's the same thing. If I was showing you the perspective. If I make a a very large item, I will probably exaggerate the perspective effect. So if I would sketch a big house, right, then I'm going to do something like it's a castle, right? So if it's a castle, then suddenly I have very dramatic perspective and some tower in the back. So because I have made that dramatic perspective, now you understand it's a large building. If I make very small windows, I confirm it's a very large building. The proportions of the sketch and the distortion of perspective indicate it's a large thing. If I would Let's say I would do something like that. Yeah, it's still a large building, but I sketched it smaller even. But because the perspective is much more much less dramatic, suddenly, you don't have that feeling that it's tall, it's long. It's maybe a large surface area, but you don't have the feeling that this is a super tall wall. Maybe that's a prison. There's no window down there. The way you do your sketch is going to influence that. So some products, if you design a tram, there's not much sense sketching it from above because nobody sees a tram from above unless you're standing on a bridge. But if you're sketching a track, a tram, an airplane, just sketch it from angles that people understand. If you sketch a coffee machine, right, let's do a coffee machine. Why would I sketch a coffee machine somehow from below, I make this up, right? This is not an existing brand. Let's pretend that I'm I'm sketching now a potential coffee machine design. Why would I sketch it from below. How often do you see your coffee machine as if you were an ant on the kitchen top? Like, you just don't. So proportions scale, they are understood not by the size of your drawing. They are understood by the angle of view that you choose and by the the level of distortion in your perspective. And then if it's an object that people are used to, I mean, now, if I sketch something like this, you assume that a coffee cup would be around that size. Immediately because there is a coffee cup, you understand the size of the machine. I sometimes when I do three D models and CAD models, and I put next to the object the cat model of soda can because that's the 33 centiliter can of coke is basically a universal thing that everybody knows. So it helps immediately people who see the rendering understand, it's just a bit bigger than it can or it's smaller than it can. You can put a hand. The best is a human. We all have an understanding of the size of a hand. So if you sketch something that people are using by hand and you sketch the hand next to it, you are not only describing how they use the object, you also indicate the size of the object, just by having the size of a human hand nearby, right? So that's what I wanted to say about scale and proportions. It doesn't make sense to sketch a coffee machine as if it was a skyscraper. And yeah, like I was saying, even brands can be recognized. Maybe it's less so now. But back in the days, you know, this short front, going backwards, long rear, long hood. That had a chance to be a BMW while the same era in the 80s, an Audi would have a long front because the BMW has the engine here and the Audi has the engine here. At least it was like that. So it had a long front. Longer cabin, right? So proportions are going to define or express the identity of your product, and the way you sketch it is expressing if it's dynamic or not, if it's big or not. And yeah, experiment with that, try things. But you'll see that some things feel right and some things just feel not right. Have fun. 9. Composition: The last thing I want to talk about is the composition of your page. So until now, I've been just doodling, messing around, and, you know, things are all over the place, overlapping each other because I was sketching while talking, and it's not meant to be in an exhibition. If you are drawing a product and trying to design something and you're going to have to present that to management. Of course, it makes sense that every page you sketch is presentable so that you don't need to redo, it's not like you sketch ten things and then you're like, Oh, I like the number three and I'm going to re sketch it just for the sake of presenting. You don't have time for that. Ideally, let's say professional context, you try to sketch so that your page is a presentation page from the get go. How do we do that? If you make one view and just not much else and maybe some background, it's a bit poor. It usually works great to have to make a page look dynamic. You have I recommend to have three views of your item and to have a hero view. So you're going to have, let's say, we're going to make um, sometime somewhere like a bit more to the right in western world, we read from left to right. So time goes from left to right, and our eyes are drawn to this kind of zone here a bit on the right or like two thirds from the left to the right, two thirds and kind of two thirds from bottom up. So that would be your hero box. And then you could have two more views where maybe obviously different angle of perspective. That shows something else, let's see, maybe almost an alignment as if those things were communicating or corresponding. Once you have three views or three volumes, you are basically having a dynamic composition happening on your page. Now the problem I have is that I have a big empty space here. So I usually compensate. So one of the ways is that I choose my light source on the left. So suddenly my hero view has a big shadow that comes here, and that view also has a shadow that comes here. So I'm starting to fill in the space here. This one has a much flatter shadow, but it just kind of connects things and makes things more dynamic, right? I mean, immediately you have some visual mass happening which comes and closes in and then I'm going to have if it's in your work environment, it's going to have a name, project, and a date. Today's 08 oh five. I use this Swedish format I find it convenient and it's a habit. Now, I still have a problem with my composition a little bit. So I'm going to make annotations, right? And annotations are very good because you can, you know, make fancy stuff, like Alright. So now I have an arrow, and I have another arrow here, and it says front panel right? It's useless, but suddenly my composition is working. And I'm going to have something like top opening. And I'm going to do that, and I'm going to try to have something, um, the back panel. I'm obviously writing whatever. You see now that I have put this text with this dynamic handwriting and those big arrows and suddenly my page is holding together. When I'm going to do the one, two, three shading or use markers and things like this, I will constantly keep track of that and try to keep the balance of the page so that your color blocks, your levels of contrast and shadows and your centers of mass are not reaching the edge of the paper and feeling centered. But at the same time, because it's a composition of three items, it remains dynamic. Had just one or two or if I had four, it would be much more static. I will also play with perspectives to get something a bit more exciting, still keeping in mind the scale and proportions, right? So that's maybe a little bit next level, but it's a nice exercise. And I've had situations where my page wasn't filled, like when view was missing, and we already and then we get the information that the project is on hold that there's no point continuing. Well, I just finished the page because for me, the finishing the page is like finishing my thought and finishing the level of information that I want to archive so that if the project starts again, I'm somewhere and I don't just have a half a page with doodles and. Yeah. Once you master the rest, try to keep your composition in mind throughout the process so that you have nice pages. Once you have a punchy, powerful page, it has been used. Sketching is for thinking, right? So you sketch because it's your way to explore, it's your way to think about the shapes of the product that you're designing. It's your way to make decisions. But then that very same page is your way to present, to management, your way to convince, and get the things done. So no need to redo, just be confident, enjoy getting the flow with music, with speed, and all the tricks that I mentioned in other classes. Have fun. Love your sketching. 10. Summary: So let's summarize what we learned so far. The tools I presented just the basic tools. It's enough to do some quick sketching and present your ideas. I also then started to talk about perspective. Perspective is helping you to describe the relative distances between objects. It's helping you to define visually whether a thing is very long, very short, deep, et cetera. It's also we talked about perspective of cylinders and round objects. We saw that a circle becomes an ellipse when it's seen in perspective, and I explained how to define the orientation of that ellipse. Perspective starts defining the three D reality of an object. Then I talked about shading. We said that the color of an object is defined by three things, the base color of the material. As one, two, the lighting and shading reveals the lighting. Shading reveals where the light comes from, the shadows on the other side, and the number two is the surfaces that are in between. We have one, two, three, one, the highlights, three, the darkest parts, and two, the other surfaces that one, two, three indicates the direction of the light. The third element that reveals the color of an object are reflections. So if the surface is glossy, the reflections are complete, sharp, and detailed. If the surface is matt there's hardly any reflection. Same things for the light. You're going to have in the reflections the reflection of the light source or the sun. That's going to be the equivalent of your number one in shading, and then you're going to have, for example, reflection of the ground and into the ground is a road, it's dark and so on. So we talked about how to combine shading and reflections. That's very much a matter of practice and gut feeling. You need shading to reveal the light source orientation, and you need reflections or you use reflections to really show the flow of a surface, for example. Then we talked about contrast. I insisted that you shouldn't be shy on contrast, go for black, pick a black, the shadow on the ground and the strongest parts. You can really go for black, knowing that there are places that you live white, so full contrast. Proportions, that's already a bit more a matter of practice and observation. So look clearly observe the objects that you're sketching and try to fully understand their proportions and respect that if you completely messed up the proportions actually mess up the credibility of your sketch and the reading of the shape. So that definitely matters. And composition, that's really just let's say to be time efficient. When you're sketching, you're sketching for yourself first, for thinking, you're exploring and deciding what's right, what's wrong. But then if you can use that work sketch as a presentation item, then you just do how do this in English? You kill two birds with 1 stone, right? You make a shortcut. And so if you can take the habit to take care of your composition, use annotations and titles and background shadows and so on to balance your composition, but keep it dynamic. So three elements and one hero of you that keeps it dynamic. That's it for today. I think if you practice those tools and put them again and again and again on paper, don't be afraid. You've seen how I was sketching, I'm going fast. I'm not worrying too much. I'm going for it. The worst case scenario is that you waste one page of paper. It's not the end of the world. So practice, be confident, go for it, and have fun. Thank you. 11. 09 sketch Exercise: Alright, so for the exercise, I'd like you to sketch coffee cups. As we said, three views, one hero view. And so think about what we said perspective, different views. I mean, the three views are going to have different angles of perspective and some sharing and maybe some reflections and try to keep a nice composition on your page. Doesn't need to be three views of the same. You can have three designs. It can be an exploration page, three coffee cups. Let's go. Yeah, so looking back, there is a mistake. If the top looks like this, the bottom should have that is rounder and I made it flatter. So, if anything, this should be rounder. Let's try. Definitely rounder. And so perhaps this should also somehow wait, which then maybe there is something I miss less bad. And then this scrap has a problem. I wouldn't way too far here. Definitely should if this is the axis, I mean, that distance is? Interesting. So it's down here that. So it here. Something like this would have done a better job. Maybe we can just exaggerate the contrast and pretend it didn't happen. Let's see. I have a hobby to kind of frame the shedding areas. Is that kind of like a leftover from marker era. Hmm. I'm not sure I fixed it, but it's bad. Have fun. Take it easy. Nothing is perfect, but in half an hour, it's fine. You can produce 16 of those in the day at work. You're a designer. Huge.