Looking For Feedback

Hi Sumistha,

For a 2nd year BA student I will say you are very good at sketching. The way to get good at this is to keep doing more of them, repeating and improving every time. Your colored pencil sketches are very good, keep working on the details. It is when the eye focuses and the sketch still looks realistic it becomes a very powerful sketch. Because the eye has a fairly small area of focus, adding only a few very sharp details, highlights, material indications, will make the sketch look more realistic. I can’t tell that there is metal in the sketch, if it is a black chrome or piano black high-gloss plastic. I have no experience drawing black chrome but because it will absorb less of the color relative to black paint I imagine that it will work to add a hint of a cold color in parts where it will reflect the sky (say a Pantone 7672) and a warm color like a light mars red or sand color for the ground reflections. The line drawings in your third post are very expressive, and because of the perspective the shapes are well readable. A lot of your other sketches appear quite flat. Keep posting!

Black metal finish but looks like I could communicate with rendering :neutral_face:

Thank you so much for detailed feedback. Everyday I’m trying to learn something new and trying my hands on material rendering.

Posting one more headphone drawing, please take a look at it and critic.

Thanks

Tried drawing Beats headphone

Did freehand underlay. Used ellipse guide for overlay


Nice, you got the chrome down to a T. I see no problems here.

Thanks. Posting a hand vacuum cleaner drawing, please take a look. The body is plastic

Hand Vacuum Cleaner. Plastic body.

Not bad. A few things to think about. Should the handle be larger in comparison to the body or perhaps the body slimmer? Is the dark area a compartment for debris? How might it come off? Can it be simplified? Vacuums are often around a lot of dust and dirt so every nook and cranny is a dirt trap.

Good progress. A few black areas on that chrome come out of nowhere, but it communicates. Try adding at least a little bit of a cold hue in the top reflections, and add a few sharp highlights with something like a gouache or, for a last resort use a correction pen.
https://www.google.nl/search?q=chrome+marker+drawing&client=opera&hs=h7I&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwic7qilvrDUAhXDJFAKHSrUCz0Q_AUICigB&biw=1536&bih=729

Next can be working in some color into the drop shadow and have that reflect in the chrome as well.
Keep working on getting your overall contrast right as well as getting your ellipses more accurate.

Thanks Yo,
I made the handle a little bigger and the reduced the vacuum hose size a little bit. Also added an opening slot to the debris compartment.

But Im still thinking how to simplify the drawing? Also I’m not very clear on your last statement about every nook and cranny is a dirt trap

Thanks

Hi Everyone,

I always thought about designing health shoes for women of my mom’s age (age group from 40s to 60s), so this summer break I have taken up this as my personal project. The goal is to come up with a few designs that most Indian women in that age group would love to wear with saree or salwar (both Indian attires) and for everyday walk.

Project Name: Walking Shoes for Indian women

Problem: The current health shoes that are available in the market are either athletic shoes or casual shoes. The athletic shoes while work great for walking, don’t look good at all with Indian attires (picture attached) and also could be difficult to wear for women of that age group as they have to bend down to tie the shoelace. On the other hand, casual health shoes while very easy to wear, don’t have enough support or have high heels which are not helpful for walking or lack in aesthetics.

Solution: In my design I have tried to combine the goodness of athletic shoes and the ease of casual sandals. Indian women in that age group still prefer to wear slip-on sandals, hence I have tried to keep that concept in my designs. I kept the designs simple so women can wear them quickly and comfortably. Eliminated lace because it may require them to bend down to tie their shoes. Also tried to incorporate some modern Indian prints so it will be attractive to women of that age group and can meet both their lifestyle requirements and their everyday walking needs.

Age Group: 40-65

Before I render these sketches and make paper and fabric prototypes, I would like to get some feedback on the designs. Would really appreciate your inputs on the concept, quality of work, and also things I could improve on.



The athletic shoes while work great for walking, don’t look good at all with Indian attires (picture attached) and also could be difficult to wear for women of that age group as they have to bend down to tie the shoelace.

Focusing on line weight today. Also trying to improve my cross hatching. For a change I came to library today to sketch.

Sumistha, these aren’t bad sketches. But go back to the advice you got on becoming looser.
Really think of a sketch as consisting of a few basic lines that define the object. See if you can get more character into those lines.
For example with a shoe you can emphasize certain parts like the quarter panel and define the toe box with some clear dynamic strokes.

@ralphzoontjens my second attempt at chrome surface. For some reason I feel the chrome surface is getting highlighted better in first drawing. Tried color dropped shadow as well but i don’t think I have succeeded. I will try chrome surface one more time.

Wrt the shoes, I understood what your saying. Now when I look at my drawings, I could see where I went wrong. Working on it, will be posting soon.

Im still working on my personal project and making all suggested changes. In the mean time did some quick sketches to keep this thread going.


Looks good, try making more contrast and pull out the highlights more

I think it would help if you were scanning or at the very least cleaning up these sketches in photoshop. I’m happy to invest time in giving feedback, but I expect you to invest time in making the work presentable.

Hey Sumi,

Glad to see you posting on here, I remember on my post Quinn H. said he always improved the most by sketching during the breaks and intersessions between semesters and I felt the same way!

You’re showing a lot of potential and improvement already in a short time! I think what’s going to take you to the next level (and get you some better feedback) is to aim for a bit more in quantity. I felt I got the most out of posting when I could share 10-30 pages worth of sketches at a time and get a full critique of that “session”.

It helps to keep the topics similar, like in school assignments so if you do 10-15 pages of computer mice then 10-15 pages of another topic, that we you can learn the products and we can see over many sketches what are the most apparent things you can improve on! I also recommend posting your drawing class assignments on here to get another set of eyes on them! I typically scanned everything Sunday and tried to post my accumulation every Monday (do what works best for you!).

I hope that helps, keep going!

Hi Sumistha,

You are sort of doing 2 things here - exploring designs through sketching and presentation rendering.
With your sketch explorations you were getting ahead and the bottle sketches are quite good, now focus on sketching more dynamically allowing you to create these efficiently while still communicating all the subtleties of the design.

With your presentation renderings I was trying to convey something very subtle - adding warm and cold tones in the product to give it more depth and realism.

I cannot find a great example at the moment but for example compare these two:


A quite good render, but a bit dull.

Note the subtle shading in the product surfaces reflecting colored areas in the environment. It adds much more life to the image.

These classic automotive tutorials are also great in showing what warm-cold contrast can do:

I think apart from the drop shadow your last headphone sketch was the best one.