sketch feedback please




Hello, my name is Nhu. I’m an Industrial Design student and new to core77.
I started learning digital product drawing 2 months ago. Here are some final product sketches for an assignment. It would be awesome to get some feedback from the community so that I know what to work on. Thanks a lot!

Hi, I’m no expert but since you haven’t had any replies I thought I might try and help.

You seem to have a good understanding of shadow and perspective. My advice would be to start experimenting with lineweight to help add some dynamic to the sketch as its your job as a designer not to create a life like image but to communicate the form whilst also adding some character and personality to help sell the idea. Furthermore try to abbreviate the form with the colours and shading rather than colouring in the whole sketch. Lastly i would recommend practicing on analogue techniques more than digital.

definitely not in the expert class either, but all of these could stand to be much cleaner/sharper/tighter…250gb’s suggestion of focusing on creating good linework might help in that regard, also being that these look like they are hardgoods paying attention to placing more defined highlights & shadows to better indicate both materials & surfaces would also help to these looking cleaner/sharper/tighter

These show you have a good basic understanding. One piece of advice I thunk you could benefit from is sketch first, render second.

The things you should be exploring, defining, and communicating in the sketch are the core idea, proportion, function, aesthetic concept, rough concept of manufacturing approach.

Once you have those things sorted you can begin to render color, material, finishes in a persuasive way.

It becomes difficult to evaluate these sketches because the core idea is not evident yet. What do these product do? What scale are they? The answers to these key questions should be evident in the drawing.

For example, I might guess that the first sketch is a handheld vacuum? Is that the best view to show the design? Is the handgrip proportionate to the body? Should there be a larger disc collection chamber and motor housing?

I’d love to see the answers to these questions in some follow up sketches.

Agree with the above, don’t make your lines vanish, use them to focus your eye on the most important piece of the design.

But your overall use of color and shading is good, adding context like yo suggested (a hand, or background that provides scale) will go a long way.

Hi,

I love these, and you seem to have a painterly approach to rendering and form development which I like a lot.
Try to combine that approach with the harder approach of defining forms through crisp linework more.
All in all these sketches are quite good, I do wonder how much time you spend on these but they convey the shape well.
Be more adamant about perspective and how the form reads - see how the last one seems to lean to the left?
That is a matter of practice.

Hey Nhu, you’re at a good spot if you’ve only been learning this skill for two months. I agree with what everyone’s said so far.

Your renderings looked tight from this thumbnail size until I checked out the full preview. They could be more refined. Clean up the edges with a harder brush. Be more clear about the color breaks. Why are they transitioning into each other, past their parting lines?

Also, be careful about going too far into the photorealism style. I caution this because I think some students get too caught up in delivering the technique, when the priority is communication. Yes, your images look great. But I have to guess what products I’m looking at. Or maybe they’re new archetypes of existing categories? (Here is where context matters!)

Hope to see another post from you, would love to watch your progress here.

Hello, thank you so much for the feedback which has raised so many questions I had not thought about when I was working on these.

To be honest I did not have in mind what these products were when I drew them. The exercise brief was simply to draw 10 objects, and I was running short of time to elaborate the core ideas. So I acknowledge that visual communication is not very effective.

Sorry I don’t have follow-up sketches, but I will keep in mind these points to improve my future work.

Hello, every word you say here rings true hahaha. I’ve realised now that I was caught up in making the object look realistic while not communicating the design very effectively. Thank you.