a little about myself first, i recently joined this forum hoping to learn more and basically expose myself bit by bit to the design community. I’ve been sketching for about a month and a half, with about 4 months of hardcore traditional art training. I am applying to art schools right now and want to undergrad in I.D.
I do not plan to go into detail about where i want attend school and what not until my apps are in and I have a better feeling about my future. So far its been a stressful experience, but going from nothing to something in the past 6 months, i have definitely seen improvement. I do, however, plan to keep practicing sketching no matter whether i get in or get rejected from the schools i’d like to go to.
For my portfolio, a good chunk of it needs to be sketching, ideation, and a lot of stuff i have never learned so i’ve been mainly teaching myself how to sketch through websites, vids, and books. The classical training i had for 4 months was mostly charcoal work and i admit it taught me a lot of fundamentals that help with my sketching. however, for some reason, the level that i reached in charcoal work is much much higher than anything i’ve produced in sketches and thus, i’ve decided 3 sketches a day AT THE LEAST will help me stay focused and practice.
having a forum to be critiqued by people, from pros to amateurs, is a good way to keep myself on track and honest. I don’t plan to defend my skill level or make excuses, so please be as harsh or kind as you wish, and i’ll just post post post sketches. Also, i will not be censoring my work. I have a long ways to go and will be simply sketching with no serious focus because i need practice in all aspects.
And yes, sketchroll was the inspiration(i feel like this is too strong a word) for this thread
Glad to be an inspiration, keep it up! 3 Sketches a day is definitely more manageable and actually doable. I failed this week in doing 100, but despite not reaching my goal amount, I’m really happy with how much I improved in just 1 week.
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Try choosing a theme either every 3 pages or every week like me. It helps you to focus on one subject and really gets you to look at it in all angles.
got it, thanks for the advice, and will do! I just figured i would give myself a goal that I should be able to achieve no matter what work gets thrown my way from school, college apps and what not.
and goodluck to you! you are definitely more skilled than i am and your work is very intriguing. glad to know you also are seeing improvement
Great to see more of these. Practice really does make perfect (or near perfect). There is no substitute for just hands on doing when it comes to learning how to sketch. Visual language, like any language, must be spoken daily to gain fluency.
thanks for the input guys. unfortunately, i have let myself down today. I spent most of it thinking of my last project for my college apps, and also spent a bit of time starting it. I was a bit burnt out by the time I wanted to start my 3 sketches but no excuses. i need to manage my time better, spread work apart, so i don’t cram the last minute and force myself into a corner. I will do better tomorrow
i guess this will be a journal for me…i’ve always wanted to keep one about my hobbies. maybe this is a bit obsessive and odd for you guys but i’m going to do it for my sake. And besides, i should be posting on here either way cause i am supposed to be doing 3 sketches/day
bleh another day of working on my project and losing steam and not really wanting to do my sketches. i already know my work ethic is lacking and will have to be up-ed 100% if i plan to make it in art school. anyway, less talking more sketching
today’s work, i googled coffee makers and sketched with the quickness(for better or for worse, not really sure). tomorrow i will draw one machine at time until i get the shape and process down better
If you are looking at sketching as a chore you will only get yourself further in a funk.
My advice would be for you to go back to basics. You need to get your basic form down. Do some exercises of drawing pages full if lines, circles, boxes, cones, cylinders, etc… I can tell by looking at your sketches that you are getting stiff and frustrated. By going back to your basics you will start to loosen yourself up and nail down the ground work for your sketches.
Have fun with it!!
J
Edit: Keep at it. The more you do it, the better you will perform!!
Sketch first thing in the morning, not later in the evening. 3 pages should take you 30 minutes. 10 minutes a page. You can spare 30 minutes before you start on your project, just skip facebook No more excuses! Do you want to get better or not?
on the exercises Justin recommends, I’ve never been a fan. They work for some people, but I never took a liking to them personally. However, if you feel they work for you, than definitely do them. Sketching from reality is good, it looks like that is what you are doing, but design sketching is about sketching from the mind. It is not about what something looks like, but what it COULD look like. If you are going to sketch real things as practice, I recommend looking at something and then putting it away and sketching how your mind envisions it… but what I really recommend doing is looking at something briefly to understand how it works and how it is made and then sketching 5-10 variations of it, how you might have designed it differently given the same parameters and manufacturing techniques.
thanks for the advice guys. again today, i kept workin on my portfolio project, then in the past hour decided to do a sketch. well the sketch is quite terrible but is a reflection of my skill level and lack thereof. these pages tend to take me 30 min to an hour so i should start them much earlier in the day, and not do them at night. i wish i had the skill to do them in 10 minutes.
i hate the exercises that Justin recommended cause they remind me of the very beginning of my charcoal training and now reminds me that i have a very very long way to go. However, tomorrow i will do what he suggested just to loosen up and practice. As for what you said Michael, I will try one of them tomorrow. Despite needing to create things from my head for my portfolio, i do not think i am at the skill level to really create out of my head. i just don’t have the mechanics down as well as basically everything else including perspective and form. thus i will first work on objects from real life.
i just realized something when i was looking over my ideation sketches of the products that i have created for my portfolio and it has to do with what you pointed out Michael. My sketches of products that i have imagined or created in my head that i have put on paper are so much more confident drawings than the ones that i have recently sketched out and posted here. i was curious if maybe looking at flat 2D images on google pictures is screwing me up because i don’t know the dimensions and thus have a harder time with it.
nonetheless, i need to still work on all aspects of my sketching, but tomorrow i will really see what i can do with an object i have in front of me
just did a quick sketch of the top of a dust-off bottle with ideas. if i have time today i’ll do another page with more ideas on it. i talked to the college that i want to go to today and they gave me positive feedback and told me i was pretty close to finishing my folio. thus, i will mostly working on finishing it these next few days and will try to include a sketch of other things here or there. we’ll see, i just want to get my apps done asap
EDIT: don’t know if it is the site but i can’t seem to upload right now…will try again later
Good! Keep going! Work the line weights and also work on your hand writing. Also, please capitalize your “I’s” in your future posts, this is a professional forum, if you want feedback from professionals, you will have to post like one.
Alright, got it. By the way, about handwriting, do they actually teach you in art school how to write? Because I always thought it was simply a matter of the artist or designer expressing him or herself and thus the writing, whatever it looked like, was a part of the expression of ideas on the page. So I can understand neatness and whatnot but do they actually try to change you’re handwriting? I can’t imagine them making everyone’s handwriting the same so what guidelines or rules do schools teach?
No they dont teach you how to write. But you do get influenced by your peers and instructors. As much as you are practicing your sketching, I would highly recommend you practice maybe even double the amount on your handwriting. As yo said, Less talking more sketching!
Sketchroll. Handwriting is about communication, not expression, but if it was about expression yours would express that you have crap handwrighting, so either way, work on your handwrighting!
The “architect” style is preffered, but even so, no two people have the same style of it.
Same with sketching itself. You don’t see many designers sketching in a fine arts figure drawing style. They all have a personal variation of a similar “designer sketch style”. You are part of a larger community, a practice that has accepted norms and variations on those norms. While that might seem confining, remember not to confuse the medium for the message! The sketch style is irrelevant, as long as it is clear, and good. The purpose of the sketch is to express an idea that leads to a product. It is a moment in time on a journey, not the destination.
No more excuses! Do you want to get better or not?
