I prefer to use pastel and copic marker to render my sketch. How about you guys? 
pastel is so 90s!!!
do you sketch to keep up with the trend or do you sketch to convey an idea?
Oooooo⌠Burn! Nice one cow.
Well, actually pastel is more 80âs and much before that. It was well dead in the 90âs.
I havenât used pastels in several years. Thatâs not to say that I wouldnât if the mood struck me. It really depends on the design direction of the projec that I was working on. Typically I use verithin pencils and prismacolor markers.
I have been looking into a Wacom tablet. Seemingly more and more I render in Photoshop and Illustrator if I am ever going to show anything to a client. I have found that with some clients, sketches (no matter how well executed) can sometimes turn a client off. I think that some people have a hard time visualizing the end product in a sketchâŚmaybe its just me. I am thinking that a Wacom tablet could help me save some time.
How many people use Wacom tablets? What are your thoughts?
I do each page of these sketches (11x17) in 30~45min max from line to color.
Who says pastel is dead?
Copic + Pastel = Killer!
Nice work cow! I love old school stuff.
after you get past the initial learning curve of getting used to the disconnect fron the pad to the screen (or you could opt for the tablet on screen solutions on a tablet pc/cintiq) depending how you work of course, it could definitely have a good impact on how you work. if you go with the wacom pad, there still will be a lot of things that will be easier to do in the traditional analog methods but imo the wacom pad is good tool to haveâŚ
sketching with a tablet is great, but the more I use one, the more (ironically) I find I enjoy sketching with a regular pen and paper. Theres a purity there you just canât replicate digitally.
Rendering digitally for me is a different story, and I donât think Iâll ever go back to pens or pastels. 
not a bad sketch cow, how much pastel did you use for that? looks like noneâŚ
I think pastel is just too messy and time consuming, scrape it off, get out the pads mix up baby powder, etc etc. Not to mention crappy contrast that makes your sketches seem washed out compared with photoshop or painter brushes.
example A
and cow btw i sketch to try to communicate ideas as clean and quick as possible, this is one of the reasons i find pastels outdated.
Hahahahaha!!! where did you get that car from? That was my freshman sketch!!!
Where did I use pastel? See, you canât even tell! Thatâs how good it gets!:lol:
Of course I donât do full blown pastel renderings now. I use them where I feel they are the most effective. Eg. Arrows to show action or movement.
In the vac sketch, I used it to blend the green markers to give a smoother texture. Iâm not the cleanest person so are my sketches. They are afterall, sketches, not rendering which I do on photoshop.
Hey, 30~45 min for each page of those, how can you beat that?
How about more freshman sketches? Man you actually made me dig up some old stuffs.
Whether itâs new tool or old tool, they are useful tools. Itâs up to you to find new uses for old tools, then they become timeless. I use manual pencil sharpener. How old is that? But I always ask, what happens when the power/battery is out? I will be the only one in the studio who can keep on cranking.
ahh well⌠each to their own i suppose⌠I guess you just have think about who is going to see the sketch, if its going to a client then i will probably do it digitally, but if it is development i find marker is enough for me and other designers to get a clear understanding of the form.
Btw: How can you beat that? easy, not stuffing around mixing and applying pastels, therefore only spending 20-30 a page.
If engineers are going to see the sketch, simple line work wonât do it. They discriminate us like how we discriminate them. If you give them arty farty sketches, they will just dismiss it as âdesignersââ dreams. If you add markers with material implications and fancy arrows to show the mechanism or interaction, they may have less to complain about. For me, I never assume that anyone is going to get whatâs in my head, so I try my best to put it down on paper.
Seriously, I can do these a lot quicker with more detail then to scan them and do all the path works. Afterall, these(products) are just concept proposals, nothing final.
BTW I would love to learn from your 20min sketches.
Would you be so kind as to demo one of those sketches? I would love to be able to produce work like that.
i find a wacom table is health to oneâs neck.beacause when you draw with a
pen ,you have to look down upon the paper,but if this keeps long you would suffer from the long work.Hower,when you use a wacom table,you decus the screen.Thatâs why i think a wacom table is good. 
Not if you have an angled drawing table.
molested_cow,
The first image that you posted of the Bean Vac in this thread, that top right rendering was completed using 3D modeling right? Iâm just curious, because you said Copic + Pastel in your post.
Splendid work either way!