This is really
about how drawing works for designers. There are herds of drawing classes for
the rest of humanity who are sadly not designers, where centuries of graphic
tradition are heaped on people with no other point than to draw nice drawings.
But we designers draw the way elephants use their trunks – it’s how we interact
with the world, and how we communicate (so please picture an elephant
trumpeting with his or her trunk when you are drawing).
What makes a drawing a designer’s drawing? The
point is not a display of skill or even to make a beautiful drawing (though
both things are useful, in the background), but communicating. Design drawings
are often covered in notes, the words and images combining to tell as much as
possible - a costume sketch will note the silk trim and the distressed leather
boots and in which act this character wears this, while set sketches note the
glossy paint finish and where the wall moves between acts I and II, and so on.
It
is also about communicating with ourselves - we can argue that we don’t know
how we see something until we draw it.
The
world is filled to bursting with surprising things, and it’s brilliant to keep
a sketchbook to try to pin down fleeting appearances, and try to work out what
the hell is happening here. Some of the notes and sketches could later be
extremely useful, as you use a scribbled space or person as the inspiration for
a design, but many will be just for interest, to keep your eyes open and your
drawing muscles limber.
Here
are examples of pages from my own sketchbook, including recent times in
airports. I’m looking at people and trying to figure out what’s going on –
recording appearance but also asking what their relationships are, what’s
propelling them.
Edward
Hopper’s sketchbooks are filled with drawings that are so clearly for him,
showing as much as he can with the pencil – form and shade – and using notes to
record color and texture impressions, and reminders of the quality of light,
the feeling of the shadows, etc.
James
Jean is a contemporary illustrator many of you may know of, who draws with an
enviable freedom. Many of his sketchbooks are sold in reproduction, and many
are online, like here.
I
still have my own sketchbooks from my time at NYU, 20 years ago. They’re there
on a shelf with a couple dozen sketchbooks, filled with big and small ideas,
all of it completely mine. By opening yourself to the strangeness and interest
and boredom of the world, you can get a sense of who you are as an artist.
Your Mission
Grab your
sketchbook, head to the coffee shop, and draw the people and the space. Or a
bar or a park or a waiting room or wherever – if you are traveling, airports
are perfect spaces to record humanity. Note details. Wildly speculate about whom
these people are, what is happening in this space.
What are people
doing or wearing that shows that it’s 2012? What signals are people putting out
to the world? What signals are intentional, which are unintentional? You are
doing research for the big picture.
