Hi! I’m Chou-Tac,
You will receive your “Designer Starter Kit“ book
in 1 minute in your email box.
Tell us in the Comments Below:
1- Where do you come from? Your age?
2- Why do you want to learn to sketch?
3- How did you discover the blog? (Sorry I’m so curious!)
BONUS:
– Which problem are you facing today?
– What would you like to learn from the blog?
2- Why do you want to learn to sketch?
3- How did you discover the blog? (Sorry I’m so curious!)
BONUS:
– Which problem are you facing today?
– What would you like to learn from the blog?
Hello Chou-Tac.
My names Roger Santos, 34, I´m from Portugal and I´m an industrial designer. Thank you for taking your time to create this for us and sharing your knowledge with the community. My goal is to always become better in what I do and I do believe that with your insights and help I´ll perfect my sketching abilities. If you have time, feel free to look at my online portfolio site (www.behance.net/rogersantos), and let me know what you think.
Thank you and cheers!
Hello Roger,
You are definitely do awesome stuff ! 🙂 I hope you can find things helpful to you though. 🙂
Cheers,
Chou-Tac
Hi Chou-Tac,
My name is Shana and I’m 26. I study industrial design in Germany but right now I’m on an exchange semester in Australia. Hopefully I will get an internship in usa that I would probably start in April.
So something that really frustrates me and lets me feel I’m not a “good-enough-designer” is that I can’t sketch. And I know that if i wanna have a really good career this is a tool I have to be able to use. So many times I decided to start learning sketching but i never really commited to it. And as my big next step is coming closer, so the internship, I’ve decided to learn sketching and this time for real. I hope I can do it this time! What you do and how you communicate the tutorials via e-mail… this seems pretty cool…Thank you so much!!
ps.: I think I accidentally registered twice for the stater kit … I’m already on the list for the sketchbook course.
Cheers
Awesome Shana. Good news !
You already got something important: your compelling goal ! That’s what you need to keep in mind every morning you wake up :D. So you will take action accordingly and stick to your projects happily. 😀
Hi,
My name is Erin i’m from Melbourne Australia and im studying Induatrial Design. I’m very excited to learn from you I could use some more sketching skills.
Welcome Erin !
Hope you’ll learn a lot of things to apply at your school 🙂
Hi! Thanks for the guide, im sure it will be very helpful. Im from the Dominican Republic and Im in my freshmen year in Industrial Design at the Santo Domingo Institute of Technology(Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo, INTEC). I’ll make sure to tell al my friends so that they can improve as well.
Thank you very much Denys for sharing :).
Hey, if you are interested in the Spanish version of the book, let me know.
Hey Chou-Tac Chung!
I am Nidhi, a product design learner from Pune,India.
I feel my sketchings skills need improvement, and i am very excited to learn from you!
Hello Nidhi,
Glad you want to learn sketching. It’s a very cool journey !
HI
I’m 18-year-old in South Korea who wants to be a product designer.
I saw your drawing in YouTube.
Until now, i will enjoy your drawing from video in youtube everyday when i have a time.
Thanks
Hello Lily,
Happy to see your comment here 🙂
Have a nice day !
hey!!
I’m from India. I’m an engineer. I’m appearing for DAT for admission in design school.
Thanks.
Hello ! All the best Damini ! When is your admission test (sounds very early is it ?)
Hi,
My name is Loukina, I am a student in industrial design in Antwerp. I am currently doin an exchange in Wuppertal, Germany. I would like to improve my sketching and visual communication skills. 🙂
Welcome Loukina 🙂
You got a such cool name !
Hey, im Michael from Germany :-)….want to study industrial design and i am creating a portfolio map for the acceptance process at the Burg-university. Maybe you guys can give me some tips for this :-). Anyway great page and i am sure to learn a lot. Best regards Michi 🙂
Hello Michael,
Wish you tue best for your Design school. You may check this article, it’s about how to apply to a design school when we do not have any portfolio. https://www.thedesignsketchbook.com/q-i-want-to-apply-for-a-design-school-but-i-need-a-portfolio-how/
Hope it helps 🙂
Chou-Tac
Hola, me parece genial la iniciativa. Siempre he tenido esa pasión por el dibujo pero no encontraba una inicativa como esta. Podrías enviarme la versión española por favor.
Muy agradecido
Luis Felipe
Hola Luis,
Just send you the Spanish version in your email.
Hey Chou Tac !
I am very happy to have found your website via “design sketching” on facebook.
I started with graffiti; style writing in the first place. Through the years I changed my focus on canvases. I already did not decide what I want to focus on in my art, so you can say I try one hell of stuff since years because I really can not decide what I want to concentrate on as style or sujet. Maybe I left out the basics.
Props to you and your way of offering main things in sketching. Keep up the good work !
-Fry
Hello Fry,
I remember one of my friend who was also making graffiti was making great lines in Design sketching. He imported his Graffiti style into design. It was awesome. Everything are linked each other. So seams to be curious and that’s a great thing !
To help you decide, it’s not a matter of art, techniques or skills. Design is about making people life better, making better products, better experience. Your today skills doesn’t matter much. Focus on your goal, then find ways to get what you need.
Hope it helps.
Hi my name is Diego, I’m from colombia but I’m living in Argentina, i saw your instagram page and inmediatly i came here, I want to study Industrial Design and i think that the best way to show and communicate my ideas is sketching, when you learn to draw, you learn to see (A sentence from spencer nugent, another sketch blogger) thanks (:
Hello Diego,
I fully agree with Spencer. Our brain is not made to retain all the information. Putting down ideas on paper allow us to go deeper in our research and get so much more creative ! Best of it is that we can share our sketches to people. This is how we connect multiple brains on a project and make it even more awesome !
Sketching is definitely the best language on earth. 🙂
Hey tonight we (me and Sketchdrive) have just released a sample module of my upcoming Design sketching course. You can get there the 3 lessons of 6 videos. https://my.sketchdrive.com/sample-projects/share/d09655NirRqJBC89AlhfAQ
Hope you enjoy !
Hi Chou-Tac
i’ll be sitting for SC exams next week.
Can you help me out with basic skills for free hand sketching?
Thanks.
Hello Poushkal,
What is an SC exam ? School exam ?
1 week is pretty fast.
First, go through the Designer Starter Kit. As you have only few days, please send me an Email at choutac@thedesignsketchbook.com. I will send you the full book in one shot. Then feel free to look at the recent post, there are video tutorials that are related to the guides.
2nd, If you wanna be able to draw some volume in 3d pretty fast, may I recommend you these tutorials.
Draw 3D volumes using contour lines: https://www.thedesignsketchbook.com/tip-138-how-to-start-drawing-anything-better-in-4-steps-with-the-random-product-technique/
and
Make your product sketching more real: https://www.thedesignsketchbook.com/tip-141-one-simple-trick-to-make-your-sketches-more-real/
Of course they might not be enough for your exam, but they will help you get instant results.
Hi
Chou-Tac
I’m a perspective teacher, but don’t have enought exercices about stroke and stroke shadows, ¿Could you help me? Or recomend some exerxices to do in my class.
Thanks.
Hello Juan,
The way I would explain shadow to Design sketching student is using Hatching. Because we draw with ball point pen only. No pencil, no eraser. It’s clean, fast and efficient.
So you could start by showing small squares with the different values of grey from light to dark. You would play with different variation of hatching (depending of proximity, thickness, cross hatching).
From there, you could show to your students a simple application of the shadow on the different surface of a cube. Hope it helps 🙂
PS: 2 examples of hatching with cast shadow. https://www.thedesignsketchbook.com/?op_live_search_style=1&op_live_search_all_pages=Y&op_live_search_product=&op_live_search_category=&op_live_search_subcategory=&s=light
Thanks!!, it will be usefull for my class, thanks for share your knowledge.
My pleasure Juan 🙂
Hiii.
Chou-Tac
i am nikhil..i am preapring for fashion designing but my sketching&coloring is very dull..plzz help me and give tricks..
Hello Nikhil,
You need some tips for your fashion sketching?
For your sketching, try to give dynamic poses to your model, and give your model a 9 head height. As soon as you got a nice pose, don t hesitate to use underlay to draw multiple proposal of clothing. For the colours, if you are clumsy, you can try with pastel colors first. They are light so you dont take much risk. A good tool is watercolour, it s smooth, and even if you do some mistakes, it looks good. Hehe. You dont have to be perfect. Remember to mix your colour with A LOT of water. Then when your watercolour is dry, feel free to add a pop up colour that will give more contrast to your sketches and attract people eyes. Remember to leave a lot of blank.
Hope it helps 🙂
The two links in the email for “Guide 1” don’t reference any files and look like click-bait. Is there any other way to get the files?
Do you mind try again ?
If you still face that issue, please send me an email at choutac@thedesignsketchbook.com
We will find a solution.
Hello Chou-Tac !
My name’s Bastien, I’m 18 years old in approximately two hours and I’m a French student in the preparatory class in a Art/Drawing school. My dream is to become a Game Artist (video games is my main passion). And actually sketching is really complicated to me. I like really much adding details and I can’t even prevent me from making some haha. So I hope my level will improve (I need to learn as much as I can in one year if I wanna enter in my dream Game Art School :p)
Happy Birthday Bastien =)
Try to do not go into details too early. Draw starting from general shapes to details. If you take this habit from now, you will improve so much faster. No point to spend hours on details if your main shape is not ready yet or not correct. In this case you might struggle to make it look good and end disappointed.
If you start with a good main shape, and perspective setup, it will become more fun and easy for you to add the details.
Tip: you can train your details even on a simple cylinder or sphere. Do many experimentation instead of trying to make only “piece of art”
A bientot ! (je suis francais auss au fait)
Chou-Tac,
My name is Frank. I am a graduate from DigiPen Institute of Technology. We focused on a lot of traditional drawing, not only learning how to make a mark but also the right ways to do it. We also covered a lot of the digital realms. As I have no real issues with sketching and drawing, I am interested in in the design aspects of your guide. We learned how to design but for games and moves in a sense that we were all over the place and not specific.
Sometimes I have difficulties with the basics. This is where your guide seems to be where I would want. Will comment later on how the guide has helped me.
Thanks,
Frank
Hello Frank,
I believe this guide will be too basic for you though. But you may find out some tricks that will help you on your sketching routine. 🙂
Hello, Chou-Tac. My name is Brian. I am a veteran EE making the transition from electrical engineering to design under the guidance of a great mentor, an accomplished professional designer. I have done a few relatively simple projects in the last ten years, and have some 3D CAD modeling experience. Now I am going full-time. My greatest need at this time is improvement in sketching skills.
Hello Brian,
Hope the blog will help you during your learning journey.
It’s good to have a mentor, it helps fighting procrastination.
See yah !
Hi Chou-Tac. My name’s Cake, I’m a high-school student from Thailand. I really glad to find you . I’m learning product design but my sketching skill is not good enough .The things that i think in my mind but when i draw it in the paper it’s not beautiful as i think it should be. So, i want to improve my skill and want to know how to use Copic .I really need your advice .
Thank you 🙂
Welcome to the blog Chutikarn. 🙂 Take your time at decomposing the product you see in many simple shapes. That will help you visualise and draw them better.
Hi Chou-Tac. My name is Wouter, I’m 23 and I’m recently graduated as a Master in Computer Science. My main interest in Computer Science lies within Computer Graphics, the mathematical backend for 3D programs like Blender, Maya, 3DS Max. But, whole my life I’m also passionate about Computer Graphics Art, which makes me always come back and try these programs (Blender, Maya, …) to become better at CG art. These learning paths always end after 1-2 weeks when it becomes clear that one better first learns to draw, something I always give up after a couple of days. I find it really hard for myself to keep my motivation going, I hope this book gives me a good start to keep the momentum going.
Let me know how it goes Wouter 🙂
Hey ChouTac, what up? My name is Lavi, I’m a highschool student from Israel. I’m dreaming on learning and working as comic book artist, graphic designer, concept artist or anything else related to art. As for now, I’m learning at the art class at my school, trying to learn new things and develop my style. I’d say I’m feeling somewhat fine with drawing anatomy & organic things, but I’m still struggling with mech, bots, buildings etc… I have a good feeling that your blog&tutorials will be a great help for me
I would really appreciate I you’d have a snap look on my work at my Instagram page “Lavi.Art”
Thanks again and you’re amazing!
Welcome Lavi 🙂 Have a lot of fun !
Hello there! Thank you for making this,I appreciate the help I can get from this! 🙂
I am currently an 18-year old Advertising Arts student about to enter my 3rd year in college and am residing in this island in the Philippines called Cebu.
I was looking for something to learn and improve over this summer break so I found your site after deciding to work on my illustration skills having just barely made through a class where the instructor failed to teach us properly, ahah.
I look forward to challenging myself with skills that can help with my incoming classes and personal portfolio project! ╰(*´︶`*)╯ thank you!
Hello ChouTac. My name is ashutosh from India. I am a product design student. Even if people appreciate my sketching I feel that my sketching is bad and I love to improve it always. Thank you for the tutorials your uploading and the guide book. Looking forward to learn more from you.
I had a question to ask. Should I go on for electronic sketching pad? if yes, which one will you recommend?
Hello Ashutosh,
I don’t recommend Ipad for drawing (Even though some people do great stuff on it). The palm recognition is not that good so I keep having a conflict between the pen and my palm. :S I prefer to use the Samsung Pro note for an on-the-go usage. This type of tablet is just a bonus. You can’t install Illustrator and photoshop on them, 2 softwares that are needed as a Product designer. So you may consider a Wacom tablet instead. Feel free to see more about the materials here: https://www.thedesignsketchbook.com/category/industrial-design-sketching-tools/ See yah.
Hi~ Chou-Tac, My name is Jasmine Shiao, I’m from Taiwan and I’m currently studying in product design. I want to improve my sketch ability but always don’t know how to start. It’s always confuse me whether setting a topic for the sketch is needed or not.
Hello Jasmine,
I understand your feel. You may try this, the Random product. It should help you start drawing products without topics. It’s for training your 3D vision, memory of forms and hand skills.
https://www.thedesignsketchbook.com/tip-138-how-to-start-drawing-anything-better-in-4-steps-with-the-random-product-technique/
thank you 🙂
All the best Quinton. With the energy you have, I am sure you will achieve anything you want 🙂
Hi Chou-Tac, My name is Daniel, i’m from Spain and i’m studying Producto Development Engineering. I need to practise my products sketching technichs. I have a Wacom Intuous S and i want to learn to use it properly, and i’m attempting to do all the drawings with it. Do you think is a good idea? or should i always start drawing by hand? I don’t want to be buying markers and crayons all the time so i don’t know how to improve. P.D. I have just discover your website and it’s awesome, i’ll be following it since now.
Hello Daniel,
About the markers, if your school aims to teach you how to use them, I would make a try. At least get the series of shade of grey (I got a preference with the cool grey, more than the warm – that’s my own opinion) For the colours, you may choose one or two for a start (Maybe choose your favourite colour it will be like your signature colour :P) just for using them as a “popping colour”. It’s a good way to highlight certain part of your product/sketch in a second. Then if you see that you like it, you may buy more markers along the way.
About drawing on paper vs tablet:
At start you can combine both, they are complementary – But give a preference to paper. There is nothing better than drawing on paper to learn. All the good habits in sketching are taken in an analog way. Your movement will be more free as you can’t express certain line on your Intuos because of its format.
You can start digital early it’s fine. Make sure to do not be trapped into Photoshop and all the tricks to cover your sketching mistakes.
Sketching is first of all made to create ideas QUICK (Ideation phase). Then only sketching is made for communicating with seductive boards with beautiful rendering (Communication phase). If you just start Product design, you should give priority to the first phase drawing mostly on paper.
So spend time with a pen and paper with NO ERASER. Pen and paper are your best friends. If one day you got a client facing you in a coffee table chatting about a project, be ready to quick sketch ideas in front of him. Would be difficult to tell him to wait for you to plug your tablet and do some photoshop rendering on the spot… 😉
Plus you can bring a pen and a sketchbook anywhere you are and practice anytime. Museum, urban sketch, bus, waiting room… are great opportunities for you to improve your skills.
For the choice of pen, you just need a simple ball point pen at start – that you may use with a Papermate for line weight. That’s all 🙂
Hope it helps !
PS: I got a Spanish version of the book. Let me know if you are interested.
wow, thank you so much for the answer, you opened my eyes with the “wait, i have to plug in my tablet…” that’s so true. I’m getting a pen and a paper right now. Don’t worry about the spanish guide, i’ll practise my english 🙂
Have fun Daniel !
Hi Chou-Tac, My name is Siddhartha Nayak, I live in Bangalore, India, I am an mechanical engineer and interested in Product design and industrial design. Hope your guideline helps me to become product designer.
It’s great to follow your passion. All the best Siddhartha ! 🙂
Hi there! My name is Monique Barnes and I am from the United States. I am a student studying Industrial Design and I am a bundle of nerves because there are portfolio reviews in my major where they cut students and I hope to not be one of them!
All the best Monique ! I have written a couple article about portfolios. Feel free to have a look at this one. https://www.thedesignsketchbook.com/how-to-turn-your-portfolio-into-a-marketing-weapon/ Hope it helps. 🙂
Thank you:)
Hi, my name is Michaela. I´m from Germany and a jewelry designer. At the moment i started a new job within a design company and they are really addicted to drawings. So i have to improve myself a bit:)
Hello Michaela, congrats for your new job. I hope you can learn great stuff here and apply successfully for your projects :).
Thank you Chou-Tac 🙂
Hi, I´m interested in the book of the Designer Starter Kit – Spanish version. Please let me know how I can get it! Thank you. Ángela
Hello Angela, sure no problem.
Please send me an email at choutac@thedesignsketchbook.com