Wonder what to draw? Look in your house! | TIP 149 | VIDEO

September 22, 2015

We often wonder what to draw.

Today, I share with you a simple solution to get started – and create that “spark of inspiration” to know what to draw. So you will fill that blank page of plenty of your drawings!

Draw your house!

If you are looking for drawing cool ideas, pick up anything you like in your house, and draw it. You can turn it around, analyze it, and draw from any angle.

Be driven by your enthusiasm and you will make cool drawings!

Drawing my Sony Camera

Then you can decide to look at your reference product and:

Draw it
Doodle it
Modify it
Or mix it with another object to create something new!

TUTORIAL NOTE: I am thinking to do that experiment one time in a while choosing something I have around me and make a sketching demo with it.

I could share with you the process I use depending on the object. Some of you told me that the drawing demos and drawing lessons you find are mostly in time-lapse videos without narration.

If I can, I will try to add some narration, otherwise, I will add at least some additional written comment on the video to illustrate my thoughts.

Today, I start sketching with the [DRAW my HOUSE] challenge, my EPSON printer that is also a scanner.

Use the Sketching technique: “Ugly doodle”

Drawing with Ugly doodles about starting with a sketch purposely inaccurately.

The first sketch is a draft (and you can draw as many drafts as needed).

The initial sketches aim to feed my brain of precious pieces of information.
I try to memorize:

The main elements
The main functions
The quick proportions

3 steps to draw the coffee machine

Too many beginners try to draw the perfect sketch in one shot.
They fail and think they don’t have the skills.

However, designers draw many draft sketches first.
They iterate to, later on, create a good and quality sketch.

“Starting to draw with Ugly doodles is the key to draw amazing drawings.”

They help you to better prepare your mind before trying to make a nice sketch. When you adopt this step in your creative process, you never feel weak again.

You accept doing mistakes to improve and suddenly get fast results. Just because you learn how to persevere positively.

You gain confidence and fun as a design sketching beginner.

“These few minutes of draft drawings will save you from many failed attempts and frustration looking for immediate perfection.”

Feel free to send me some of your sketches from the “Draw my house” experiment. I could publish some of yours and share some sketching points.

If you guys are started Design sketching, feel free to sign up for the blog. You will receive 4 guides for beginners, that will help you start sketching.

Draw My House!

I choose to draw the printer that is next to me on my desk. It is basically a bloc that we will “sculpt” around.

Draw my house-the design sketchbook Industrial design sketching a

The game is about choosing anything that you like in your house.

Take your time looking around you the object that interest you. If you are a beginner, start simple. Look for more cubic forms for an easy drawing. They are easier great to starting learning drawing with a basic perspective.

Draw my house-the design sketchbook Industrial design sketching b

When you start drawing, don’t look for making one perfect sketch.

You need to warm up with an ugly doodle. It is basically the first draft of your object. Your brain will get familiar with it, memorize the main elements, and have the first feel of proportion.

Draw my house-the design sketchbook Industrial design sketching c

Sketch slightly bigger sketches with the general shapes.

Ignore the small details at the moment.

Draw my house-the design sketchbook Industrial design sketching d

You want to get familiar with the forms, functions of the printer.

Understand how your product work helps.

Draw my house-the design sketchbook Industrial design sketching e

I like to draw with what we call a mouse view.

The viewpoint is purposely very low to give an appealing effect to your sketch. As you can see on the right, I started to draw the first main forms very light.

Draw my house-the design sketchbook Industrial design sketching

We started from general forms, to go to details and refinement.

The drawing process to draw in the order I recommend is

1. Body shape
2. Main functions (Cover, Paper holder, Control panel…)
3. Details (buttons, light, grooves)
4. Paper (Accessories, props to give life to your printer)
5. Refinement

Draw my house-the design sketchbook Industrial design sketching f

The final touch is to add an arrow to show the movement of paper coming out of the printer.

I definitely recommend you guys to try the Ugly Doodle from start.
You can see more on this topic where I used this creative technique on my Coffee machine.

That’s it for today!
Feel free to see more articles and drawing tutorials on the blog.

Cheers,
Chou-Tac

If you want to make your first steps in drawing, I invite you to download the Designer Starter Kit to start learning with the basics of perspective step-by-step.

The Designer Starter Kit exercises in 6 videos:

Once again, these videos are linked to the Designer Starter Kit.

To enjoy the series of tutorials better, I recommend you guys to download it first.