I completed Han's training "Sketching for Prototyping". This was a super interesting training for me, as my sketching and drawing is something I am really eager to practice and do more of. I have never been a strong confident drawer, but that is ok because I know that I just need to practice more! Han's training, however, really helped me to develop my sketching skills and teach me about the efficiency of sketching. Prior to the training, I would avoid sketching at all costs, I would always try and find images of other things I liked and piece them together like a collage to display my crazy idea, or I would trace things over the top of things until I had the idea down on paper that I was thinking. The sketching training, however, showed me that within a very short space of time, you can develop so many different ideas from just a simple item. At first, the water bottle really intrigued me and made me more dedicated to wanting to really try sketching more, because of its simplicity, although with its simplicity and Han's guidance I managed to suddenly have 16 different water bottles, that all looked different and had different attributes. This is the image of my very rapid sketching
We then also did rapid prototype sketching for a lamp, which showed me that from a simple lamp image how quickly you can come up with ideas that make the design of the lamp so different and unique. It left me thinking if I did these rapid prototype sketches enough I am sure to come along some fantastic design one day!
I took away a lot of tips and learnings from this training but these are a few that really stuck with me...
- No Erasers
- No drawing hairy lines - something I was guilty of before because I thought somehow my drawing might come out looking better but actually never did! From now on I have been practising really focusing on drawing precise lines.
- Use annotations to supplement the drawing - this is something that I really learnt and loved about the training, it told me that even though my drawings may not be the best, getting a rough image down and then writing a great annotation of my thought process next to it, is also a great way of rapid prototyping. This was a huge tip I used in my assignment 2, with lots of annotations to supplement the sketching skills I am still working on.
I like that Han's touched on making mistakes and how making mistakes informs your next sketch, and making more mistakes leads to a faster process. As I make lots of mistakes with my sketching I definitely found carrying out the training challenge of the chair that it helped me when I went onto the next design for the chair make it even better and it was clear towards the end, that the mistakes I had made at the beginning had greatly helped me design and have stronger ideas towards the end.
To complete the training, I had to complete the #sketchingchallenge where I copied this idea of rapid prototyping we had practised in training so I got my timer workout timer out, set 1 min for each sketch and began. The chair I had to base my designs off was this...
This really challenged my 3D Drawing but I enjoyed putting the things I had learnt into play... and know now that sketching is a huge area that I need to work on! I am going to get myself a little notebook just so if an idea strikes I can practise drawing my own design rather than looking for something similar...
