Hughes Interior Design Drawing

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-84797-667-3
Verlag: Crowood
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten

Interior design is a multidiscipline profession blending spatial, technical and aesthetic knowledge. The skill involved in manipulating these elements to solve specific design problems is intrinsically linked to drawing. Interior Design Drawing explores all aspects of this vital design skill, from sketching to record information, through orthographics and development to analyse the problem, to presentation drawing to communicate the solution.Explore the role of drawing in the design process; understand the main orthographic drawings; use line, tone and colour across 2D and 3D drawings; add texture and atmosphere to drawings; consider aspects of composition and presentation of a set of drawings; an overview of how drawing relates to the process of interior design. This guide covers sketching to record information, elevation and projection, and making final presentation drawings to communicate solutions to clients.Fully illustrated with over 100 colour illustrations.Alan Hughes has an MA in Interior Architecture and has taught at undergraduate and post-graduate levels for many institutions.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hughes, Alan

Leseproben

CHAPTER 2 SKETCHING

Having established that designers need to draw for a number of reasons, there are several approaches that might be taken to acquiring the necessary skills. Although sketching might seem daunting it is often the best place to start when getting used to the drawing process. When sketching, the student immediately has to consider the 3D aspects of what they are drawing and as an interior designer creates in three dimensions, this is a logical place to start.

Why We Need to Sketch

Sketching allows the designer to understand an object or visual situation, and the by-product of this is that we learn to look at things in a different way. Most of us just glance at what we encounter, relying on our efficient brains to fill in the detail of the everyday things and places with which we might come into contact. When sketching you need to look closely, to understand how things are put together and how light and shadow allow you to understand the 3D quality of what you are observing. In practising your sketching you are developing a trained eye. You are interested in the specifics, not just the general impression of what you see.

Seeking and Looking

Once you feel you have the fundamentals, which should be by the end of this chapter, take a small sketchbook and a favourite pencil and take a walk through the area in which you live or work. Try recording the materials you see on the buildings that you pass. Start to look at the combinations of regular building materials, in terms of their function and how they look. Note down anything that takes your eye and try to sketch it. Try looking (as discretely as possible!) at the glass in the windows, for example: how much can you see in and how much is reflection, and what changes this balance?

Stonework on a building is often texturally different depending on where on the façade it is used – look for rusticated masonry (textured stone) at corners and around windows and doors. Examine and record the pattern and the tonal mix in the stone. Look at wood and metal and where they are used in a similar situation. Take a window frame, for example, and examine the thickness of the wood as compared to the metal. Look at steps and stairs and examine the depth of riser in both situations. In public spaces you will find stairs wider than in domestic equivalents, practise sketching these in proportion and recording the frequency of balustrades and handrails. How do these fit in to the stair itself?

Stop and have a cup of coffee in a street-side café. How close are the tables, do the chairs seem comfortable and how long do you feel you can stay? Look at the height of awnings and signage and observe the retail space in terms of layout and atmosphere. Check how one store uses a material against how another uses it; what is the feel and the result of the difference? Most importantly, check what is at your eye level at all times. See what designers have planned for you to see when standing, sitting or moving along the street. Invariably there will be many distractions but by observing and recording these things you will be starting to unravel the designed world and increasing your skill at drawing it.

BE BOLD WITH YOUR SUBJECT MATTER

Although you might think of sketching and drawing as something you need to do to facilitate your design skill, there is no need to concentrate on typical ‘design’ subjects. Sketching and drawing can be an exciting and even joyful process; try anything and everything as regards technique and subject matter. Life drawing is one of the most exciting and rewarding areas of drawing and provides a good opportunity to record a complete range of form, colour and texture on a human body alongside getting to grips with human proportion. So consider joining a drawing class via your local school, college or educational authority – your observational skills will develop, regardless of subject, and you will enjoy the interaction with other students.

It is important to remember at this stage that you are drawing for yourself. You need to find your drawings useful as a record of what you have observed. There is a chance that these sketches will be viewed by others but they are not for exhibition in a gallery, they are not fine art. Sketches are a personal record and need to be treated as such. It may help to think of sketching as visual note-taking and of the sketchbook as an extension of the diary. Do not be reverential about your sketchbook; it is a working document. Like a diary it should be carried at all times for use and reference for ongoing drawings and observations. (Or, as Oscar Wilde suggests in The Importance of Being Ernest, when in need of something sensational to read on the train!) By making sketching an everyday activity drawing will become familiar and will therefore in time become a less onerous task, speeding up your progress in both skill and method.

Understanding What Can Be Seen

So, how do we look in order to sketch and understand what we are seeing? At this stage in our evolution, perhaps more than at any other, our vision-based skills are considered paramount. We are bombarded with the visual image. The sheer number of visual stimuli to which we are subjected is sometimes quite literally blinding. Take advertisements, for example. Through exposure to advertising, such as a static billboard, magazine page or a moving image, we are encouraged to recognize a message through a kind of visual shorthand. We complete the picture, in a sense, without really looking. This is immediate and natural to us, so it is not necessarily in our nature to slow down and carefully take in visual information in any depth. Suddenly concentrating on one object for what might be considered a long time is a new process. This more extended consideration of the object involves the mind in a more analytical way; you have to think whilst you look, and this is the preparation for drawing.

For designers the drawing process is multilayered, particularly when a design solution is being considered. The marriage of mind, eye and hand creates an exceptionally efficient combination that will facilitate the production of the imagined solution. Exercising the skill of each in its turn stimulates the imaginative process, adding to and deepening the design vocabulary. The intellect identifies what we see and recognize and the memory stores the data collected. From the day we are born we store: what we see, what we know and who we are – our cultural selves. As a design idea takes shape it will be influenced by all the information through which it is filtered. The act of drawing and the use of our sketches contribute to the whole process. If we understand what we see more fully, this knowledge will bear fruit as we use it in the exploration of design ideas.

OUR FIELD OF VISION

3. The cone of vision: the average range of what people can see.

Most animals have a certain field of vision, and human beings are no exception. In the case of man this field is referred to as the ‘cone of vision’, which extends above and below eye level. It has a central zone, in which objects are in focus and range so as to be seen clearly. The distance we can see depends on the condition of our eyes but the cone delineates the range of sight across, on average, 60 degrees (30 degrees above the central line of vision and 30 degrees below). Peripheral fields can extend this to a 90-degree angle and further, to perhaps a maximum of 180 degrees horizontally and 140 degrees vertically. So our eyes take in a view across a space in a shape akin to a beam thrown by a powerful wide angle flashlight, a cone ending in a circle, although the angles suggest it might be closer to an ellipse.

Tools for the Job

So what do we use for sketching? Listed below are the principal items you need to begin the process.

A ring-bound, hard-cover sketch pad (A4 or larger, cartridge paper)

Choose a sketchbook with paper of a reasonable weight, something around 130gsm, a good cartridge paper with a fairly smooth feel would be ideal. Many are marked suitable for both pencil and pen but enquire in your local art shop if you are not sure. Try to get one with a hard cover as this will support the paper; a ring binding means you can use the book more comfortably. An elastic band big enough to hold the page down is also good idea.

Graphite pencils (2B, 3B, 4B and 6B)

Graphite pencils for sketching should be soft-leaded, graded 2B to 6B for example. ‘H’ leads are hard and ‘B’ leads are soft. The number in each case indicates the degree of hardness or softness, with ‘HB’ as a middle point between the two types:

You need to try out your graphite pencils to understand the quality of line and tone they will give you, how often they need to be sharpened and how much they smudge. Softer leads give thicker, blacker lines and tone, even when applied with little pressure, whereas hard leads give precise, sharp marks. If you press too much with these you will gouge a trench in the paper.

Coloured pencils

Whilst coloured pencils vary in hue (whether they are red, blue, yellow, and so on), their hardness or softness often depends on the brand. There are so many on the market now, with most indicating the exact effect you will achieve with them (‘softcolour’, ‘polycolour’, ‘graphtint’ and so on). The make-up of the pencils is usually the same within the colour range, with no H or B issue to consider. Try to buy a broad...