Monday, September 14, 2009


This week I'm going to highlight some of the rendering I teach design students at Canada College. In my classes we use various media such as colored pencils, markers, pastels, and watercolor to convey design ideas to clients. The image above is a good example how various media can be mixed to achieve a strong rendering. In this drawing I used grey markers for the mirror effect on the desk, markers on the floor, pastel on the wall, and pencil on the chair and artwork. A dash of white-out on the artwork creates the illusion of reflected light on glass.



I'm constantly telling my students that a good rendering starts with a good drawing, so they're required to keep sketchbooks devoted to drawing. The chairs above represent three different styles rendered with markers only. The left chair is silk, the middle is zebra hide, the Ghost Chair on the right is made out of polycarbonate and is rendered with grey markers. I like teaching this technique because the results are immediate and exciting for the students.


2 comments:

  1. That is very interesting. It seems like the goal would be to use the medium best suited to convey the natural texture of the object?

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  2. Jeremy~ Mostly, yes, and technique allowed by said medium as well. Markers are though unforgiving, are fast and versitile. With colored pencils, you'll have a lot more control, but will spend more time on a drawing. Usually it's in the designer's interest to get it down quickly, because as they say, time is money.

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