Miguel Estrada

African Mask (Drawing for Design)

This was my final for my Drawing for Design class this past quarter. There where more projects in between this and the Monopoly bill, but I’ve excluded them because I feel like they where just exercises leading up to this final, plus I’d really rather not scan them in. I would like to get across that this stuff is tough and had a steep learning curve for me as I worked through it. This a type of perspective drawing called Paraline, that keeps receding lines parallel as they go back into space. Its a very useful and accurate way to portray an object, so that you could actually gather measurements from and build it. From my understanding its something used widely in the ID (Industrial Design) community, and it commands that you think in the 3rd dimension. That is, that you can envision the object not as a flat representation but as the object itself. As a graphic designer, having worked primarily with flat 2D material this really kicked my ass. The class was a personal struggle for me as I tried produce work to my high standards while really reteaching myself how to think about drawing. Compounded with the task of having to render the objects early on with minimal aid from tools such as straight edges and compasses. Without a doubt I am now a better artist and designer because of the skills I gathered taking this course. I’ve already implemented many of these principles into some of my designs and I’m even researching it further now that the class is over. In short, very very cool stuff. Take a look at preliminary sketches in the gallery to give yourself a better idea of how this works. The last picture is the root rectangle overlay I used to compose the objects on the page, and you’ll notice the typographical elements are broken on the lines created by the grid.