Teacher:
They’re only in 4th year and they’re working on a very self-contained marker pen illustration. It’s our introduction to marker pens, and it happens as part of our Graphic Communication course at Standard Grade in 3rd year. We call it the Gizmo Project. It’s a little electronic device. They create the design and they illustrate it. And Felicity here’s working…. What’s your design, Felicity? It’s an underwater something or other, an underwater gizmo for communicating with someone above.
Interviewer:
So their challenge is to create an electronic gizmo?
Teacher:
The casing for that design, yeah. So they’re working with marker pens and black and white rendering pencils to produce this 3D illustration.
Interviewer:
And remind me again, this is what age group is this?
Teacher:
This is 3rd and 4th year – Standard Grade.
Teacher 2:
What we’re seeing here are exactly the sort of things that you’re seeing in product design industry. You know, it’s kind of Seymour Powell style design graphics, and what that gives the client an opportunity to see is the product in different materials, different colours and, rather than actually having a model there as well, that you’ve effectively got a prototype on paper. So it gives you such a wide range of presentation techniques. You can annotate the sketches to give you any information you need. And again, as well, you can actually take the material that you’ve got there and model it using the same colours. The vocational skills that we’re seeing here come through into FE colleges. A lot of them are doing that. We’ve got Glasgow Metropolitan here today with us. They present a few courses with that, and it’s just about getting practical skills into a work environment.
Interviewer:
The girls there. I’ve just seen the girls are creating sort of, something out of their own heads, a gizmo, electronic gizmo or whatever, but the guys are developing drawings for an iron there, so you can possibly imagine the scope for enterprise in this activity as well.
Teacher 2:
Yeah, you do have the scope for enterprise, certainly, within this area. The pupils have to consider how we market the product. That’s the important thing. It’s – who’s the target client? What age are they? What sort of demographic they have? Price range is very, very important and the ergonomic and aesthetic feeling in setting up of that. You know, how’s it going to be used, and what’s the weight distribution going to be? So, in terms of the marketing of a product like that, that’s extremely important. They can decide upon themselves the colour schemes that they use, what that’s going to be. But, yeah, in all of the designs nowadays that we’re seeing, we’re seeing simplicity. One of the most common design icons these days is the i-pod, which is basically a white cube, and that’s where we’re trying to get pupils to realise that it doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s shape, it’s geometry, it’s simple and it’s clean lines.
Interviewer:
It’s complex but not complicated?
Teacher 2:
Not at all.
Interviewer:
What you gonna start off doing?
Pupil:
Right, well, I’m going start off by sketching out one of my designs for my iron that I did. I’m just going basically replicate this, starting off, since I’m using a blue pen, I’m going start off using a blue pencil, basically just so the overall thing, when it’s finished, looks better.
Interviewer:
Before we get started can you explain about the equipment that you’re going be using?
Pupil:
Right well, um, what we’ve got is, basically, we have colour pencils that we use for the sketching, and sometimes we use them for rendering as well.
Interviewer:
Are they special pencils, or..? They’re softer pencils aren’t they?
Pupil:
Yeah, they’re quite soft lead, so it makes it much easier to get a light finish on the actual paper, and they don’t scratch all over the place. For the pens, we use Pantone pens. They’ve got 3 different nibs on them. For this one, I think I’m just going be using the chisel nib, which is on the end here, the bigger one, and the bullet nib, which is on this side, for using finer details and smaller areas. And the paper that we use is a special bleed-proof paper, for using the actual Pantone pens on so that the ink doesn’t bleed through it onto the paper below. It also gives you better quality finish as well for the actual drawings.
Interviewer:
Good, you just want to get started then?
Do you just want to point out at this point, as well, the lines that you’re drawing?
Pupil:
Yeah, at the moment I’m just drawing sort of guidelines to try and get the overall shape of the drawing. Basically, these lines, I can draw as many as I want, you don’t have to keep them all. You generally draw over them when you start using the pen. You start off light just to get an idea of where they’re gonna go, then, once you’ve got a better idea, you have to start firming them in, just to make it easier to follow but also to give you a better idea of which ones you’re keeping, which ones you’re not. Cause I’m using a blue pen, it’s quite hard to see, so I’m just sort of pressing down a lot harder than I normally would. These lines will be usually kept almost invisible for normal drawing just so you don’t come through, because on the ink you can still see lines underneath it. I’m also spinning the paper round a lot just to make it easier for my sketching. Generally, you find that, if you’re trying to do curves, it’s much easier to turn the paper and keep your arm going instead of trying to move around the paper itself. The thing to remember when using these pens is, basically, don’t be afraid to use them, just go crazy with them – that’s what I was told.
Interviewer:
Why do you think that helps?
Pupil:
Ah, cause when you first start using the pen, you sort of put the pen on the paper like that and most people sort of get a bit scared, they think they’ve made a mistake, but generally, with these pens, I just keep using them and any mistakes that you make earlier on, they tend to disappear. The whole thing is built on layers. This ink when it dries will actually be set a lot lighter than it actually looks at the moment, so when you want to pick out shadows you just keep layering on the ink, just keep putting it on. You generally find most mistakes are made by people trying to be too accurate and they end up just making it even worse. Also, you don’t need to stay within the guidelines when you use these pens either. Generally, what you do, cause these aren’t actual finished sketches, these are just designs for showing ideas, so, when we finish these, we normally go over them in either a fine line pen or in a harder pencil of a darker colour just to bring out some of the detail.
Interviewer:
So just now you would be saying that you would be completing a preliminary graphic?
Pupil:
Yeah, at the moment this is just a preliminary graphic.
Interviewer:
And if you wanted it to be a presentation graphic you would tidy it up?
Pupil:
Yeah, if it was going be a presentation graphic you’d, well you’d probably spend a bit more time on it obviously, but you’d sort of go round it in a fine line pen, refine some of the detail using a Pantone for a bit longer. Sometimes I’d even cut out the shape and then put that onto another sheet of paper.
Interviewer:
That colour as well?
Pupil:
Yeah, generally sometimes what we use is put down a lighter blue to begin with just to get an idea of the tones. Also, so we know where we’re shading in just to make it a bit easier, and then we switch to darker colours and then bring out the shading a lot more. Another good thing with these pens is that, if there’s certain design features that you really want to stand out, then you can do that a lot easier. You’ll probably see this bit here on my actual design. That was, like, a cut on the actual shape of the iron, sort of went inwards, and that was one of the main design features of it, so I’m just making it a lot more noticeable on the drawing. Yeah and, for design, these are good for when we actually do rendering of certain parts of the product. We have to make it stand out on the drawing in a certain way. Most people use pencils or just sort of fine line it but don’t actually colour it in. But these pens allow it much easier to make things stand out so. It’s also good cause it gives another sort of medium of rendering, which the SQA like very much. Yeah, well the whole thing is actually in itself. This main part here is the handle, and that is the main body part. The sole plate would sit under here somewhere, but in terms of sketching it’s probably not good to put that in cause this is very rough and we’ll cover it up mostly anyway by this part here so.
Interviewer:
Now if you were going to go on and make this a presentation graphic, what kind of things would you add in, for finer detail?
Pupil:
Well if this is a presentation graphic, then I’d leave it to dry first, then I’d probably go over it again a couple of times with the pens just to bring out some more details, give it a bit more smooth look. Smaller things like controls or buttons or gauges, these are the sort of things you draw on later and highlight them using a white pen or a pencil. Also, what you could do with these is, actually, putting them on a thing for promotion you’d cut around it. So you wouldn’t have any of the scraggy overlap ..