PSD(proportion, surface, detail), my favourite drawing technic!
Background
Sometimes we, designers, have an idea or just want to draw something on paper, but we just can’t do it properly. You, somehow, know what you have in your head but you have difficulty transferring it on the paper.
Suddenly a lot of questions come to your mind. Questions like Where should I start? How should I start? and so on…
We learned some drawing technics at design school which helped us somehow through this process.
Shortly in this article, I want to introduce you to one of my favorite drawing technics PSD(proportion, surface, detail) that helped me a lot in drawing and working as a designer.
PSD(proportion, surface, detail)
PSD is one of those technics that makes me feel empowered. You get the feeling of being able to draw almost anything. It makes you feel more confident in drawing. I believe PSD is a universal technic with a huge potential to be applied in many other types of drawings types (from portrait, and watercolor, to oil painting and so on).
I heard about PSD for the first time in an educational video from Scott Robertson where he explained the concept behind it.
here I put a link to that his channel:
PSD(proportion, surface, detail) is a three-step drawing process. here I am going to go through each step in detail.
First step: Proportion
In PSD, The first step is to define the proportion. When you draw something, the object you draw must be proportionally right.
I usually start with small thumbnail sketches because It is easier to explore different proportions on a small scale. Doing a lot of thumbnail sketches helps you open up your mind. It empowers you and gives you a feeling like you see things more clearly now.
in this stage, It is important to sketch out as many as possible to find the right proportion before going deep into any. personally, when I find the right proportion in my thumbnail sketches, I draw it on a bigger scale also to see if the proportion still makes sense or not.
Here you can see an example of exploring Proportion.
It would be very handy to take some inspiration too. The source of inspiration can be anything from a picture, an object, a sketch, or….
It is quite common among designers to use Pinterest. I personally use it very often. When I want to make a series of sketches for a project, I often make a special board for it on Pinterest.
In that board, I collect all the pictures that inspire me or trigger me in the direction I want to go aesthetically.
When you are drawing and exploring different proportions in your sketch, it is important to choose the right view of the object you are trying to draw. Often the side view is considered the best view to explore the proportion of the object. This is especially true for transportation vehicles like boats, cars, bikes, or trains…
Second step: Surface
The second step in PSD is to define the surface. In this stage, you sketched out the overall proportion and you are happy with it, but the sketch is not well defined yet.
Now, you want to give your sketch a bit more clarity by defining and exploring the surfaces that shape the object.
Here you can see how different appearance a sketch could have while having the same proportion. Surfaces help the object to be understood.
When the proportion is in the right place, it would be easier to define the surfaces..
Third step: Detail
The third and last step is to define the details. Details will make your drawing looks more natural and more professional.
It would be much easier to draw the details if the surfaces are well defined.
If the proportion of your sketch doesn’t look right, It doesn’t matter how the surfaces of your sketch look; your sketch will not look OK. This scenario applies to the surface also. If the surfaces in your sketch are not well defined, the details will not look natural either.
Overall, these three steps are heavily dependent on each other. Lagging or missing one of the steps will harm the next one. Either make it useless or hard to be done if not impossible.
and the last comment:
“A good visual library will help you a lot. So build a bigger one.” :)
Seyedamirarsalan(Amir) Shamsabadi
