IDEATION & PROTOTYPING
For the 50 shades of drawing assignment, I decided to draw my dad. I spent my summer back at home before I started school. It was my first time seeing my parents in 2 years and my first time spending that much time together with them at home since I was a kid. I had a wonderful time with them catching up, talking, eating, traveling and also most importantly teaching them how to use electronic devices and programs. I knew that COVID changed the way we do things, but I did not realize to what extent everything needs to be done digitally and virtually these days. I naturally adapted and learned this change, but that was not the case for my parents. I always thought my parents as people who teach me, guide me and help me. But this summer, I often was the one teaching them how to use Youtube, QR code check-in, online banking, flight mileage tracking and more. I was frustrated at times, but I was sad because I could see that my parents are aging. I was looking at all the pictures that I took of him this summer and I started to draw his face with a pencil and tried to get different angles of him doing different things. I have been drawing with a pencil almost everyday at work for past few years, but this time it was my dad, not next season’s blazer. Then I moved onto a digital drawing tool; I made line sketches of him on my computer. It was interesting that it looked more abstract in a way, but also looked more like my dad. I also tried vectoring the images and played around with different layers of elements.
After listening to the lecture of the week, I wanted to focus on a specific part or detail about my dad instead of drawing his portrait in different angles. Apart from not being able to adapt to new technology, my dad also has a hard time seeing and hearing things than before. I noticed that he needs his glasses to read, to look at his phone and to work. So for next 2o drawings, I focused on his glasses and ears in particular. I used shades of grey markers and a pencil. I wanted to draw them in light, delicate layers. I have so many pictures of my dad, but it was very interesting to make 50 drawings of him.
Theorizing Sketching & Craftsmanship
In this lecture, I really agree with the passage from Cross that designers face complex multidimensional problems. Accordingly, designers need to be comfortable with lots of negotiation and messiness in order to frame and solve the problem. However, as a menswear designer, I had a hard time developing multidimensional design solutions when I worked in the fast paced industry due to short development time, lack of man-powers and fast trends. I decided to study more when I realized that I want to deal with more complex, future oriented and constructive thinking in design problem solving.
