Ingress
So I came to a terrifying realization this week. It never occurred to me that if I wanted to do a master’s in design, I might have to embrace the one artistic medium that I have been avoiding all my life, drawing.
…if I wanted to do a master’s in design, I might have to embrace the one artistic medium that I have been avoiding all my life, drawing.
I’ve never been one for visual arts. I can appreciate them but whenever it comes down to putting pencil to paper, I just create a mess. Shortly into my “Ideation and Prototyping” class, we were assigned to sketch 50 variations of an entity. My heart sank. There have been several times I’ve stared down a problem in my adult life knowing the only thing to do was stomach the pain and force myself through it. First came financial responsibility, then algebra and pre-calculus at 27, and now drawing.
I decided to try and set myself up to have at least a small chance of success. After thinking about several different object possibilities, I decided to land on the humble door. With its cuboid shape, it didn’t demand much in terms of technical prowess but it also offered another advantage. As someone who aspires to be an experience designer for themed environments, the door represents a transition from the real-world into an experience. The presentation of the door is the first opportunity to make an impact and literally ushers in your audience and your work.
I did however not get too excited and decided to do some quick practice to get any kind of advantage as quickly as possible. I started on some of the introductory lessons in the book “How to Draw What You See.” The first few lessons gave a huge jump-start by introducing me to tools such as horizon points, perspective, and dimensionality. After working through some of those lessons I jumped into crafting doors.
The first few were warm-ups of basic doors you might find on a house, such as a plain door, a quad panel door, or a sliding glass door. I then moved on to experimenting with arch top doors, mesh fabric doors, and shuttered doors. After several uncreative variations, I decided to start thinking beyond the door itself. I thought about what the door might keep out. This led me to nautical doors for excluding water, curtain doors for blocking stages, and blank doors for blocking pretty much everything. I held onto the concept of water for a while. Differing ideas like a waterfall acting as a door to a hidden cave, a droplet-themed door with digital aquariums in the highlights, all sprang to mind.
I then explored different organic materials. This included doors made of spiderwebs, light, and vines. I liked some of the craziness of these doors and decided to continue the trend. The next exploration showed portals, summoning circles, and trapdoors, showcasing what can come through a door where one wasn’t intended.
These were definitely my favorite of the batch as they presented so many creative opportunities. I began to explore different art styles such as surrealism once I started running out of ideas.
To finish out the drawings I experimented with close-ups of various parts of a door like a handle or a latch. The final render I did was of my favorite 2D drawing but in a 3D medium. Taking advice from the readings on cardboard modeling, I created a 3D representation of the droplet door. I couldn’t help myself but build the proceeding archway that would encompass those who ingress into (possibly) a virtual aquarium.
As I wrapped working on these illustrations and renderings it led me to think about how creatively misleading doors can actually be. If I were to continue this trend I would look into specifically exiting doors and how that experience can be creatively constructed. Hopefully, when that happens I’ll have a bit better grasp on my pencil and visual arts.
