This is an essential skill that a designer need to train. If you want to be able to draw things fast and create from your own imagination, think in 3D. Decompose what you see in basic shapes and volumes such as circle, ellipse, sphere, cube, cylinder, cone. Assemble them, then go into the details.

TIP 50

Train your 3D vision seeing anything in transparency

CHOU-TAC CHUNG – WEASEL

Let me illustrate that case first. If you ask a kid to draw an elephant, he will naturally look at the contour and try to reproduce what he see flat on paper.

But if you give him some clay, he will roll the clay to cylinder for the trunk, make some little cones for the fences and other simple shapes that he will bend, cut, trim, twist, flatten. He will then assemble all these to reproduce the whole thing. Note that even if you show the side view only of the elephant, the kid will naturally create both side with the clay. It shows that the elephant is not anymore just some 2D contours, but a volume.

The brain naturally tend to think in 2D when we want to draw on paper. To represent something in volume we switch our thinking to 3D.
WALLACE AND GROMIT – A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH, 2008

So here is the trick for a designer. It is to sketch on 2D, but thinking in 3D. If you ask a designer to reproduce something on paper, he will decompose it in multiple simple shapes in his mind and reassemble the elements on paper. To do that, he visualizes each shape as transparent volume. The next level is to be able to rotate them in his mind. Then he could reproduce that thing in different angles.

Magic right ? It is not that easy, but it is really worth to train toward this direction.
This tip deserve some tutorials. I will prepare some. However, if you are interested, you can still let me know. 🙂

Let me know your point of view.
See you tomorrow for the next Tip of the day !