Anchor 1: Warm up
Anchor 2: Workouts
Anchor 3: Developing Control of Complex Motor Actions

The goal set out in the previous section [Act of Sketching] is to achieve a state where the act of executing the sketches becomes a near natural process and can be carried out with minimal and intermittent attention. The first step should be to understand the factors that lead to ‘naturalness’ in sketching. This understanding developed over several years of teaching sketching to design students. Observations and video studies of beginners and advanced learners handling specific sketching tasks contributed a lot. These insights have then been converted into a learning programme in sketching.

The programme takes the learner through a series of sequential structured tasks, which form the core of learning as well as the basis of self-evaluation of progress. While quality of the sketch is critical, ‘naturalness’ is seen as a key aspect of the process of execution of the sketches. The assignments are specially structured to compensate for the live supervision and actual classroom interactions.

Based on the conceptual differences and the nature of skills required for execution, the sketching tasks have been classified broadly into three higher level ‘Anchors’, each based on one or more principles that, the author believes would lead to naturalness in sketching. They are as follows,

    The ‘Warm up’ Anchor is based on getting the body in action before starting rigorous sketching workouts. It is expected that the learner will go through these actions every time s/he wants to get into serious sketching. The logic of these exercises is explained in the following sub-sections,

    • Body in Action
    • Feeling the body movement internally
    • Need for using music support

    The series of tasks for repetitive practice under the ‘Workouts’ Anchor are based on ideas in coaching in sport. The actions required to execute the tasks are prompted by series of specific objectives. Key subsections that deal with the objectives are,

    • Fluency at any cost
    • Look elsewhere and draw
    • Developing control of complex motor actions

    More than the correctness of lines, the focus is on the control of complex motor actions, the smoothness and flow of lines and peripheral eye scanning in the process of sketching.

    The principles under the ‘Sense of Perspective Space’ Anchor lead to understanding the geometry of the shape and representing and later conceiving the objects in perspective using the geometry.

We will now discuss the logic behind each Anchor. Once the logic is understood, it will be easier to go through the rigours of the extensive structured learning modules. [05. Practice Sessions]