Sketching + Drawing Furniture

There is an established process to designing furniture. Furniture can range from a standalone cabinet to a chair. It begins with a sketch of a furniture design or furniture concept you have in mind. The sketch evolves into a series of drawings and ultimately into a piece of furniture. This iterative sketching + drawing process is often called ideation or the conceptual stage.

By letting your creative juices flow and simply putting pencil to paper, your designs begin to take shape. Furniture design is an iterative process where one design evolves into another. The term fleshing out is just that, it describes the process of refining a design. Sketching is a crude form of laying ideas on paper. The sketching process rapidly transfers your ideas to paper without technical details. Through sketching, only a few minutes are invested in each sketch so ideas can quickly flow from mind to paper. Drawing is next with either orthographic views or isometric views. An isometric or axonometric view presents an oblique or angled view of the furniture design for improved visualization. You might say this creates a 3-D view of a 2-D object.

The technical aspects of a design, dimensions and components come later in the design process. Although CAD software is available, it can be used later in the technical drawing and rendering stage.

Through manual rendering, drawings can evolve into more realistic appearing furniture pieces. A term widely used in furniture design is to better visualize a furniture piece. This is achieved through perspective drawing and the coloring and shading of a drawing. The result is a traditional rendered drawing the helps the viewer better visualize the design. A simple set of colored pencils, an eraser shield, eraser, geometric drawing angles, rulers and a T-square are the tools used to perform this.

Computers excel at rendering images for better visualization. An example would be to rotate an image in space. This feature alone is invaluable in visualizing a design. With an understanding of sketching and drawing, you can move outside your comfort zone and experiment with new, challenging designs. Staying in your comfort zone will keep you from developing new skills and furniture making expertise. Learn more about the process of designing furniture in my Furniture Design Class.

Author, Copyright: Norman Pirollo (WoodSkills)