Teaching

DESIGN FUNDAMENTALS
Lesson 1 – Introduction to drafting and materials handling


Lesson Description
This is a lesson which attempts to introduce the basic drafting tools and their application in the design process. Through observation of the basic elements, students get confident to use those supplies in their own future experiences and allow them to present their ideas more professionally and with better technique. It starts out requiring students to prepare their desk and handle the tools properly.
Secondly, students are expected to be able to evaluate their own performance by pointing out the good and bad aspects of each exercise drawn by them. At last, students are expected to practice more the concepts at home so that their craft improves on a weekly basis.

Goals
This lesson aims to introduce students to basic drafting skills. The goals for it are make students knowledgeable of each drafting tool its function, care, maintenance and application in the drafting process. It also aims to think about drafting as a mode of self expression and as a communication device that carries a message which needs to be understood by other people.  In that way, students will gradually lose the fear of technical drafting, building up their confidence to improve their abilities as prospective artists or designers.
By the end of this lesson, students are expected to be familiar with the use of the drafting tools, its relevance for the creative process, and ready to express their ideas in a faster and more intelligible way through drafting.

Objectives
During the lesson scheduled timeframe, students will get familiarized at first with the visible differences between the drafting tools and their basic features and how they have different functions in the process. Then, using simple geometric shapes (circles, squares and triangles) they will begin to understand the first concepts related to line type, line thickness, measurement and accuracy.
Students’ performance will be accomplished through demonstrations in class, exercises and assignments using basic geometric shapes. The main objective is make students able to draw their ideas with their technical equipment in order to communicate their thoughts in a more accurate fashion.
In that matter, the degree on which satisfactory attainment of the objectives will be judged should take into consideration the lack of experience of most of the students when it comes to basic drafting. Past experiences show that some students are hearing from the basic drafting tools for the very first time in this class and this should be considered. Despite their previous drawing experience, it is not guaranteed this content was introduced in such classes.
Students will demonstrate that they have learned and understood the objectives of the lesson if they are capable of the following once the assignment is over: sharpness of lines and angles, ability to draw lines with none or minimal interruption, ability to draw circles in various sizes, ability to draw a straight line with a consistent thickness, ability to match perfectly two or more lines at one point only and cleanliness of the overall project.

Pre-Requisites:
To start this lesson, students need to be capable of recognizing the drafting tools, their importance, maintenance and function to prepare the presentation templates. Students also need to know how to prepare the desk for drafting.

Materials necessary for this lesson:

  1. 18-inch T-Square (wood frame with a plastic edge- not metal)
  2. 30x60x90 triangle
  3. 45x45x90 triangle
  4. 0.5 mm Mechanical Pencil (recommended brands: Pentel, Alvin)
  5. O.5 mm HB lead refills
  6. White Eraser for drafting (recommended brand: Staedtler)
  7. Compass
  8. Extra Leads for the compass
  9. Lead Pointer
  10. 19”x24” Tracing Paper pad
  11. Scissors
  12. White-copy paper
  13. Drafting Tape
  14. Drafting brush (optional)
  15. Erasing Shield (optional)

Lesson Procedure

Introduction
At first, it should be addressed the idea that drafting is not a way of expression connected to only architects and engineers. Many artists and designer in the past (for instance, Mies van der Rohe and Sol Lewitt) have made use of basic drafting concepts to elaborate their designs. The goal is to get the students practicing the art of drafting and make them change their mind that as artists they should not be learning this content.
It is important to reinforce that through drafting one is not only presenting his ideas in a technical way, but in a more precise one. Accuracy in the design process is extremely important not only for design but for art in general. Through accuracy and technical detailing, it is possible to refine an idea, develop it and make sure all of its parts fit together in a proper fashion prior to the fabrication phase, avoiding future problems.
In order to do that, a quick activity will be introduced. Students will draw a square and then repeat the drawing with the proper drafting supplies. In that manner, they will understand that both ways of approaching a design have their relevance but in different times. It is important to reinforce that a design should always develop almost on a daily basis and the development of the shape is part of it up to the point when the final shape is modeled or drawn accurately in scale. This becomes noticeable in the quality of the line, in the ideas of scale, proportion and lineweights when we compare the hand-made sketch and the drafted one.
After that, a presentation on different possibilities of sketching can be made comparing a regular sketch to a technical drawing (examples of famous designers are presented in order to make students aware of how a sketch can be a powerful instrument for idea clarification). At this point, designers’ work such as Steven Holl (sketch for Art Building West), Oscar Niemeyer (sketch for Brasilia or any of his buildings), Ron Arad (sketch for any of his furniture), Frank Gehry (sketch for the Guggenheim Museum), Le Corbusier (sketch for Dom-ino Houses) and other designers should be presented.

Main Activity
Students are practicing the skill of drafting. After making the introductory exercise (which should not going to be graded nor is part of the final assignment package in order to avoid students’ feeling of being under “grading pressure”), students are introduced to the assignment. Right after watching the demo and having the first questions that might have arisen answered, the details of the handout and the requirements of the final product are explained. The exercises should be drawn by hand and technically, as a first practice on drafting. Another demo is presented at this time, which involves preparation for drafting and introduction to drafting:

  1. The necessary supplies for the assignment are:
    1. T-square
    2.  0.5mm Mechanical Pencil with HB lead
    3. Drafting tape
    4. Scissors
    5. A sheet of regular paper
  2. Place the T-square on the opposite side to your writing hand. (Right-handed place T-square on the left side and vice versa)
  3. Use the T-square as a guide for the paper. At this point, it does not matter if the paper has a portrait or a landscape layout.
  4. Rest the bottom edge of the paper on the top edge of the T-square. Rest the paper as close as you can to the edge of the table or the Head of the T-square. The further it is, the less accurate the T-square gets.
  5. Start with the tape. Explain the importance of cutting it versus tearing with your fingers. Tore tape can be carried away with the T-square due to an uneven edge which not always sticks perfectly to the work surface. Highlight that this takes more time in the preparation but saves a lot more time in the working hours.
  6. Cut four pieces of tape with scissors.
  7. Check the paper position again and tape the first corner.
  8. Tape down the second corner.
  9. Finish taping making sure the paper is stretched to its maximum without ripping.
  10. Ask them to draw a couple of lines before you being the geometry exercises.
  11. Use the T-square for the horizontal lines and the triangles (30x60 or 45x45) for the vertical lines. Lines have to be as consistent as possible and it is useful to spin the pencil as you draw a line to guarantee an even line thickness all along.
  12. For vertical lines, extending a line might be necessary, so it is necessary to be really careful when drawing two adjacent lines.
  13. In technical drafting, lines should meet perfectly. No excess lines at the corners are necessary. If that happens, erase excess lines with eraser. An erasing shield can be useful at this point.
  14. Repeat this process always when a new sheet of paper has to be set on the table for working.

They begin then their journey through the geometry component of the course. A proper handout should be passed around to the class and the goal of the lesson is stressed, which is being able to reproduce the exercises presented to them and introduce them to geometry as a design element and the drafting supplies as a work tool. A 6-step sketching demo is presented at this point:

  1. The first exercise of the handout is used as a reference for this demo.
  2. Tell students to pay attention to the shape of the square. Look at lines and angles that compose the final object. Are the four sides the same size? Are the four angles the same?
  3. Start with a horizontal and move on from it, adding a vertical line and the diagonal. They then draw the second horizontal and the second vertical line, finishing up the square.

If the section roster list is small, it might be more beneficial to gather them all in one desk and give hands-on demos to ensure proper understanding and procedure. They can also be asked to participate, like one or two draw a line of the demo assignment. Their result can be discussed and problems can be addressed at the spot, before they start their own assignments.
Since this is a beginning class, the practicing of having a rough version of the drawing is important. Students need to learn that in drafting there is always a draft and a final version. The draught version is the one that is drawn on a piece of tracing paper that has all the graphic information required in the final version.

Closure/Conclusion
Once these demos are presented and questions are answered and students move on to their own working time. The final feedback will be given to the students once their handed in assignments are returned to them with comments and also during scheduled meetings. As a way to keep their mind on the objectives of the lesson, a list of essential items to remember by should be provided on the assignment sheet. These items are: watch for line quality, finishing and page layout.

Follow up Lessons/ Activities
The students should be encouraged to practice drafting at home using their nine hours of outside class time to get familiarized with their technical equipment. After knowing all the exercises and how to use their tools and develop a thinking process based on both, there will be more assignments that will be handed in their portfolios which aim to evaluate whether or not they are capable of applying the geometry concepts to their ideas. Those assignments are the following:

  1. Circle within a circle
  2. Intersecting circle, square and equilateral triangle
  3. Organic Geometry Plan Drawing
  4. 3D Composition Plan Drawing
  5. 3D Composition Elevation Drawing
  6. 3D Composition Paraline Drawing

In a more advanced setting the following assignments also require knowledge of basic geometry and drafting:

  1. Isometric Paraline Drawing
  2. Plan Oblique Paraline Drawing
  3. Elevation Oblique Paraline Drawing
  4. Perspective of a Cube with two vanishing points
  5. Perspective of a Cube with two vanishing points and shadow

In the first group, the assignments’ complexity builds up as they develop during the semester and therefore the following order has to be followed. After those comes the second group, when a more in-depth knowledge of the subject is expected. The second group however ends with two simpler assignments to be finished but they are assignments that require more preparation time and a more complex explanation and for that reason they are explained in the end. A demonstration on perspective involves besides geometry ideas such as horizon line, ground plane and many other concepts, which might bring confusion if explained in the middle of the process.
The time length devoted for each assignment by the students will vary on many issues, including but not limited to: geometry knowledge, tool handling, and design complexity, among others. A classroom schedule has to be followed but some changes might be necessary depending upon the development of the group.
This set of assignments will last until the first week after the midterm portfolio is due, when it should be turned in for grading. The media used is technical pen on tracing paper, which should be photocopied in a neat fashion and placed inside the portfolio binder.

Assessment/ Evaluation
The lesson will be evaluated as part of the midterm package turned in for grading, which involves the whole set of assignments aforementioned. The identified objects will be evaluated through looking and commenting on the final work. It will become clear if students had been practicing if the items discussed in the demonstrations and throughout the working days were present in some degree at the final work. Some perfection is expected at this point but the fulfillment of the basic criteria is more. A great amount of improvement should be expected and asked for in the final work, when the semester grade should be assigned.



Teaching Philosophy

Teaching Philosophy
Teaching Experience
Teaching Agenda
Lesson Plan Sample
Students' Works
Contact

PDF Version
(requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

Back to Index page
Back to Teaching Section



Copyright © 2008 Vinicius Lima.
All rights reserved