Sketching Techniques: Crating

When attempting this type of drawing, imagine the product and it’s component parts fitting inside a series of boxes or crates.  These will be much easier to draw in the initial stages rather than attempting to draw complex curves from scratch.  It is also easier to judge a cube when drawing.  Using this as a basis, the final shape can be drawn in relation to these crates.

This example shows a concept for a torch.  The torch has curves and ellipses which need to be drawn in perspective.  The easiest way to do this is to think of the product as a number of boxes joined together. The ellipses can then be constructed on the face of each box.

[From "Design Modeling" by John Bairstow, Robert Barber, and Marilyn Kenny]