glasses | gecko

Last week I came across an interesting drawing exercise at Mithi's Creative Journey (via Suzanne over at AN [OPEN] SKETCHBOOK) and knew I had to try it out.

The point of the exercise is to recognize the importance of drawing as a medium for working out ideas - visualizing forms which, through a process of editing / refining, become more removed from their intial source material. Basically you start out with two objects (I used my glasses and a ceramic gecko) and work on a series of drawings, using formal methods and combining elements to end with a final four.

This is my set:
First 16 quick line drawings of my glasses and then another 16 of a ceramic gecko:




Next, 64 quick drawings based on the original 16 - using the formal methods of exaggerating, distorting, simplifying, enlarging, reducing, repeating, rotating, combining, cross-referencing, and layering. Glasses first, gecko second:



Next use the formal methods again to make a single set of 32 new drawings, combining the glasses and gecko drawings:


Refine again to 16:

This time, paying more attention to layout, negative spaces, blocking out spaces, etc., reduce to 8:


and FINALLY refine and reduce to four final "complete" drawings:


It was really fun watching the transition from those initial simple drawings to the final four. Highly recommended!