MYP Design Rendering, Shading and Texture Notes

Rendering Turns an Outline into an Object

1. Rendering means adding tone, shadow, texture and highlight so a drawing stops looking like a wire outline.
2. It does two jobs at once: it shows the form, meaning what is curved and what is flat, and it shows the material.
3. A rendered sketch lets a client react to the finish before you have spent anything on making it.
4. Render at the end of the design process, on the two or three ideas worth developing, not on every thumbnail.
5. Choosing a material and then proving you can show it is useful evidence for criterion B, Developing ideas.

One Light Source, Obeyed Everywhere

1. Decide where the light comes from before you touch the page, and mark it with a small arrow or a sun in the corner.
2. Top left is the usual choice because most people read a page from the top left and expect light to fall that way.
3. Surfaces facing the light stay lightest, surfaces turned away go darkest, and surfaces in between take a middle tone.
4. Use that same light direction on every drawing on the page, or the group looks as though it was cut from three different magazines.
5. Three tones are usually enough: leave the paper white for the lit face, a mid grey for the side, a dark grey for the underside.
6. A drawing with shadows on both sides of the same object reads as a mistake even to someone who knows nothing about drawing.

Tone Follows the Shape of the Surface

1. A flat face takes one even tone across its whole area, which is what tells the eye the face is flat.
2. A curved face takes a tone that changes gradually, light where it turns towards the lamp and dark where it turns away.
3. On a cylinder the darkest band is not at the far edge but just inside it, because light bouncing off the desk lifts the very edge again.
4. That thin lighter strip at the edge is reflected light, and putting it in is the difference between a grey tube and a metal one.
5. Hatch and blend along the direction the surface runs, so strokes curve round a curved form rather than crossing it.
6. Keep a hard edge between tones on a sharp corner and a soft blend on a rounded one, since the edge quality is what shows the radius.

Cast Shadow Anchors the Object to the Ground

1. A cast shadow is the dark patch the object throws onto the surface it stands on, and it falls directly away from the light.
2. Without one, a rendered product looks as though it is floating somewhere behind the page.
3. The shadow is darkest and sharpest where the object touches the ground, then fades and softens as it stretches away.
4. Its shape is the outline of the object squashed onto the ground, not a grey oval drawn underneath by habit.
5. A low light gives a long shadow and a dramatic look; a high light gives a short one and a calm, catalogue look.

Texture and Highlight Are What Name the Material

1. Shiny materials give small, sharp, very bright highlights, while matt materials give large, soft, dull ones.
2. The amount of contrast between lightest and darkest is the single strongest clue to what something is made of.
3. Texture marks must follow the form, so wood grain bends round a turned leg and brushed metal lines run along the length of a handle.
4. Add texture last and only in places, because grain drawn evenly over every square millimetre flattens the whole drawing.

Marker, Pencil and Digital Each Behave Differently

1. Pencil is the most forgiving: a 2B for mid tones, a 6B for the darks, and an eraser used as a drawing tool to lift highlights back out.
2. Markers dry fast and cannot be lightened, so work light to dark and lay the palest grey over the whole shape first.
3. A set of three cool greys, roughly a 10 per cent, a 30 per cent and a 50 per cent, renders most products on its own.
4. Keep marker strokes flat and in one direction, overlapping each one while the last is still wet, or you get visible streaks.
5. Finish marker work with a white gel pen or a white pencil for the sharp highlight, and a fine liner to restore edges the marker softened.
6. Digital rendering puts base colour, shadow and highlight on separate layers, so you can change the light direction without redrawing the object.

Rendering with a Purpose, Not for Decoration

1. Render the one thing the page is arguing about, so a drawing comparing three handle finishes should differ only in the finish.
2. Say in a note what material each rendering shows, because a viewer can mistake your brushed aluminium for grey plastic.
3. Leave working drawings unrendered, since tone over a dimensioned view only makes the figures harder to read.
4. Photograph rendered sheets in daylight rather than scanning them, as scanners tend to flatten marker greys into one tone.