Sketch as a Tool of Thought in Art and Science

Abstract

Professors from different studies such as fine arts, engineering in industrial design and digital graphic design, and from different universities (UPM, UCM, UNIR) have participated in an educational innovation project dealing with sketching as a starting point to creation. Teachers from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) proposed to their students exchange experiences. Students from industrial design went to classes to the Fine Art Faculty and fine art students had to deal with an industrial design proposal. The aim of the experience has been knowing how students from different studies manage drawing tools to start their work; drawings to finally paint a still life, drawings to understand volume in a sculpture plaster model to reproduce it with clay, and sketches to propose a Christmas ornament made with wood. After the experience, drawings from exercises from the three universities have been analyzed to establish similarities and differences in the use of visual language (points, lines, planes, surfaces, and color, between others). Fine art students use the lines with ease, hints, light with the inclusion of color spots as part of the approach to the solution. Industrial design students, on the other hand, consider the line as an essential element in their drawings, well-marked, clearly delimiting the edges of the object, integrating color as an addition rather than as an integrating element. And finally, but not last, students from digital graphic design use lines as a language to propose fast schematic approaches, lines as added texts, and generally a lack of color. Even though each field of knowledge has some particularities, we think that the drawing approach is essential to face creations no matter their essence. Sketches in early stages mean to face problems, to think and to translate ideas into a two-dimensional surface.