Status: 🔴 Actively under development

Length: 12 weeks

Time needed: 5 hours a week

This course builds essential drawing and sketching skills for designers. You’ll learn to use drawing as a tool for thinking, communicating, and problem-solving—not as an end in itself. Through guided exercises and projects, you’ll develop confidence in perspective drawing, observational sketching, diagramming, storyboarding, and visual note-taking.

Drawing for designers is different from drawing for fine art. You’re not trying to create gallery-worthy illustrations; you’re learning to quickly visualize ideas, communicate concepts to others, and think through problems on paper.

Recommended Resources

Week 1. Learning to See: Foundations of Visual Thinking

Week 2. Materials, Composition, and Visual Note-Taking

Week 3. Drawing from Observation: Training Your Eye

Week 4. Complex Forms and Ellipses in Everyday Objects

Week 5. Linear Perspective: One and Two-Point Foundations

Week 6. Three-Point Perspective and Complex Spatial Relationships

Week 7. Value, Light, and Shadow: Creating Volume

Week 8. Visual Note-Taking and Field Notation for Design Research

Week 9. Diagramming for Clarification and Communication

Week 10. Storyboarding for Explanation and Narrative

Week 11. Sketching for Ideation and Problem-Solving

Week 12. Communicating Design Concepts and Final Integration Project

Conclusion

This 12-week course establishes drawing as a core competency for designers. The skills you build here will compound over years of practice, making you a more effective visual thinker, communicator, and designer. Drawing for designers is not about creating art—it’s about thinking visually, communicating clearly, and solving problems on paper before committing to expensive implementations.