Please enjoy this guest post from graphic designer and woodworker, Mark Loughran.

Introduction

Although I am only a novice woodworker, I have been a graphic designer for over twenty years, have been through art college, and I have taught drawing at third level. So while I am not a furniture designer, I have experience in design. And although its a different discipline, I feel there are some things that are shared in common with woodworking design.

Generally I see a lot of articles on the internet on how to use drawing applications like Sketch Up, but I have not seen many articles for traditional drawing for woodworkers, so I hope this might be of some interest.

As we get more used to using computers to generate drawings, I feel that we could lose touch with a very important part of the design and creative process ? the pencil sketch. Of course computers are a powerful tool, and can be used to great effect (I use a computer to develop all my designs), but I believe the humble pencil sketch can be the best way to start the design process, before moving on to a computer. And in the long run the quickest. The advantage here is the speed in which you can get a thumbnail sketch of your idea on to a page, ready for further development.

The 1st Tool of the Shop

Often you will see a woodworker with a pencil behind their ear, or in an apron. I believe that the pencil can be the first and most important tool in the shop.

Where to Start

Start with a thumbnail sketch on paper. A napkin or the back of an envelope is fine too. Wherever and whenever the idea comes to you. Don’t get me wrong, computer applications for drawing are a huge step forward, and are a massive benefit, but there is nothing quicker that a pencil sketch, and that can capture the essence of a design. As when the inspiration or idea comes, its best not to lose it. It is important that as computers become more a part of design, that we don’t forget the traditional design skills like sketching with a pencil. Its not something to keep just for the sake of it, I feel it has real benefits for the designer. I guess woodworkers will probably be the first to appreciate traditional methods, while embracing modern technologies also.

What to Use

Pencils are probably the best thing, no great surprise there. Markers and pens are fine to draw with too, but sometimes its handy to be able to erase part of a drawing that’s not working, or just to adjust a curve. Use a soft pencil like a 2B up to a 6B, its softer graphite so it gives a darker line. The harder pencils are more suited to finer plans and drafting applications. With a softer pencil graphite, you may need a softer eraser too.

Keep it Rough

Leonardo da Vinci did large numbers of rough sketches which went towards making each one of his masterpieces (you don?t need to worry about matching his skill level, I know I won?t ever get there), so do lots and lots of sketches. Keep them quick. Don’t be too precious, no need for expensive art paper. Sometimes it can actually get in the way of creativity, as we tend to be too careful using it. Inexpensive copier paper is fine. Try to avoid lined paper though, as the lines get in the way, and distract from what we are drawing. Be as free as you can. Make a mess! It will actually help in freeing up the drawing process. (See more on Leonardo_da_Vinci)

Practice

Some people think they can’t draw, but anyone can if they practice. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, it just has to capture roughly the design that you have imagined. And only you need to understand it. Some great designers are not great artists, and don’t have to be, but the more you practice, the more useful a skill your drawing will become.

Relax

Practice relaxing your hand before drawing. Squeeze it tight to feel what it feels like when its tense, then relax it. Lift your palm up off the page when drawing, and its easier to draw larger curves. Use your elbow or shoulder as a pivot point instead. Elongate your hand, and push the pencil further out than the normal writing position. Too much tension can get in the way of good sketching. Don’t worry if quality doesn’t look good immediately, keep practicing. Often people will hold the pencil in the same way they would if they were writing, but if you can practice a more relaxed position, with the tip of the pencil further away from your finger tips, and your palm up off the page, this can help. But for the very small thumbnail sketches this is not as important, it’s more important when the drawings become larger in scale.

Draw in Context

If you are designing a chair, draw it with a person sitting it in, see if they are sitting upright to eat, or reclining to relax. You can use a Wooden Artist Sketch Poseable Mannequin to help with drawing people. If its a set of lockers for each side of a bed, sketch in the bed and the room setting straight away, so its in the context it will be used. If its a computer desk, draw it with the computer and keyboard in position. This approach will help to iron out an issues before they arise. A lot of time can be saved in eliminating problems before making the piece by drawing it in context from the very start.

Keep Your Sketches

Sometimes your initial thumb nail sketches can capture the design so well you can benefit by constantly referring back to that original sketch. If you are moving to computer to finish the drawing, you can even scan the drawing in, if you have a scanner, or take a photo of it with a digital camera. Keep all your sketches, and build a file of all your drawings, not just the finished ones, keep everything! Something you decide not to build now, may become relevant in the future, and its nice to keep all your ideas for the future. Its also interesting to look back on the sketch you did for a piece you have made, and see how the design developed on paper, right through to the finished piece.

Its Quicker in the Long Run

You may want to get straight into building your project, as you have a clear picture in your mind, but by spending a little time drawing at the start, it can actually save you time in the long run. By ironing out issues and drawing the piece from different angles, you can work out details that save you time in the long run.

Scaling it Up

If you are not using a computer for the final drawing, you can do a scale drawing. 1 to 12 is an easy scale to use if you are using feet and inches, so each inch of your drawing will represent a foot in your actual piece. But if you are using metric, 1 to 10 might be easier, so 1cm can equal 10cm in your final piece. Just add a zero, its easy. Draw a grid on a page, with squares, and you can map out your piece to scale.

Keeping a Scrapbook

Keep a scrapbook of pictures you like, designs that appeal to you, and let it build over time. You can mix your own sketches in as ideas develop. If you see something online that inspires you, keep it in a digital scrapbook.

Make it Fun

Sometimes the design part of the project can be a lot of fun, and with good drawing skills, it can be even more enjoyable. Taking an art class can be a good way to kick start your interest in drawing, and you may also find that you can discover things in your surroundings or in nature that will inspire you in your design choices for furniture design. And also by looking at art that interests you, you can find another great source of inspiration.

Hopefully this brief set of tips, can be of interest to my fellow woodworkers. Although my grandfather was a carpenter, I am only beginning a journey in discovering the pleasure of working with wood, but with inspiration from great teachers like Marc Spagnolo, as I am a big fan of The Wood Whisperer, I hope to improve my skills and increase my knowledge of woodworking, and right now just practicing my skills is good fun. I don’t think my shop will feature on any shop tour on Marc’s site though, as its only a six by eight shed, but who knows :-)

Mark Loughran runs a small graphic design studio, Identikit.ie, with his wife Tanya in Dublin, Ireland, for over twenty years. He has two daughters, Emily and Isabel, who are budding artists. Hobbies are cycling and woodworking.

The guide is Bob’s self-published interactive PDF book. If you’ve never seen something like this, you’re in for a treat. The PDF opens up with a convenient index at the left. You can use this to jump around the document with a single click. Like any good woodworking book, each section features text and images. But this PDF book does something a traditional book could never do: it provides video clips. So as you are reading along, Bob has short narrated video clips that he uses to hammer home a particular point. This format is particularly effective since SketchUp isn’t something you learn by simply reading or watching. If you open SketchUp in another window, you now have the perfect storm for learning: text, pictures, video, and a testing ground. To get the most out of this experience, I recommend doing EVERYTHING Bob recommends. The only way to understand and retain this information is to practice. Repetition is what makes you fast and speed is what makes this program practical.

The book is 184 pages and I don’t think it can be gobbled up in one sitting. There’s just too much here. I broke it up into two sessions. For me, there was a natural break point right before Bob gets into the advanced stuff. This gave my brain a little time to recuperate and allowed me the opportunity to forget and then re-learn a few details the next day. Once again, repetition and practice.

Day 1:

I have to admit that I was tempted to skim through the intro and early chapters. Boy am I glad I didn’t! As someone who used SketchUp well before Google owned it, I am pretty familiar with the interface and basic functions. But just like in woodworking, its very easy to develop bad habits over time. And usually you don’t even know how bad they are until someone points them out. I knew I had some bad habits that needed breaking and the early chapters of this book nipped them in the bud. With the slate clean, I was now able to approach the rest of the book with an open mind and as a complete SketchUp noob.

In the first half of the book, Bob reviews all of the tools and their functions. I tried to replicate the things I saw in the pictures and videos as I went along which really helped me commit the details to memory. He then moves into creating objects, moving/copying/rotating, and into the use of groups and components. By this time, your head will be reeling with all the ways you can use these simple tools to design your next project. Just to give you a frame of reference, by the end of the first half of this book, I was able to construct a table of any size (legs, aprons, mortise & tenon joints), within minutes. And the best part is because everything was done properly, any part of the table can be modified readily. Want a larger top? Shorter tenons? Tapers on the legs? A deeper reveal? No problem.

Now I could have made a similar table prior to Bob’s video in about the same time. But should I need to modify anything or make any adjustments, I would be up a creek without a paddle. And with practice, using the proper methods will be MUCH faster. I am just new to some of this so it takes me a bit longer. Think of it like learning how to type. When you initially learn the method, you are probably faster hunting and pecking. But once you get some practice, suddenly your fingers are flying and it becomes second nature. Same thing with SketchUp. I felt very accomplished after Day 1 and I am excited to see what the second half will bring. Total time investment for day 1 was roughly 2 hours.

Day 2:

Now we’re getting into the nitty gritty. Bob covers curves, circles, cope and stick door frames, as well as other helpful details on manipulating, modifying, and presenting your SketchUp models. This is definitely more than I want to digest in a single evening. And many of these advanced lessons will be much more useful when I have a practical need for it. So when the time comes, I’ll be jumping right back into the PDF. Total time investment for Day 2 was another two hours. But I could have easily spent more if I went through each part and replicated each lesson.

One thing is abundantly clear: if you learn the system, you open a lot of doors for yourself. Lang’s interactive book is, simply put, a full course on SketchUp. And the best part of all is that its taught from a woodworker’s perspective. So you won’t be wasting your time with architectural details and things that you will never use. Bob’s teaching style is straight forward and the lessons are easy to follow. If you are trying to break into SketchUp and all you’ve done so far is draw pretty little squares, I highly recommend you give this book a shot.

Now many of you may be wondering how this book differs from the recently-released SketchUp For Woodworkers video series. Here’s a comment from Bob himself,

“It?s hard to say which is ?better?, that depends on what you?re looking for, and what your learning style is. If you catch on from watching the video that?s probably all you need. I usually explain the difference like this; the videos are like watching my presentation at Woodworking in America. It?s a couple hours of watching me run SketchUp while I explain verbally what I?m doing. The book is more like taking a week-long class from me – more time for explanations, and I think having the material presented in text and in video makes it easier to sink in initially and to go back to refresh your memory.”

I am currently reviewing the SketchUp for Woodworkers video series and I will report back to you on that.

If you are interested in picking up Woodworker’s Guide to SketchUp, or even the video series I just mentioned, use the links below. We are now an affiliate with the Woodworker’s Book Shop so all sales will help support TheWoodWhisperer.com. And by the way, if you use our code Woodwhisperer20ww at checkout, you’ll get 20% off your entire order (unfortunately this excludes Bob’s book since he is an external vendor)!! Booya!

• Woodworker’s Guide to SketchUp
• SketchUp for Woodworkers Video Series Pt. 1(Digital Download)
• SketchUp for Woodworkers Video Series Pt. 1 (CD)

Here you can see one of my initial SketchUp drawings. A number of changes were made from the original piece in the magazine. The 6-panel doors have become wide 3-panel doors (more on that in a second). You’ll also notice I only sketched in one curved leg for reference. The actual cuve is based off a template from a previous project, and I am not good enough with SketchUp to display it accurately. So this was just a very rough visual reference.

I am incredibly psyched about the doors on this piece. The three raised panels on each door will be made from birdseye maple. But as you see in the sketch, the center of the panel is walnut. So the plan is to veneer a thin sheet of solid walnut over a piece of solid birdseye maple. Then with a big panel raising bit, I will run the piece through, cutting through the walnut and revealing the birdseye beneath. You can definitely expect a video on this process.

After sending the first image to the client, it was brought to my attention that the legs are actually supposed to be made from 8/4 stock. The original doesn’t have this, but in order to match a previous piece I made for him, they need to be thicker. So back to the drawing board. Now here’s an image with the thicker leg stock (without the curves drawn in). I actually like the look of the thicker legs better and frankly, the straight leg design really appeals to me. But, its not my cabinet! haha.

Once the overall design and look of the piece was established and agreed upon, I made another sketch for my own purposes. I like to have a few skeleton sketches that I can print out and bring into the shop. This helps me figure out the joinery details and visualize the exact sizes and positions of the internal parts. It also helps me eliminate any errors before they occur. I would much rather have to redraw a SketchUp model than recut a piece of wood.

So that’s what I’m up to. I need to pick up some 8/4 stock for the legs today, then I can start the milling process. I won’t be filming the entire project, but I will make a few episodes from parts of the process that I think you might find interesting. Wish me luck!

You can download SketchUp here and if you are looking for the original file used to make this Steamer Trunk tutorial, you can download that here. Also, check out the SketchUp Room in the Wood Talk Online Forum. There is a growing list of models there available for download.

You can download SketchUp here and if you are looking for the original file used to make this Steamer Trunk tutorial, you can download that here. Also, check out the SketchUp Library in the Wood Talk Online Forum. There is a growing list of models there available for download.

Another thing you might want to check out is an older video I did showing how I typically use SketchUp. I rarely design an entire project from start to finish. I just use SketchUp to work out proportions and measurements. And you’ll see me do that in the first episode of the Arts & Crafts Table series.

You can download SketchUp here and if you are looking for the original file used to make this Steamer Trunk tutorial, you can download that here. Also, check out the SketchUp Library in the Wood Talk Online Forum. There is a growing list of models there available for download.

This week’s project comes from Eric in Atlanta, GA. Let’s see what he has to say:

“First off let me thank you for all that you do. Your website has been an invaluable resource for me. I got into woodworking about a year ago when I decided to build my own custom kitchen cabinets for my house remodel rather than pay someone else to make them. I found your site on a woodworkers forum, and I’ve seen all your pod casts and check your blog daily.”

“Here are some pictures of a recent cedar mantel I built for our new fireplace. I started this project looking for inspiration on the web. I wanted a big beefy mantel that would fit our family room that has 22′ ceilings. After looking at a number of pictures from various sites and taking some initial measurements, I fired up Google Sketchup and began designing the mantel. As a novice woodworker I find that Sketchup is as important as my table saw or router. Investing the time to get over the learning curve will reward you with improved project design and a significant reduction in the frustration you might experience taking on a project with only the plans in your head.”

“The mantel was made from 6X6 and 6X12 rough cedar that I planed using an electric hand planer. I used traditional post and beam construction and relied on a drill, chisel, and handsaw for the mortise and tenons. The mantel was finished with a wiping varnish made from equal parts of mineral spirits, boiled linseed oil, and varnish.”

“This was a very fun and rewarding project and instilled in me a deep respect for carpenter’s of old who had to build post and beam houses with the same precision that is now almost exclusively used for furniture construction.”

Here’s the final cut list: Table Top: 36″W x 72″L (4) Legs: 29 1/4″L x 3″W x 3″T (2) Long Aprons: 64″L x 3 1/2″W x 3/4″T (4) Short Aprons: 28″L x 3 1/2″W x 3/4″T (8) Side Slats: 16 1/4″L x 3″W x 1/2″ T

Note: I will be using the Festool Domino to construct this entire project. If you plan on cutting traditional integral tenons for this project, please include 3″ extra length on all apron pieces for 1 1/2″ tenons, and 2″ extra length on all side slats for 1″ tenons.

In part 1 of this episode, I show you the process that I go through whenever I begin a new project. This involves some educated guesses and the use of SketchUp, a free program that allows you to easily draw 3D renderings.