In a recent video, I sketched one of the most complex products you can represent on paper—a car. Let's take it down a notch. In this episode, I'll be sketching a front load washing machine. I wanted to draw something rather geometric to show you a particular technique of sketching with drawing tools. My very first boss out of design school, Aaron Szymanski at Evo Design, had this amazing technique where he could draw with straight edges and ellipse guides but still keep the sketch light and airy, not too tight. The way he showed me that he did this is by moving the drawing tool slightly as you go back and forth across your lines. This way, the lines feel sketchier. So I've brought out my Rocky's Modern Life ruler and an ellipse guide to show you how to work up a sketch with this method.

First, I roughly define the front face of the washer with a diagonal to represent the axis of front loading door. With the ellipse guide, I work up sever concentric ellipses to define that door and then define the rest of the front face. With that set up, I can pull the right side and top of the washer back in space. At this point, I can start layering in details. I'm working here with black prisma pencils, taking care to keep the tips sharp as I go, and I'm using both the tip and the side of the pencil. I'm also working into that with sharpie, opaque white pen and white pencil.

Try this technique out and see if it works for you. As always, I'll answer any questions you have below.

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Yo! C77 Sketch is a video series from Core77 forum moderator and prolific designer, Michael DiTullo. In these tutorials, DiTullo walks you through step by step rapid visualization and ideation techniques to improve your everyday skills. Tired of that guy in the studio who always gets his ideas picked because of his hot sketches? Learn how to beat him at his own game, because the only thing worse than a bad idea sketched well is a great idea sketched poorly.