As a designer and illustrator it’s your job to translate the world into a composition. You must constantly, or at least while working, break things down into forms you can use when you’re drawing. So you have to train your eye to see things not always in a three- dimensional way, but rather as a flat canvas, where objects relate in geometry more than space. So if you’re looking at, say, a glass of water on a table, you should try to see the glass as a rectangle, of sorts, with a convex top and convex bottom. The opening at the top isn’t an opening, it’s an ellipse. The shadow at the foot of the glass is a sort of crescent.

You are breaking down the visual input in front of you and translating it into a different format. By doing this, you can then layer things in whatever application you happen to be using, manipulating the forms to create an effect, or simply a look and feel.

How do you do this, you ask? Here’s a simple method to training yourself. Get an eye patch. Seriously. Put an eye patch on your eye for about ten minutes, and look at your subject. After a few minutes the nausea will subside and you’ll be able to focus. By using only one eye, you will lose your depth perception. Things will flatten out.

When you get to the point of actually seeing the geometry of your subject in this way, it will be time to remove the eye patch. Now examine the same subject and remember those shapes. Through practice, you’ll be able to break down a scene into forms and geometry, without any pirate accoutrements. And it will help you when you’re designing a composition. Especially if your composition involves using the built-in geometry of Illustrator’s tools.

-andrew shalat

(Topic of converstaion for InsideMacRadio’s tip airing next Saturday.)