Product Design: Sketching in Colour

Colour isn't decoration on a sketch. It's information.

About This Course

A Copic marker doesn't behave like paint or pencil. It layers, it blends fast, and it forgives almost nothing. This course teaches product sketching in colour: rendering form, material and mood with markers, the way working product designers pitch an idea before it's ever built.

What You'll Create

  • A folio of colour product sketches, developed across the term.
  • One fully rendered final design, shown from two angles, selected for the end of term exhibition.
  • A brief statement on the material and colour choices behind the final piece.

Course Details

Age Range
9-11
Term
Term 3
Schedule
Thursdays, 5:00pm
Duration
10 weeks
Price
$500
Spots Available
0 of 8
This course is currently full. Join the waitlist below to be notified if a spot becomes available.

What You'll Learn

  • • You'll layer Copic marker light to dark, the way it's actually meant to work.
  • • You'll render form with colour and value, not just outline it.
  • • You'll show the difference between matte, metal and glass using colour alone.
  • • You'll work fast without losing control of the render.
  • • You'll present a finished product sketch from more than one angle.

The Support You'll Get

You won't be handed the answer. You'll be shown how to find it.

Your practitioner has spent years making their own work, and their own mistakes. In the studio they work alongside you: asking the right questions, pointing out options you hadn't seen, helping you push through the moment you get stuck. The ideas stay yours. The decisions stay yours. They're there so you're never finding the way through alone.

Week by Week

Week 1: Copic basics. How the ink layers, and why you work light to dark.

Week 2: Blending. Building smooth colour transitions with a marker instead of paint.

Week 3: Rendering form. Using value to make a flat sketch look three-dimensional.

Week 4: Materials and surface. How matte, metal and glass each read differently in colour.

Week 5: Colour theory for product sketches. Mood and material through colour choice.

Week 6: Speed sketching in colour. Fast concepts, loose colour blocking.

Week 7: A considered product sketch, from line to full colour render.

Week 8: Adding a second angle to the same design.

Week 9: Refining the strongest piece.

Week 10: Exhibition. Public showing, families attend.

Every course ends with an exhibition

Celebrate what you created with the people and our community. Every term concludes with a presentation or exhibition of your work: a chance to share your process, your ideas, and what you've made.

Your Instructor

Andrew Chew

Andrew Chew

Visual Communication & Photography

Andrew studied Visual Communication, majoring in Photography. Twenty years on, he's worked as a designer, photographer and gallery director, running No Vacancy Gallery and later directing YAVA. He built Assembly because the system around young people kept treating creativity as decoration instead of discipline. He teaches the way he's worked: try, fail, try again. Back your ideas. Test them. Push through when it's not working yet. He's spent years making his own work and his own mistakes, and in the studio he works alongside you, showing you how to look, how to frame, how to decide what matters, then make it.

Want to join?

This course is full. Join the waitlist above to be notified if a spot opens up.