If you’re trying to imagine how something is going to work, there’s no better way to do so than a good old fashioned pen and paper. Unfortunately, if you’re like me, you may have never really learned how to draw, so the initial challenge seems quite daunting. To get yourself started, nothing beats a bit of tracing paper! I bought a whole roll of it on Amazon in a bid to start sketching more, and it’s already come in handy. I’ve created a 4-minute video to go through how I approached drawing up a modified layout to my own kitchen. For those of you that prefer text and images to video, the written version is below.
- Take a photo of your existing room. Make sure the vertical lines are straight. Ideally line it up so you’re viewing a corner like this:
or straight on like this:
2. To make life simpler for tracing (and printing) use a free site like Rapid Resizer to convert your image into an outline or stencil. Then print it out.
3. Use tracing paper to outline the walls, cabinets, corners, the lines that show perspective and make your brain see 3D when it’s 2D. Use a pen or thin marker to make sure you have nice bold lines because the next step is tracing over these lines so they need to be clear.
4. Put another sheet of tracing paper over the first traced lines and start drawing the new ideas in place. This time you can use pencil if you would like to be able to erase and change as you go. But don’t rely too much on the eraser, sometimes it’s nice to just go with what your hand draws and see the evolution of the sketch.
5. Decide if you like your design! And go back to step 4 as many times as you want to keep trying out new ideas.
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