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thor anticipate problems and make final changes before investingthe time and materials to build the final piece. The first finishedversion of the author's dining chair, above right, is the culminationof an idea that started as just doodles and was refinedthrough drawings and mock-ups.The author used shading and perspective to make the rendereddrawing of his chair, above left, look like the finished chair. Also,a rendered perspective is an excellent sales tool for selling a designto a prospective client, who may not know how to 'read' ascale drawing. The fu ll-size model, above center, helped the audrawingabove) of how the shaded cushion and sketched-in woodgrain give the drawing a realistic appearance.Mock-ups and prototypes-Once the full-scale drawing is done, Ihave a choice to make between building the piece or making afull-size model or mock-up first. While the drawing stages I've describedare crucial to the design process, drawings of a complexpiece are often insufficient for getting a clear image of how the .lines will interact when the actual piece is viewed from differentangles. A mock-up or model is invaluable here. Building a mockupis much like building an actual piece of furniture, and you canmeasure directly from your full-scale drawings to size the parts. Ifthe piece is symmetrical, you may build only a half model, as ofmy chair shown above (center). Early mock-ups can be made fromcardboard and scraps that are just hot-glued or nailed together.The trick is to keep things flexible so you can experiment withchanging the shape of parts or changing the way they connect toeach other. Eventually, I get to a stage where I'm ready to make abetter quality model-my prototype for tile chair. TIle prototype mayonly be screwed-together plywood, but it's built well enough so Ican sit in it to test its comfort and stability. My prototype convincedme to change the design of my chair, because tile meeting of theback splat with tile arm didn't look as good in life as in my drawings.For tables and other simple forms, there's no need for mock-ups,because me process can be time-consuming. But when it comes to aspatially complex piece, me work put into development of a modelcan help you steer clear of functional or visual problems, as me followingstory illusu-ates. A few years ago, I began showing renderedperspectives of a chair collection (not including the chair shown intilis article) to manufacturers of contract furniture. After speakingto several companies, I refined my drawings according to theirfeedback. In drawing each perspective of the chairs, I carefullychose the angle of view that would show off my chair in the mostflattering way. One manufacturer finally signed a contract for mychair collection and made three prototypes from my full-scaledrawings. Viewed from the correct angle, each chair looked asgood as the original perspective drawings. But when we walkedaround the chair, the design lost its coherency and proportionalattractiveness. I discovered that through the drawing process I hadperfected one view of the chair and ignored the others. Eventually,the manufacturer decided not to produce the collection, and I amleft wondering if it would have succeeded had I worked out thedesigns with mock-ups before submitting them. Having spent thetime to extenSively prototype the design of the chair in this article,I am confident it works, visually and in terms of comfort. DPeter Kom is director of the woodworkingljumiture design programat the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colo.,where he teaches a workshop on basic drawing for designers. Formore in/ormation, write to Anderson Ranch, Box 6194, SnowmassVillage, Colo. 81615Further reading ________ _Books on drawing basics:Drawing on the Right Side Of the Brain by Betty Edwards. J.P.Tarcher, 9110 Sunset Blvd., Suite 250, Los Angeles, CA 90069; 1979.Th inking with a Pencil by Henning Nelms. Ten Speed Press, Box7123, Berkeley, CA 94707; 1981.Books on perspective drawing and rendering:Color Drawing by Michael Doyle. Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 135 W50th St., New York, NY 10020; 1983.Design Graphics, 2nd edition by C. Leslie Martin. MacMillan PublishingCo., Inc., 866-T 3rd Ave., New York, NY 10022; 1968.Perspective Drawing Handbook by Joseph D'Amelio. Leon Amiel,Publisher, 31 W 46th St., New York, NY 10036; 1964.Books on standard measurements for design:Humanscale 11213 by Niels Diffrient, Alvin Tilley and Joan Bardagjy.The MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA02 142; 1974.The Measure of Man: Human Factops in Design by Henry Dreyfuss.Whitney Library of Design, 18 E. 50th St., New York, NY 10022; 1967.January/February 1989 73