How to prepare for CEED : Study Plan

It's already mid-September and CEED is just about a couple of months away. If you are panicking about the fact that you have not began your preparation or disappointed about the rate at which your preparation is progressing, then welcome to the club of more than 5,000 CEED aspirants!  

A sense of positive pressure gets work done. Deadlines are important to build that positive pressure. To set deadlines and milestones to motivate yourself for preparation, all you need are guidelines on how to make a wonderful plan for CEED preparation. For NID preparation, same guidelines can be followed, but with different dates.  

Before making the plan keep these factors in your mind: 

1. Forget about the portfolio! That’s right! CEED is being held in December, while the interviews won't begin till March. That’s a lot of time to make a killer portfolio. Therefore, while preparing for CEED, just forgot about portfolio! 
2. Sketch on clean sheets of paper.  Though the tip number one tells you to forget about your portfolio, you never know which one of the sketches would be so good that it might work its way into your portfolio. Hence, always use a clean sheet, not a ruled one or a back-of-used-paper sheet. One simple way to do this is buy a nice pack of A4 sized papers meant to take print-outs on. These cost between Rs. 200 to Rs. 300 a ream (500 pages) which is a good investment  
3. Buy pencils. Try out different pencils such as 0.5 mm, 0.7 mm, 0.9 mm mechanical pencils as well as regular wooden pencils during the first week of practice. 

The sample CEED plan 

Milestone	Week	Study area
Start	1st week  (Sept 3rd  week)	Sketching straight lines, perfect freehand circles, ellipses  Try out different pencils and techniques  Watching videos on YouTube about these techniques  Buying books and material for practice  Studying perspective sketching
1	2nd week  (Sept 4th week)	Observing and sketching simple products like cell phones, spoons, scissors, etc.  Learning proper shadows and textures
2	3rd week  (Oct 1st week)	Practicing product textures using pencils  Sketching simple products without observation (only by imagination)
3	4th week  (Oct 2nd week)	Practicing sketching architectural buildings and houses using proper perspective  Start by learning how to sketch human figures. Watch videos for the same  Go through old CEED papers and list down the topics covered in Part A of these papers. This is your syllabus.
4	5th week  (Oct 3rd week)	Detailed sketching of human figures in action  Start Part A preparation. Read the information about relevanttopics from the list of topics you have prepared.
5	6th week  (Oct 4th week)	Detailed study of human hands  Study of hands in different postures   Read more topics for Part A
6	7th week  (Oct 5th week)	Study of problem solving techniques such as Attribute Method, SCAMPER, brainstorming, etc. And applying them to solve simple problems of everyday life such as prevent water clogging on roads  Read more topics for Part A
7	8th week  (Nov 1st week)	Solving old CEED papers. Download an old CEED paper from IITB site and then solve it within set time of 3 hours. Spend next day analyzing the paper  Read more topics for Part A
8	9th week  (Nov 2nd week)	Solve more old CEED papers. And when you discover you are finding difficult to attempt certain questions, then analyze and practice those points where you feel you need improvement  Read more topics for Part A where you feel you lack or need focus
9	10th week  (Nov 3rd week)	Practice selectively on the sketching where you feel you really need to improve. Spend rest of the time on preparing for Part A
10	11th week  (Last week before CEED)	Try to get maximum rest.  Sketch and practice as required.  Read as much Part A topics as needed  Practice based on your requirement
11	CEED	CEED exam this Sunday

This is a broad study plan. You can modify it as per your requirements. You can shorten or lengthen some elements as you wish to.  

Important resources for the study plan 

Sketching: 
Perspective Sketching eBook

Drawing Tutorial - Freehand Lines & Circles -YouTube 

Basics of Pencil Textures - YouTube   

Complete perspective sketching tutorial  

Awesome sketching tutorial by Umea students  

The one and only Spencet Nugentsketches iron   

Human sketching - though digital, can be used onpaper as well 

Human poses

Creativity: 

SCAMPER and Random word 

Attribute method 

SCAMPER 

And don’t forget the all encompassing D'Source