Lisa Arnold

Fashion drawing is all about attitude, exaggeration, and style. As you develop your fashion illustration skills, infuse your work with personal flair — your signature — to create a look unlike any other. Start by observing the golden rules of fashion drawing, mastering the S curve and other figure drawing techniques, and putting a creative spin on the fashion drawings you create.

When drawing fashion illustrations, you first create a rough sketch of the body, also referred to as a croquis. Then you draw the clothes that go on top.Grab your pencil, a black pen, some tracing paper, sketch paper, and a fashion magazine if you have one handy. Here’s how to begin drawing a front view croquis:Lay tracing paper over a full-body picture of a model from a magazine.

Drawing a stick figure, or line figure, is a perfect way for beginners to get comfortable with basic figures for fashion drawing, and it serves as a refresher for people who’ve done figure drawing before.Draw an oval to represent the figure’s head and then draw a dashed line of symmetry.The line of symmetry, or balance line, runs down right through the center of the stick figure’s head and continues to the bottom of the stick feet.

Pants are pretty simple to draw: They start around the waist and follow the legs down to the vicinity of the feet . . . although in today’s fashion, they can also start somewhere around the middle of the derrière and end anywhere from just below the knee to the ground!They can’t be called pants if they don’t have two legs, but the pant legs can hug the body or flow outward and can end above the ankle or drape the floor.

Once you've practiced drawing torsos and getting the general shape of your fashion figures, you can start concentrating on how to draw the various parts of the body. Let's start at the top and work our way down. How to draw heads Start with a basic oval when drawing a head for your fashion drawings. Take a look at your head in a mirror.

Many fashion artists feel intimidated when drawing shoes, but if you can draw feet, you can draw a shoe. Shoes finish a fashion look. Like clothes, shoe styles change quickly, so keep up with what’s new. But keep the classics on hand (or foot!) as well — they only get better with age.Draw a fierce-looking high-heeled shoe.

Women’s pants are fun to draw, and the varieties are endless. The waistlines, length, and fit are constantly changing. Designing pants can be such fun when you think about the placement of pockets and topstitching, along with the height of the waistline and length of the hem.Don't forget the pants staple — jeans!

When you’re drawing a dude’s arms, don’t aim for muscle beach in fashion drawing. Male arms can look toned and terrific without making people’s heads swivel in disbelief at their size and shape. Keep in mind that men’s shoulders are wider.To draw attention-getting arms on a man, follow these easy steps:Lightly sketch a torso with armholes.

Eyes really are the windows to the soul. The expression in the eyes is the first thing that people look at in real life as well as in fashion illustration. Eyes instantly express a person’s mood and can convey a haughty, happy, or distant look. There’s no end to the looks you can give your fashion creations through their eyes.