Books and Articles by Marianne Egan

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.

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.

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.

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.

Once you have your fashion drawing foundation in place, it’s time to party with your pencil lines! Gesture drawings are the way to go when you want to create a bold and exaggerated style that really emphasizes movement.Show off long lines to create a fashion drawing.Do a quick drawing of a very exaggerated fashion figure with long, stretched-out legs (one bent and one straight) and the head straight up and down.

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.

Drawing the waistband and belt loops on a pair of fashion pants takes just a few simple steps. The complication factor comes from the variety of ways you can design the look. You can alter the number of belt loops, the location of the topstitching, the placement of the button, how many buttons you use — the options are endless!

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.

You can use markers for a variety of purposes in fashion drawing. Some artists love to add marker lines over a pencil sketch to get that sharp, clean look (ultra-fine black Sharpies are great for this). You can also use markers to add color to your fashion drawings.Begin your marker supplies with a few key colors in high-quality markers and the rest of the colors in cheaper versions (100-color sets).