Fashion Drawing For Dummies
Overview
The fast and easy way to learn the art of fashion drawing
This fun guide gives you dozens of step-by-step diagrams that walk you through the process of preparing creative illustrations that you can later develop into dynamic presentations for your design portfolio. Plus, you'll not only learn how to draw clothes and fabric, but also how to show details that make up the total look: faces and hairstyles, fashion accents, and a wide variety of textures.
If you're an aspiring fashion designer, you know it's essential to be able to draw, prepare, and present a fashion drawing. Whether
you have little or no prior drawing experience, Fashion Drawing For Dummies gives you easy-to-follow, non-intimidating instructions for mastering the drawing skills you need to design like a pro.
- Learn the rules and techniques of fashion drawing
- Draw the fashion figure in different poses and from multiple angles
- Discover how to complement your drawings with accessories, clothing, and style
If you're a fledgling designer looking for non-intimidating guidance on learning the ins and outs of fashion drawing, this friendly guide has you covered!
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About The Author
Marianne Egan teaches fashion illustration and design, apparel construction, and more. Lisa Smith Arnold teaches art and drawing, including fashion illustration, at Norwalk Community College.?She has also served as creative coordinator and fashion editor at several major publications.
Sample Chapters
fashion drawing for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
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.
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Fashion Drawing
If you want to have a career in fashion illustration, you need to do more than create a portfolio and wait. Be proactive! Putting your portfolio together is the first step toward marketing your work, but it’s far from the last.Making a name for yourself also involves putting yourself out there in the fashion world, using every possible medium to promote yourself, and never passing up a chance to network.
Fashion Drawing
Not only is staying current on fashion trends fun, but it’s also essential in today’s fashion world. Your fashion drawings must be timely or even cutting-edge if you want anyone to take a look at them. Read about, watch, and study all that’s current in the fashion world, which is constantly changing. Here are ten ways to stay in the loop.
Fashion Drawing
The way the lines of the shoulders play off the angle of the hips can make your fashion drawing really fierce! The angles you choose for the shoulders, hips, and waist can convey totally different attitudes.
For a more dramatic look, use a steeper angle between the trapezoids that represent the upper and lower body.
Fashion Drawing
In fashion drawing, you’re either copying something that’s already been designed — drawing something you see on the street or runway — or designing a garment as you draw. Either way, you’ll discover endless style variations. Remember that there are many more shirt types for you to copy or create. The difference is in the details.
Fashion Drawing
There are a number of ways to add detail and interest to the clothing you draw on your fashion figures. Following, are a couple of common ways to start with.
Topstitching for function and looks
Topstitching, which is thread stitched on the fabric that can be seen from the outside, can add the detail that distinguishes one pair of pants from another.
Fashion Drawing
All fashion drawings consist of lines, curves, and geometric shapes. Figuring out how to draw smooth, flowing lines and shapes that vary from dark to light, thick to thin, and bold to subtle isn’t always easy. Fortunately, practice really does make perfect, so the more you draw, the better you get and the more comfortable you become with varying your technique.
Fashion Drawing
The basic torso is simply two trapezoids drawn one above the other. The upper trapezoid is upside-down, and the lower one is right side up. Both male and female torsos have these shapes, but each has a slightly different twist to represent the different dimensions of each gender.
Men are much boxier than women.
Fashion Drawing
Before you can start drawing a fashion face, you first have to draw a head with a face grid. When you’re ready for your face, you can adjust the guide lines on the face grid to reflect various views of the face as it slowly turns. When you draw a profile, for example, the center front line moves all the way to the side.
Fashion Drawing
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.
Fashion Drawing
Sketching a fashion illustration can take hours when you pay attention to every little detail. On the other hand, drawing can take a couple of minutes if you go with the minimal look and simply focus on the garment design, giving little thought to the body, face, arms, or legs.The main rule of the minimal look is to use the fewest number of lines possible.
Fashion Drawing
Fashion figures often twist and move into extreme positions. Nearly all wonderful fashion drawings start with the S curve. No, the S curve isn’t some special code that fashionistas use. It’s a drawing tool based on the letter S (or some form of it), and it’s critical when you’re drawing a model’s body. The S curve helps you achieve a graceful line of the spine in one swoop.
Fashion Drawing
A digital portfolio simply means one you can access on a computer device, including mobile devices. All fashion illustrators in today’s world need to know how to use the computer to their advantage.Choosing work for your digital portfolio is no different from choosing images for a traditional portfolio. A benefit of putting together a digital portfolio is that you can include more work — but not too much more — if you can’t narrow your choices to 10 or 15 of your best pieces.
Fashion Drawing
When you first start drawing fashion illustrations, it’s easiest to imitate someone else’s style. But eventually, you need to develop your own signature look. Try these methods on for drawing style:
Experiment with exaggeration and play with proportions. Draw attention with outrageous hair or go for a minimalist look.
Fashion Drawing
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!
Fashion Drawing
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.
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.
Fashion Drawing
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.
Fashion Drawing
Folds don’t just fall without purpose — there are reasons why cloth pulls and moves on your fashion figure. When material moves in different directions (because you’ve drawn a fashion figure really working it), folds appear.The placement and appearance of the folds partly depends on how you’ve drawn your fashion figure, because the folds show areas where the fabric is stretched or compressed.
Fashion Drawing
Fashion drawing isn’t known for having a lot of rules, but it does have a few pointers. When drawing fashion models, remember the following guidelines:
Know the difference between figure drawing and fashion drawing. In fashion drawing, go for a stylized look over realism. Show just a few key folds or shadows instead of every detail, and leave some white space.
Fashion Drawing
Shading techniques are used in both figure and fashion drawing but in somewhat different ways. In fashion illustration, you often use shading to create a fabric texture or to accent a curve in the body. Some fashion illustrators prefer to work without using any shading at all.But for figure drawing artists, shading is essential, because shading molds the body with lights and darks to create dimension.
Fashion Drawing
You may be torn between buying a pad of paper or individual sheets for your fashion drawings. When you’re starting out, buy pads of drawing paper because you get more bang for your buck.When you have a full pad of paper at your disposal, you’re more likely to flip the page and keep experimenting with figures and colors, which helps you improve your skills.
Fashion Drawing
Not all poses you see on real-life models translate well on to paper, but it’s helpful to recognize different poses and understand what types of poses work well with different types of clothing.A fashion model in an evening dress doesn’t strike the same poses as a teen dude in an urban outfit. The fashion model stands tall and straight to show off the gown’s bodice and skirt; the teen dude is likely to assume a slouched pose to demonstrate how the clothing moves with ease over his body.
Fashion Drawing
All fabrics work for at least one type of clothing, but as a fashion artist, you’re the one who chooses the type of fabric that works for your fashion figure’s clothes. Texture, which in the fashion world means the feel of the fabric, suggests different fabrics and adds a sense of dimension.Draw a herringbone texture.
Fashion Drawing
Creating great arm attitude is tough enough to do in person, and you, as a fashion illustrator, have the extra challenge of capturing those same attitudes on paper. Fashion models practice moving their arms to create seductive and graceful poses, alluring and charming poses, and shocking and powerful poses. If a model can’t work those arms in different ways, she’ll be lost in the modeling industry.
Fashion Drawing
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.
When making fashion sketches, you have to draw the arms in proportion to the rest of the body, or your drawing will look very off-balance. A common beginner’s mistake is to make the arms too short, so use the correct head count. Arms should be 2-1/2 heads long, not including the wrists and hands.
The elbows should line up with the waistline, about 3 heads from the top.
Fashion Drawing
The powerful stance is in, and arms can convey such a powerful feel in fashion drawing. The popular hands-on-the-waist look really brings out the fierceness of a pose.To create fierce bent arms, draw two trapezoids to represent an angled torso.Add armholes on either side. Mark the figure’s center front line with a dashed line to keep the body even.
Fashion Drawing
Although you won’t draw a fashion design from the back every day, you’ll use the back view occasionally. A woman’s back in fashion illustration is quite beautiful, with sleek lines and shoulder blades that look like angel wings. Outrageous dresses for women with barely there backs, including wedding gowns, cry out for a back view.
You should have no problems getting your fashion-drawing boys to dress up just the way you want them to (unlike the real versions). Sooner or later, a boy has to get dressed up for a holiday, a family party, or a school concert. Much to his displeasure, he has to put on a decent pair of pants and a blazer.
Brush up on blazer basics
A boy’s blazer is simply the mini version of a man’s blazer with simple lapels, two lower pockets, and one breast pocket.
Fashion Drawing
Patterns (not sewing ones) can really throw a fashion artist, but you can draw awesome fabric designs if you know a few artists’ tricks. So many illustrators opt out and just shade in fashion drawings.But what happens when you want to draw a whimsical skirt sprinkled with polka dots or high rubber boots with a great-looking plaid on them?
Fashion Drawing
Even though hair isn’t the main focus of a fashion illustration, it adds to the overall look and can portray a certain style. However, you don’t have to follow any specific hair rules. If you prefer wild-looking hair on your prim and proper fashion model, go for it!Hairstyles shouldn’t distract from the fashion elements (clothes), but your model’s hair also shouldn’t be boring.
Fashion Drawing
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.
Fall fashions offer a wonderful range of opportunities in fashion illustration. Jackets look smart in the fall. Blazers over turtlenecks convey the elegant country look, and short, snappy jackets work for the city. The fall look is about layers, because a fall day can go from chilly to warm to chilly again.A T-shirt layered over a long-sleeve shirt with a hoodie on top can make your fashion look, as can a flannel over a hooded shirt and a knit skirt over leggings and knee-high boots.
Fashion Drawing
You’ll often draw eyes from different angles, depending on the look that you’re going for. Each angle involves a different technique. Sometimes you can add flair simply by drawing eyelids and lashes.Three-quarter-view eyes offer a different perspective.The key to drawing eyes in the three-quarter view is not drawing both eyes the same size.
Keep noses under control in a fashion illustration. The idea is to create a great-looking nose without going overboard with too many shapes and shadows. You’re not illustrating an anatomy textbook, and the nose isn’t an area you want to stress. Oh, and realistic-looking nostrils aren’t at all fashion forward!Draw a simple fashion nose from the front view.
Part of the fun in drawing fashion is the release of your creative spirit. Watch dancers to feel the power of creative movement. They bend, jump, leap, spin, and twist their bodies with grace and strength. Fashion artists can steal ideas about movement from dancers to create beautiful, strong poses that allow creative movement in the clothing being shown on the model.
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.
Fashion Drawing
Sweaters are great layering pieces that keep your model warm and fashionable all at once. Some sweaters open from the front, and others go on over the head. Sweaters are always made of some type of stretchy material, so you can draw them either pretty tight without a lot of seam lines or really loose and baggy but still without a lot of seam lines.
Legs can make or break a great fashion pose. They add so much personality and attitude. Long legs can turn women into supermodels whose bodies go on forever. For men, legs define masculinity even in the most feminine of outfits. For children, legs portray the innocence of a relaxed child’s pose.Draw the front view of female fashion legs.
You don’t want to draw anything other than a graceful ear in your fashion illustrations. Fashion ears shouldn’t be big and floppy, and they shouldn’t stick out on your fashion head. Fashion ears are often no more than a place to hang a pair of elegant earrings.
You don’t want to play up ears on women or men, but you do have a bit of a leeway with the kids.
Sun hats, brim hats, and snug-fitting hats all start with one mini golden rule: draw a shape that fits around the head before adding brims, textures, and accessories.Draw three different hats for women.Draw the head and neck of a female fashion figure. Map out the crown of the hat close to the head. Embellish the hat by adding different brims, textures, or even feathers or flower shapes (not shown) to adorn the lady’s hat.
Fashion Drawing
Drawing jewelry on your fashion figures is all about using basic shapes to create necklaces, earrings, bracelets, or watches. Going back to the basics applies whether you’re creating simple or elaborate jewelry.Draw a fashion necklace.Draw the head, neck, and shoulders of a woman. A swan-like neck is essential to show off a necklace.
Fashion Drawing
A mini golden rule is that you must know what a foot looks like before you can even begin to draw a shoe. After you know the basic shape of a foot, you can draw everything from classic sandals and loafers to outlandish boots and heels.Draw tiny fashion feet.Let’s face it: Real fashion models have big feet. They’re super tall and couldn’t possibly walk, run, or leap with tiny ones.
Feet hold the body up, so don’t draw them too small on your fashion figure drawings — the length of your foot is about the length of your forearm, from the crease of your elbow to the start of your wrist. You can draw feet from many angles, but concentrate on the front and side views for now.
Start your feet by drawing a hoof (as in animal) shape — don’t laugh, it works!
Some fashion models are fortunate enough to wear glam dresses and gowns, where the cloth tumbles into a beautiful cascade. Many noted designers use bolts and bolts of fabric to get gorgeous hanging folds.
Don’t draw little curves at the hemline of a dress and expect them to look like folds. Choose a few key folds and follow their form from where they begin down to the hemline for good fashion results.
Most fashion illustrators love to draw fancy dresses and create a glamorous mood. With gowns for women, just about anything goes, and as a fashion artist, you get to go to new and exciting places with your pencil.Dress up the basic shapes.Just about every basic shape comes into play when you’re drawing gowns and dynamic dresses.
Fashion Drawing
When you draw fashions for children, make sure your figures have simple hairstyles. In real life, you rarely see a kid with a fantastic ’do. After all, their main agenda is playing, and a parent’s goal is keeping kids’ hair easy to care for and style.
Stick with the short and sweet look
A short cut is every parent’s dream, and it helps showcase your children’s fashion designs.
Fashion Drawing
Although men usually have fewer choices in hairstyling than women, you still have to master the main male hairstyles. Keep in mind that men also have another hairy area to consider: the face. You can hair to the chin line just as you do to the hairline to create a dramatic beard.Give your male fashion figures a head of short hair.
Many new fashion artists hide the hands by sticking them behind the figure’s back or by drawing shapes that looks like paws. But hands don’t have to be so hard if you use basic shapes and curves.Follow these steps to create a flat hand with the fingers extended:
Draw an oval for the palm.
This oval should be a little less than half the length of your figure’s head.
You can really have fun with hands in fashion illustration. Gone are the days of always hiding them behind a fashion figure’s back or slipping them into pockets. Instead, try some fluid and playful styles. After you master a few classic or playful poses, you can use them for every type of fashion look.To draw hands in proportion to the rest of your figure, use your head — literally.
Counting head lengths when drawing fashion figures works when dividing up the length of the legs. The entire length of legs in a figure drawing runs about four heads. The knee joints start within the sixth head.
Men’s legs are thicker than women’s. Keep a woman’s leg long and curvy while making a man’s wide and straight with muscular calves.
Although men’s formalwear doesn’t have nearly the variety of styles that women’s fancy dresses do, you can still tailor the look. What looks better than a well-cut jacket and a pair of pants that hang from a guy’s hips just the right way?
Sketch a suitable tux jacket
Tuxes can vary in the color and fabric (powder blue velvet tuxes were popular in the 1970s!
You can often read a person’s mood just from the set of her mouth, and the same is true in fashion illustration. Certain mouth shapes are in style at different times; for example, full lips are popular in the fashion world these days. But don’t limit yourself to one style; lips can come in shapes from classic to rosebud to diamond shaped.
For drawing kids’ pants, almost all the same rules apply for drawing pants for men and women. The rules for women work for girls, with differences in the curves of the body; girls tend to have a boxier shape rather than a small waist and wide hips. Boys’ pants are just a shorter version of men’s pants; boys and men have the same squarish shape.
A man’s gotta have pants. You can draw dozens of different looks for men’s pants. A well-dressed guy turns heads. Fit is important when you’re going for a tailored look, and for students, the style is all about going slouchy. Either way, you’re allowed to have fun with guys’ fashion pants.Men’s pants differ from women’s mostly in the fit and in the subtle details such as the pocket locations and the length of the center front fly.
Fashion Drawing
You need to know how to draw age-appropriate dresses for young girls and preteens. Wearing a party dress makes a little girl feel like a fairy or a princess or, well, a fairy princess. You may not be able to get your girls out of party dresses — girls may even opt to wear them over a pair of jeans with high-tops!
Pockets play a key role when you’re drawing pants. Some are easy to see from the outside (usually in jeans), and others are sort of hidden in the side seams (you can’t really illustrate these; just draw a hand hiding in them). Here’s a list of the variety of pocket styles:
Stitched, rounded pocket: Almost always used as front pockets, these usually appear in pairs, stay flat on the body, and have a row or two of topstitching on the inside edge.
Polos are shirts made out of knit fabric, which means they stretch and are quite comfortable to wear. They’re like T-shirts but dressier. The neckline on the polo has a collar and a placket with several buttons. Men, women, and kids all sport polos, often with a manufacturer’s logo and sometimes with a pocket on one side.
Kids’ shoes are all about comfort. Fashion-illustration kids often sport sneakers, but you have other footwear choices as well. Boots, flip-flops, and sandals all work for kids as well as adults.
Sneakers — always in style
How many types of sneakers can you draw on your fashion figure of a child? Too many! Athletic sneaks are padded, with arched and chunky-looking soles that curve up at the toes.
Spring jackets are fun to draw because they’re not as heavy and bulky as winter wear; you can actually see clothes peeking out beneath some spring jackets. Outerwear really lightens up in the spring. Spring also brings rain in many parts of the country, so you need to know how to draw raincoats as well. You can have a lot of fun with these jackets.
Fashion Drawing
Even the bottoms of pants should look sharp in fashion illustration. To accomplish this, use curved lines to wrap the bottom of the pants around the ankle, foot, or calf (or thigh if you’re drawing shorts). The type of pants you’re drawing determines the kind of hem you draw.Hems can reflect several cuts.Skinny-leg pants: These types of legs are like a second skin on the leg.
Fashion Drawing
Three-quarter views of the torso show mood and subtle action in your fashion drawings. The partial side view brings your figure to life because you avoid that straight-on stiff soldier look. Plus, this view is a typical red carpet view that adds lots of movement to your fashion pose. Even better, this view works like a charm to make thin appear even thinner.
Draw a long, lean fashion figure and show her (or him) off in clothes that really hug that bod. Some clothes are really tight, and why not? On the body of a fashion figure, that’s often the way they look best! No matter how tight the shirt, dress, or pants are, folds do exist — tinier ones. You need to add them to show how even the tightest of fabrics stretch.
In fashion figures, a couple of trapezoids on top of each other give you the basic idea of the torso’s shape, but you need armholes, leg holes, crotches, breasts, and pecs to turn a shape into a person.
Eyeball the proper widths and lengths to get the torso right. And remember that fashion illustration is all about exaggeration, so don’t be afraid to lengthen your torso.
Many of the clothing pieces you draw will be made of everyday fabrics — denim, different weights of cotton, and so on. But sooner or later, you’ll want to draw something suitable for a special occasion or made out of higher quality materials.You can show that a fabric is more than the run-of-the-mill cotton by employing the techniques you read about in this and previous chapters.
Fashion Drawing
To make the most of your female fashion figures, you need to be able to draw short hair, long hair, simple hair, fancy hair, and everything in between. No matter what hairstyle you choose when drawing your fashion figure, make sure it’s the right accent for the mood you’re aiming for.Draw a traditional short bob.
Fashion Drawing
Waistlines come in all shapes and sizes, even in fashion drawing, but the basics remain: a woman’s waist is curvy, and a guy’s is relatively straight. Hips are wider and curvier on women and straighter and thinner for men. Hips are the widest part of your lower half.
To draw a waistline, check the lines of proportion and use the head count to properly place the waist.
By the time you’ve finished drawing a winter coat, you’ve just about covered up your fashion model! Floor-length coats, ski jackets, pea coats, and tailored coats paired with gloves, hats, and scarves make winter fashions fun and easy to draw — you’ve covered up nearly all the anatomy and don’t need to worry about drawing the perfect pair of ears or hands.
Fashion figures need attitude as well as style. Here’s how to draw a basic fashion figure with a look that rules the runway. Start by creating a fashion croquis, or rough sketch of the body:
Lay tracing paper over a full-body picture of a model from a magazine and use a pencil to trace around the perimeter of her body.
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.
Fashion Drawing
Blouses, sweaters, and T-shirts come in so many fantastic styles that having to choose which one to draw is like being in a candy store — where do you start? As always, you start with the basic shapes and add the details that top off any look.To begin with a simple shirt with set-in sleeves, the most common type of sleeve, follow these steps:
Lightly sketch a torso from the front view.
Fashion Drawing
When drawing a stick figure from the side for your fashion sketches, start with an eight-head count. A stick figure drawn from the side looks a bit more relaxed because you show a bit of a curve in the spine by the waist. The head shape is slightly angled, but the proportion lines remain the same.Try these steps to draw a figure facing right:
Draw a head shape in a three-quarter view, as in (a) in the figure.
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!
Drawing the fashion back with style is easy — and necessary, given all the backless numbers you see in the fashion industry. Forget rippling muscles, because drawing a fashion back is mostly about a smooth and simple style that works for your fashion figure.Drawing poses from the back conveys an attitude of confidence — both in your fashion model and in yourself.
Fashion Drawing
A fashion head is basically an oval to which you attach a beautiful upper body. Start with the neck and add in shoulders to see your fashion figure start to come alive. Breaking figure drawings down into basic geometric shapes and using lines of proportion solves half of your problems in creating figure drawings.
Fashion Drawing
Ah, the T-shirt! The tee is easy to draw, and it lends itself to all kinds of fun prints. Throughout the years, the T-shirt has made its way from the gym teacher’s wardrobe to the high-fashion runway and back again! Guys, women, and kids practically live in them.Draw the basic woman's tee.Start with a basic shirt.
Fashion Drawing
Drawing figures from the same perspective all the time is way boring, so master the different views from the beginning. You don’t want to get in a front-view rut. Drawing from a side view lets you vary your looks. Certain types of clothes show best from certain angles.The look of the torso from the side really counts in fashion illustration: A woman can show off her bod, and a guy can look pretty ripped in a simple T-shirt.
Fashion Drawing
Slouching was never considered a fashion must until the fashion world declared it sexy. You can draw your fashion figure in a superb looking slouch, and no one will tell you to straighten up that figure!Use the S curve as you draw a fashion figure leaning back.Draw a torso from the side, using the S shape to create the curve of the back.
The button-down shirt hangs in everyone’s closet these days. For guys, it’s standard dress in many offices, and it’s a staple in nearly every woman’s wardrobe. Little boys wear a button-down with a tie on dress-up occasions, and little girls may wear one under a dressy jumper or with a skirt.Draw the classic women's blouse.
Fashion Drawing
Why are some pencils so popular for fashion artists? Because folks have used them since kindergarten. They’re the comfort food of art supplies. You use pencils to begin your sketch, put the finishing touches on it, and add all sorts of details in between.Many beginning artists don’t realize how many varieties of pencils they can choose from.
Fashion Drawing
Although 11 heads may be the standard fashion illustration height, you don’t have to stick to the rule. Change your drawing’s proportions by adding heads (the height of a head as a guideline for proportion, not actual heads) to places such as the torso or the legs.For some edgy front fashion poses with extended proportions, follow these steps:Create a new head template (add as many heads as you like).
Fashion Drawing
Illustrating movement takes some tricks, but the impression of movement adds so much life to your illustrations that mastering these techniques is worth the time and effort.Draw a fierce fashion walk.Sketch a fashion figure walking with one leg forward. Slant those shoulders and hips for fashion attitude.
Draw pants.
Making flat, tailored ribbon bows is quick and easy. A tailored ribbon bow lends a clean, modern edge to gift wrapping; and because it's flat, this bow is ideal for gifts that will be shipped or stacked.Assemble your materials: spools of double-faced ribbon, sharp scissors, stapler, and tape or a hot glue gun.
Fashion Drawing
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).
Fashion Drawing
Arms can go any which way in fashion drawing. A few fun options include bringing one or both arms above the head or having them cross the body.
Take a look at fashion magazines to get some ideas for arm placement. You often see models with their arms covering their foreheads, resting on their heads, crossing over or in front of their bodies, or lying behind their heads.
Fashion Drawing
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.
Fashion Drawing
The drama and interplay between the line of the shoulders and the line of the hips really bring fashion illustration to life. You can create a terrific torso by following a simple fashion formula that includes the S curve. Or you can make the basic shape even more simple by just sketching the opposite hip and shoulder angles.
Fashion Drawing
Kids’ arms are short and rounded, and they’re always purely functional looking in fashion drawings. No kid frets about how his arms look the way teens and adults do. Kids’ arms are meant for climbing, playing, and carrying, not for posing or preening.
No cartooning when drawing kids’ arms: You’re drawing fashion kids who look hip like their fashion-forward parents.
Fashion Drawing
As you get comfortable with pencil and paper, work on incorporating a technique or two that tells the viewer that this drawing was done by you, not one of the hundreds of other artists out there. Here are some tips on putting your own stamp on your art.
Develop a signature style
The Great Masters of art have recognizable styles, and you need to have a distinctive style as well.
Fashion Drawing
In fashion illustration, a few good lines can go a long way toward creating a dynamic torso. However, consider what you can do with just one good line. Try drawing the torso with flair by using a technique called gesture drawing, the art of drawing quickly to capture the essence of something rather than to immortalize every detail.
Long and lean is the overall motto of fashion design for women. Legs, arms, and torsos on female bodies are drawn at unrealistic lengths and widths. Male and children’s bodies are drawn a little more realistically, but they also have their own fashion proportion rules.Life-drawing class instructors often pound into students’ brains that the head fits into the average adult body seven to eight times.
Great-looking hair is a fashion essential — even in a fashion illustration. If your drawing doesn’t have natural yet exciting-looking hair, the hair will detract from the overall impact of your drawing. And unstylish hair can date your drawing in a nanosecond. As a trendy fashion illustrator, you definitely don’t want people thinking your art is outdated.
Back in the days before the internet and great cameras, fashion illustrators were essential for showing a designer’s creations. Today, you find fewer true fashion illustrators who make their living through drawing fashion.But the art of fashion drawing itself will never die, no matter how advanced technology gets.
Fashion illustrators use four views when drawing a model. Imagine yourself trying on an outfit and looking in the mirror. What views do you try to get to determine whether a look is for you? Here are the four views you see as you turn slowly from front to back:
Front view
Three-quarter view
Side view
Back view
Facing forward: The front view
Artists — and that’s you!
Fashion Drawing
Art portfolios come in two forms: traditional, physical portfolios that you can carry around with you and digital portfolios that you can e-mail or post online for people to see from anywhere in the world.Physical portfolios contain the hard copies of your work. Hard copies can include your original sketches or scans of your work printed out and placed in the physical portfolio.
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