Fashion Illustration for Beginners
August 25, 2024
Fashion Illustration Made Simple: A Guide for New Artists
Are you an aspiring fashion illustrator dreaming of getting your illustrations published in vogue, or sketching for the fashion houses of Paris, London or New York? We get it, fashion illustration is a beautiful craft, but where do you begin when you’re a new artist? We’ve got you covered with everything you need to know to get started sketching your designs.
Understanding Fashion Illustration
Fashion illustrations are the artwork, or sketches of a piece of fashion, they can be found in magazines, promotional ads, or as stand-alone pieces of artwork. They can also be used as a visual representation of a designer’s idea for a garment used in the production process of making the garment.
Importance of Fashion Sketches and Illustrations
Fashion Illustration might not seem like the most important part of the design process but it’s actually a crucial step.
Sketching is how the design starts to move from the mind of a designer into its first physical form. This can be merely a rough sketch to get the concept on paper or a technical sketch, which is called a flat, and is used to convey the idea of a design to a patternmaker or fabricator.
Starting with a Fashion Croquis
Croquis means sketch in French and it’s the word used in the fashion industry to describe the more artistic fashion illustrations that are used to communicate the designer’s idea, this is where a design starts. This sketch is where the creativity of fashion illustration can flow, using different poses for poses, expressions and materials to create more than just a sketch but an entire mood of the garment.
Transitioning to Fashion Flats
From the croquis, the drawing will need to be transformed into a flat, which is a technical drawing of the design. This drawing is made in a completely flat style, hence the name. Meaning there’s very little dimension or texture to the illustration, rather it’s showcasing the dimensions and technical aspects. This is a key part of the technical pack that is used by the patternmaker during the production process of the garment.
Utilizing Digital Tools for Illustration
While some people love to create their fashion illustrations and sketches by hand, there are a ton of great tools that make digital illustration incredibly easy and convenient.
Even if you think you’re more of an analog type of illustrator, we encourage you to give these tools a try. You might just be surprised at how much you like them– plus then all you need is your tablet and you can sketch anywhere inspiration strikes, no need to gather any additional supplies.
Overview of Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator as you may have guessed by the name is a digital tool that is used to illustrate. The tool essentially acts as a digital sketch book and comes with different brushes to mimic the drawing styles of different mediums, for example paint, colored pencils, acrylics, etc.
It’s a powerful tool that you can create your sketches using, but one of the most convenient things is that when you make your fashion illustrations digitally if something needs to be amended or redesigned, you can simply adjust it in illustrator rather than starting over from scratch.
Exploring Drawing Apps
There are endless drawing apps, both paid and free, that you can download onto your tablet, computer or phone to digitally sketch with. Exploring and testing out different ones will help you find the one you’re most comfortable using. If you are using a tablet, consider getting an iPencil, which makes it feel like you are sketching on paper rather than digitally. You’ll get more precise lines than using your finger, and you’ll have more control than using a mouse or trackpad.
Here are some to get you started:
- Sketchbook
- Tayasui Sketches
- MediBang Paint
- Procreate
- Adobe Fresco
Techniques for Drawing the Fashion Figure
There are many different techniques to drawing the fashion figure, but most people will recommend doing it in 10 simple steps:
- Draw a vertical line down the center of the paper.
- Divide the sheet into nine equal sections with horizontal lines.
- Draw a square for the pelvic region at the center of the vertical line.
- Draw the body and shoulders with curved lines from the pelvic square.
- Sketch the neck and forehead.
- Draw the legs in two segments: thighs and calves.
- Draw the arms with reducing lines from the elbow to the wrist.
- Draw the feet.
- Use the figure to develop design ideas.
- Illustrate the design.
Basic Proportions and Anatomy
This might go without saying, but making sure that your sketch is anatomically accurate is key to creating a professional illustration. You don’t want to have your model in positions that a human body can’t actually do or scale the body in a way that’s not actually possible for human form.
Proportion is one of the most important elements of fashion design to nail down. It affects everything from the balance, harmony, to the visual appeal of your garments.
Proportion refers to the relationship between the sizes and shapes of different parts of a garment, such as the length, width, neckline, sleeves, and details. In fashion illustration it’s important to be able to create consistent proportions across designs.
Sketching Different Garments
When you’re starting out, you’ll want to practice sketching as many different garments as you can. You’ll most likely find that there’s a few garments that feel more natural to sketch, and you might be tempted to just keep sketching those– but in order to master your fashion illustration skills it’s important to be able to sketch all different types of garments.
Adding Design Details to Illustrations
To take your illustration work to the next level, start to incorporate design details, things like textures, embroidery, or pleating and ruching. The design details are what brings your sketch to life, making it a true representation of the garment.
Refining Your Artwork
Once you have the basic sketch down, it’s important to go back over your design and refine the sketch. This means making sure that the lines are clean, all the details are in order and the sketch is in its most polished, professional final form.
Materials and Methods for Creating Templates
Creating templates not only makes your sketching process a lot faster and simplified, it also brings a level of consistency to your illustrations. While creating a template for digital designs is pretty straight forward, it’s also just as easy for physical sketches. You can create a master template for different poses and use tracing paper to copy the template to use for your new design.
Developing Your Unique Illustration Style
When you’re a new illustration artist it’s easy to get caught up in copying other illustrators to learn the ropes, but as you start to gain your footing, it’s important to start to hone your own illustration style. This will help you stand out from the crowd of fashion illustrators. The goal should be to have the industry not have to guess if it was your work or not when they see one of your illustrations.
Continual Experimentation and Learning
As with any skill you’re trying to master, even when you get good, it’s important to continuously experiment and learn. You never know where experimenting might lead you, you could easily find your signature style this way. As well, adapting a life-long learners mindset is key, ensuring that you’ll always know what the latest techniques and tricks are for improving your skills.
Resources for Fashion Illustration
In order to keep learning, you’ll want to have an arsenal of resources that you can learn from.
Before you can be a life-long learner, you have to be a beginner and starting with a basic fashion illustration book is the perfect place to learn the basics. There are numerous books on the market, but we’d recommend starting with “Beginner’s fashion design studio: easy templates for drawing fashion favorites” by Christopher hart. This book not only gives you lessons on how to sketch, but also gives you templates to get you started on your fashion illustration journey.
To continue your learning you can use online tutorial videos or enroll in online courses. From the basics and advanced fashion illustration to deep diving on a particular skill or aspect of fashion skating, you can find online resources for just about anything these days. Some great places to find courses and tutorials are: Youtube, Udemy, and Skillshare.
Practice Tips for Aspiring Artists
One of the best tips for aspiring fashion illustration artists is that when you’re first getting started, sketch everything and anything. Find fashion photos you like in magazines or online and sketch them. But don’t limit yourself to just fashion sketching. To hone your skills, make sure you’re mastering how to sketch the human body. Consider taking a life drawing class to get a good hold on how the human body moves, this will translate into better fashion illustrations. Just remember, the more you practice sketching, be it in pencil to paper, or doing it digitally, the better fashion illustrator you will become.
