Fashion Drawing For Dummies

Lisa Arnold, Marianne Egan

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780470601600
• eBook ISBN:
  9780470887646
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

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!

Part I

Fashion Drawing 101

In this part . . .

In this part, you get the lowdown on getting started with fashion illustration. We begin at the beginning and explore basic drawing techniques, including how to draw a figure (for those of you who have drawing experience, this is a great refresher). We also cover art supplies and how to create a workspace just for you.

Chapter 1

Finding Your Footing in Fashion Drawing

In This Chapter

Getting started drawing fashion

Recognizing the differences between fashion and figure drawing

Drawing a basic fashion figure

Looking at careers for fashion illustrators

I f you picked up this book to figure out how to draw fashion illustrations, you likely want to be a fashion illustrator or to work in the fashion industry. Although they’re two very different types of jobs and industries, fashion illustration connects them. In this chapter, we talk about how to get started in drawing fashion and the ways in which fashion drawing differs from figure drawing. We also cover where to find work and how to get started in your career.

Getting Started with Fashion Drawing

Maybe you’ve been copying figures from magazines or dressing paper dolls with your own creations since you were a kid. If so, you already know how much your art improves when you work at it. If you’ve been drawing since you were young, you may also have picked up a number of bad drawing habits or have skipped drawing certain types of clothing or body parts because they’re more complicated. And if you haven’t been sketching everything in sight up to this point in your life, now is the time to start.

Fashion drawing tends to be much more stylized than figure drawing, so you may have to change your techniques. In the following sections, we offer some ideas about how to get started in fashion drawing.

Filling your sketchbook

Getting good at any kind of drawing is like getting to Carnegie Hall — you need to practice, practice, practice! To practice drawing no matter where you are, you need a sketchbook, better known in the industry as a design process notebook. Anything that fires up your brain and helps you create goes into the sketchbook. Your design process notebook may be full of fabric swatches, magazine clippings, drawings, words, or anything and everything you use to inspire yourself when designing. It’s like a glimpse into your brain working out all the details of a design.

Saving every scrap

When sketches pile up in your work space, resist the urge to dump your older sketches, and never throw out your old work! You never know when a throwaway sketch will jog your imagination and turn into a saleable idea.

Marianne knew musicians who talked about getting great ideas from pressing the record button even when they were just messing around. She learned from them that you never know when something you’re just fooling around with can become a great idea. The same holds true with your design ideas. You may just be doodling around with a sketch and end up with a fantastic design idea that sells itself someday! That’s what happened with the notebook sketch of an evening dress shown here.

So what do you sketch when you’re out and about, watching television on the couch, or paging through the latest fashion magazine? Whatever catches your eye! You can also use your notebook to practice the sketches we outline later in this chapter and throughout the book — they’re even marked with a Sketchbook icon!

Studying the masters

Great fashion illustrations are not generally hanging on the walls of famous museums. Instead, you find these works of art in fashion magazines, on billboards, in the newspaper, and on the Internet. Spend time looking at fashion illustrations and pay attention to the poses they use, along with the amount of lines and details. Check out the work of artists such as John Galliano, Karl Lagerfeld (for Chanel), and Betsey Johnson.

Certain illustrations will just wow you, although you may not understand exactly why. Try to figure out what you like about certain illustrations.

Keep a file of art that appeals to you by saving pictures of the types of work you’d like to do yourself. After a while, you’ll see a pattern emerging. Collecting images of what you like helps you learn visually and develop your own style. (For more about developing your own style, see the later section “Making Your Art Your Own.”)

Use the images you collect for inspiration, not for copying in your own work! You don’t want to violate any copyright laws. A work is protected by copyright as soon as the artist creates it.

Grasping the Basics of Fashion Drawing

If you’re a born artist, doing fashion illustration will certainly come easily to you. But if you want to draw but hate the way your figures come out, don’t throw in the towel. Anyone can learn how to draw. We can’t stress this enough.

A desire to draw is a huge motivator. If you have a picture in your head, y...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Part I: Fashion Drawing 101
• Part II: Building a Fabulous Fashion Figure
• Part III: Dressing Your Fashion Figure
• Part IV: Taking Your Fashion Drawing to the Next Level
• Part V: The Part of Tens
• Cheat Sheet