How to Draw Fashion Sketches

Transcript Something that is very important as well in fashion design is coloring your fashion sketches. After you’ve inked in the whole situation, you can take color pencils, pastels, wash, watercolor, whatever you want. I’m going to do this one with some pastels, because they’re really nice to shade. So you just start out on …

Transcript This is how you indicate a zipper. I’m going to go ahead and sketch a cat suit, which I’ve already done. Pretty much the last detail is the zipper and it’s going to be a featured zipper. It’s going to be down the front of the cat suit, so I’m going to give her, …

Transcript Something that’s really important when doing fashion illustration are front and back croquis. You need a front view, you need a back view. So basically, you have your front view here, where you can render all of your details, run your clothes over it, the whole nine yards. Your back view, you want them …

Transcript This is how you indicate color, texture and pattern. I prefer to use colored pencils, they’re great because you can get all sorts of harder lines and what not, and then you can smudge it all over the place to give yourself more depth and shadow. So I’m going to go with these three …

Transcript Sometimes something you’ll have to do a lot as a fashion is to retrace your sketches, so you can add a different texture or color to it without having to redo the entire sketch from scratch. And I like to use marker paper, because then that can be your final sketch. It’s kind of …

Transcript This is how you draw a wedding dress. When you’re rendering a wedding dress, I usually have the potential bride sitting right beside me. So, I have to be really quick. Fluid. The whole nine yards. You kind of want to go big with this. Because, who doesn’t want something fancy and glamorous to …

Transcript Okay, so this is how to draw seam lines. I’m going to go ahead and draw over one of my existing sketches, and I’ll show you the finished product of the sketch when I’m done. So first you want to draw your silhouette, of course. And really practice with seam lines, it’s just kind …

Transcript This is how you draw a draping. I chose a dress which is very, very complicated and very, very draped to dive in full steam with. First, you want to get your outer silhouette dealt with. Think about what your shape is going to be. Always when you’re doing something draped you have almost …

Transcript Now we’re going to draw a woman’s jacket. First thing you want to do is you want to think about what shape you’re going for. This season peplum jackets are really in, and so let’s do a peplum jacket, with lapels. All right, here we go. You want to think about what your lapel …

Transcript Getting into the fashion business, pretty much just dive in. One of the most important things to do first is to learn how to sew. If you don’t know how to sew you don’t know what goes into making and designing a garment and you can save yourself a lot of trouble. Just start …

Transcript Next we’re going to shade and texture our fashion illustration. So here is my illustration, I am going to start out on all of my folds, and on the outline. You can be a little heavy-handed with this, because you’re going to end up smudging this with your smudge stick later, which everybody have. …

Transcript Whenever you’re doing any kind of fashion illustration, you should definitely think about shoes. In every croquis that I do, I create the foot already in the shoe position. And I love a platform. It never really goes out of style. Women love to be tall. So I build in a platform, the front …

Transcript Once you’ve gotten your base color on there, it’s really important to go in and shade and color your fashion illustration. So what I then do is I take a color pencil, just really work the color into the corner and design lines of the garment. You want to think also about where the …

Transcript So now I’m going to tell you about what a fashion croquis is. A fashion croquis is basically a tool that we all use; this is what it looks like. So about every fashion designer uses a fashion croquis. It just is a simpler way for us to be able to design over a …

Transcript Something that you’ll often have to do in fashion design is create pattern or texture on the fabric of the garment that you’re designing. I’m going to go with polka dots in this dress. So it can go a lot of ways, you can be very graphic about it, or you can be very …

Transcript This is how you trace a photograph. It’s actually a handy tool if you’re not the best sketcher, if you want some strange body position, what have you. Find a pose that I like, and something that’s very important in this process is tracing paper, nice and sheer, comes in all sorts of weight, …

Transcript One thing that you sometimes will have to do is draw hands. I particularly do not like to draw hands. I really don’t feel like it’s an integral part of the garment, it has nothing to do with the clothing, why do I need to draw hands. Half the time I hide them behind …

Transcript Now, we’re going to fine-tune a fashion design. And, I often do this after my client has left me. Just because I have to quickly get on the page, get the point across. I’ll fine tune it, scan it and send it to them. And, it makes them feel really happy. So, basically, you …

Transcript Sometimes what you might want to do is add detail to a fashion croquis. This might be a face, it might be hands, it might be whatever, eyelashes, whatever you want to do. You basically start out by dividing the face in half. You pretty much know that that’s where the eye line is …

Transcript So this is how you draw the inside of a garment, especially with the fact that high-low hemlines are in right now, and they pretty much will never go away, they’re a great thing. You start by drawing your dress, and I have a shirt-dress here that has a high-low hemline. You indicate what …

Transcript Something that’s really important when you come to the point of putting your line out on the market, if you’re so lucky, is you’re eventually going to have to do technical drawings of your pieces, so that the buyers can just like flip through a bunch of line sheets, they’re called, and buy what …

Transcript Now we’re going to draw a corset. Corsets are definitely one of my specialties. It’s something I build into almost everything that I do. First, you want to think about what style of corset you want to do. I’m going to do an under the bust halter corset, which is a little invention of …

Transcript This is how you indicate a placket. Basically after you’ve already drawn your buttons, you need to indicate what they’re buttoning into, which is a placket. So I start with right on the outside of where my buttons are, you simply do a straight line, heading all the way down the front of what …

Transcript Supplies for fashion design. There are so many supplies out there that you could choose from. The best way to go about it is to systematically try different things. You need your mechanical pencils. They’re very important. Different level leads, as far as hardness is concerned. You need to have a beautiful pen that …

Transcript And now we’re to the point of finishing your fashion sketches. So now we want to think about what color skin she’s going to have, tweaking her hair, doing outlines, shoes . . . etc. So I’m going to start with doing all of my inking in, it’s just how we just sharpen our …

Transcript This is how you indicate buttons. I’m drawing a shirt dress, which I love to do. I love to make a shirt dress because it never really goes away. It’s always in style. You go straight down the front of the body. First you’re going to make your line for the placket in which …

Transcript This is how you draw a lace. You start out with the lace that you’re planning on rendering, which is a great idea. First figure out what kind of lace you want to use. This is especially handy if you have a client sitting beside you, and that’s pretty much the story of my …

Transcript So one great way to finish out a sketch is to draw the hair. It’s very important, because you want to just make this look really finished. So first you want to like get the shape of the head really good. You think about what sort of style you want to go with. I’m …

Transcript This is how you draw a pleat, or a fold, same difference, one is a little harder, one is a little softer. I happen to do a lot of pleats, so I’m going to go with pleats. We’re going to start with like a high-waisted skirt. You pretty much just want to start by …

Transcript I started designing clothes when I was five years old. I did my first dress on somebody’s body when I was around eleven. I apprenticed with a costume designer when I was the same age until I was about seventeen. I’ve had ins and outs. I started my own business when I was nineteen, …

Transcript So, here’s some trick of the trade of the fashion industry, just some shortcuts you take here and there. One thing is having a croquis. Croquis is something you can develop yourself or you can print one out online, you can buy a book on croquis, whatever you want to do. So, the reason …

Transcript All right. So let’s draw a figure.One thing I always start out with a pencil, because you can always erase it, and it’s a good way to just get the basis going. So I always start with the head. Just think about proportion as you’re doing it. The head, then the neck. We do …

Transcript All right, here are some tricks of the trade, shortcuts, call them whatever you want but they’re really going to help you out in fashion design. First thing is always have a good croquis that you’ve developed, okay? That’s what’s going to make everything easier when you’re sketching your clothes. I’m just going to …

Transcript Now, we’re going to draw for different body types, which is very valuable in today’s fashion industry because we don’t ignore the different body figures. We have plus size, we have petite, we have everything. So first, we’re going to start with someone tall and lanky. And she’s tall, she’s got seriously tall, long …

Transcript This is how you draw a fashion model, and when drawing a fashion model, you want to take something into mind. You want her to be confident, strong looking, and something you want to show off the clothes beautifully. So here we go. We start with the head. You always divide the face halfway, …