Fashion Illustration 101

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Fashion illustration has made a transformation this last decade. Artists have brought a renewed interest to the genre while edgy fashion and design magazines give illustration a second life. Years before, fashion illustration became confined to classical styles while photography gained importance. Today, with an entirely new breed of designers and artists combined with new media such as graphic computer applications, reinterpret the vintage art. Most importantly with the advent of the internet, we’re influenced from a global perspective. This decade brings a completely different sensibility while still incorporating the “glamour” we typically associate with fashion. There was a time that the fashion figure was only expressed long and lean but today contemporary culture influences the art to reflect street life.

This post is the beginning of future tutorials that will guide and suggest ideas to understand the fashion figure’s composition and creating the illustrations using the computer. And I’ll be posting examples of the myriad of diverse styles that are being seen everywhere. The drawing posted here is one of my design sketches from recent work. I’ve begun to use Adobe Illustrator instead of pixel based programs. Vectors give incredible flexibility while editing and creating the drawing. The next post will discuss the differences between the design sketch and the fashion illustration.