Fashion illustration or more specifically DESIGN fashion illustration has continued to entice fashion designers using the computer. This blog’s most popular post, Fashion Illustration 101, began to demonstrate the sensitive line quality and fluidity designers can achieve using drawing programs such as Adobe Illustrator. My initial approach like most artists was to replicate natural media and textures using pixel based applications like Adobe Photoshop or Painter. Even with the sophisticated history and layer options, drawings were still relegated to resolution and re-sizing issues brought hefty file sizes. But using Illustrator’s Brushes with the Paint Brush and the continued development of drawing tools like CS4’s Blob Brush Tool (terrible name!) the experience is becoming intuitive. Most importantly, creating design sketches using vectors offer re-working concepts as interchangeable as drawing the flat garment. As I teach computer design and illustration to students and professionals, building on the inherent quality drawing with vectors is the most important step. Evolving your eye to simplify forms to flat colors combined with graphic lines and values is very similar illustrating with markers. There are transparencies and gradations available to fill shapes, but showcasing the gestural line quality is key to communicate fashion. And that makes constantly drawing from a live model in timed poses important to exercise your natural hand for computer illustration.
Below are some examples of quick marker sketches from model drawing sessions.
Fashion Illustration Gesture
Fashion Illustration Study
geoffry, these are beautiful. i haven’t been keeping up with my blogs so i’m sorry i missed this. fab
[...] I prefer to quickly express the model’s movement in only a few lines and that has begun to influence my style of fashion design illustration using the computer. Rekindling a new appreciation of newsprint and dry markers, I plan to build a [...]