Vector fashion illustration using Adobe Illustrator CS5

Have you upgraded to Adobe Illustrator CS5? In my opinion, it’s definitely worth the investment to use some of the amazing features that truly synthesizes flexible vector editing with painterly effects associated with pixel applications such as Adobe Photoshop.

Vector illustration drawn with shapes and Beziér curves; create graphic and flattened style art that is usually associated with Illustrator. Although, the Brush Tool combined with the Wacom tablet and pen captures pressure sensitive thick and thin lines creating a gestural appearance found in recent Illustrator versions.

For line art, Illustrator always provided precise control, but the exciting enhancement to CS5 are the free form Bristle Brushes and the Width Tool! The ability to literally ‘paint’ with vectors incorporating brush textures with transparency becomes incredibly intuitive instead of relying on object layering and stacking order.

And, editing paths with the new Width Tool, the thickness of the line can be controlled at any point and remain editable! I’m posting a quick tut to demonstrate these new techniques for fashion art. The new release is packed with enhancements to work flow and more tools that I will demo this summer.

Vector fashion illustration using Adobe Illustrator CS5

The Bristle Brush Library is found from the Brushes fly out menu. You can begin to use the Bristle styles that ship with the program or just as easily select New Brush and under brush type choose Bristle Brush to create your own. Using a Wacom tablet and pen is a necessity to alter the brush opacity and thickness with pressure sensitivity.

Vector fashion illustration using Adobe Illustrator CS5

Teaching fashion design illustration I constantly emphasize to my classes and professional seminars, to vary the line weight bringing movement and volume to the figure’s gesture.

The newest member in Illustrator’s Tools palette is the Width Tool. Select any path with the Width Tool and a new anchor point is created but with the ability to alter the path’s thickness or thinness. This new feature comes in very handy when you need to edit only an area of the line or accentuate an existing brush or stroke style!

Demo presentation for digital class at Parsons The New School for Design

Yesterday Chris Musci and colleague, Maura Jurgrau, Coordinator of Digital Design, who both teach digital design classes at Parsons The New School for Design invited me to demo to their students my Adobe Illustrator techniques for fashion. As I’ve posted many times before, sketching designs with vectors is an extremely versatile style that allows for fluid experimentation. In addition to fashion design, Parsons has a rich history in design illustration art and communicating that line sensitivity using the computer is paramount.

Graphic applications for fashion design, give the ability to continuously prototype concepts and allows for seamless creativity. Envisioning traditional drawing tools designers use to sketch can translate to their digital counterparts. And building upon Adobe Illustrator’s new drawing and brush tools achieves natural results. But nothing replaces the experience and learning sketching from the live model!

Demo presentation for digital class at Parsons The New School for Design

Demo presentation for digital class at Parsons The New School for Design

Demo presentation for digital class at Parsons The New School for Design

Demo presentation for digital class at Parsons The New School for Design

Demo presentation for digital class at Parsons The New School for Design

Demo presentation for digital class at Parsons The New School for Design

Demo presentation for digital class at Parsons The New School for Design

The finished fashion design illustration
sketched in Adobe Illustrator.

Last week my illustration students learned to render transparency using gouache paint and marker. And after completing the demo I thought to develop this Illustrator version using the original painted example but render the sketch with vectors!

My approach for digital fashion illustration is to focus on gestural line and silhouette while executing the sketch in minimal steps.

Similar to natural media, illustrating on the computer may invite artistic inclinations to overly describe details. Getting practice quick sketching from the live model is important to learn to immediately capture the necessary information expressed in a fluid line.

Setting up the Illustrator file I also consider processes that would make editing the figure less time intensive. To achieve transparency effects rendering fabrics such as chiffon, understanding Illustrator’s stacking order using layers and altering the opacity are the most important concepts. Alternating between the tints, tones and shades of the color palette will also give the sketch more dimensional illusion.

The painted design illustration.

The classic gouache rendering to the right represents the designer sketch. Beginning with the wash, I loosely laid down the skin tone following with the overlapping dress shapes to create the transparency illusion.

The unexpected results using water based paints is ideal for interpreting a sheer fabric by the bleeding tones. The line, the final step, finishes the sketch accentuating the model’s movement and fabric flow.

Translating this effect illustrating with vectors, color tonality and layering the objects or strokes are essential. If you haven’t followed my examples before, Illustrator’s Brush and Blob Tools provides intuitive results.

In this view, I’ve pulled apart the layers to demonstrate the stacking order of the shapes and strokes. I begin to sketch the line art saved in its own layer. The skin tone and shadows are painted and placed in a layer behind the line art.

Next, the dress silhouette is sketched, filled with color experimenting with the opacity. The bra and legs, underneath the dress, are drawn and placed in a layer on top. I used a simple gradient, applied the Gaussian Blur filter and altered the opacity to achieve the transparent illusion.

Choosing the Brush Tool with Tapered Stroke selected, I sketched the drape and folds of the dress.

Now, having created the design sketch in Illustrator, the shapes and strokes can be selected to recolor the dress.

The finished vector camo fashion design illustration.

Using Adobe Illustrator for fashion design illustration can be a powerful tool to help visualize concepts for development and presentations. Mostly, we’ve been accustomed to view highly stylized sketches building on the technology’s inherent razor sharp gradient filled vectorized shapes. But using Illustrator’s Brush Tool experimenting with the Brush Library combined with your hand strokes replicates natural line drawing. Add the Wacom tablet and pen, and vector drawing can capture lines as natural as your personal signature.

View this tut as a broad overview instead of a detailed step by step. These concepts are the main points that I cover teaching and conducting professional seminars. I’m always impressed once students and seasoned fashion designers attend these demos, they quickly apply the methods.

Rendering patterns using the graphic apps, either Photoshop or Illustrator, give the ability to map patterns onto shapes or just filling with tiled designs can quickly give the impression. This ubiquitous approach I’ve used more than not, got me to reconsider as I quickly describe patterned garment shapes sketching from the fashion model in timed poses. The spontaneity suggesting the design can evoke more spirit than the literal interpretation.

Looking at the marker sketch below, I like the bold, less detailed expression of the patterned skirt and striped ribbed sweater. Using the same approach for Illustrator, I built upon an unfinished gesture from the NY Fashion Model Drawing Meetup that I organize and created a similar result.

But why use the computer for these gestural illustrations? For the same reasons to have the ability to edit, re-color, reconsider, fluidity creating presentations, and building a drawing with a myriad of mobile and sharing applications.

A marker quick sketch provided the inspiration for the vector style rendering.

The marker gesture sketch to the left is a good beginning to scan into Illustrator providing enough information describing the model’s movement while suggesting the silhouette.

The learning curve to get comfortable sketching in Illustrator becomes easier beginning with your drawing locked in a Template layer. Starting with your sketch helps to retain proportion and fluid line quality. As you become accustomed to either drawing with the Wacom tablet and pen or on occasion using the mouse to draw beautiful Beziér curves can mimic gestural lines.

The trick is to concentrate developing fluid lines depicting the movement. Sketching from the model, I prefer using marker to automatically simplify and graphically express line to a sketchy approach with pencil. Marker is a compatible translation to Illustrator’s vector object, flatly rendering colors and patterns.

Locking in the Template layer, create a new layer and begin to convert the marker gesture to vector lines. Some experienced users may already use Live Trace that can quickly convert scanned bitmap art into vector objects. Personally, I rather think of the conversion as re-drawing my original marker sketch and using Illustrator’s tools to retrace the movement. Lines that stop and start, unfinished, heavy and lighter line weights are all important attributes. Using, Live Trace while maybe the perfect choice to convert complicated textures for fills, the lines instead become shapes and challenging to edit.

As using natural media, drilling the sketch down to the fewest amount of lines but emphasizing the silhouette, creates a stronger finish.

Looking at the zoomed in view of the face in Outline mode, you can see that the character of the line weight in Preview mode is the choice of the Brush style building upon very simple paths.

Zoomed in view of face in Outline mode

Zoomed in view of face in Preview mode

The Blob Brush Tool is perfect to paint free form shapes. The brush reacts to pressure sensitivity if you’re using a tablet and pen. Another helpful feature is that you can continuously add to the shape without creating another object. As you would render with natural media, to SIMPLIFY the pattern and suggesting the movement on the body keeps the live gesture in the finished illustration.

Zoomed view in Preview mode

An easy method to create the shadows is to think of the darker areas as larger shapes and fill them with a neutral color. Experimenting with the opacity slider will preview the overlay effect blending with pattern. Again, to place these elements in a separate layer will make editing and selecting easy.

The stitching was created drawing paths using the pen tool and selecting dashed line from the Stroke pane. I used Round Cap and Join for a more graphic contrast to the free form style pattern rendering.

With the finished illustration the color story can be easily manipulated creating multiple color stories and layouts.

Have fun!

The finished face viewed in Illustrator Preview mode.

The Helmut Newton homage make-up found on many of the runways in Milan’s Fashion Week inspired me to create this quick tutorial. Using Adobe Illustrator, the Brush and Blob Tool provide invaluable fun and experimentation. Just like natural media, beginning with a few simple line gestures, I prefer to use bold shapes and strong contrast to express the features. Recently, I’ve been sketching with markers from live models, and much of the quick and unfinished quality is key to sketching on the computer.

You’ll notice I don’t begin using a scanned sketch as a Template layer. I prefer sketching directly on the screen for spontaneous strokes. But, as I begun to incorporate this process, I found beginning with a sketch locked in a Template layer helpful.

To achieve the best results taking advantage of Illustrator’s brush pressure sensitivity, using a Wacom tablet or if you have the budget, Wacom’s Cintiq is important. Maybe, we can look forward to an Apple iPad drawing app soon!

The finished face viewed in Illustrator Outline mode.

Enlarged view of the Blob and Brush Tool and it’s use. The Blob Tool is great to loosely paint objects while the Brush Tool provides specific style and detail.

Demonstrating the pressure sensitivity of Wacom’s 6D Art Pen Brushes using the Wacom tablet and pen. Lightly touching the pen on the tablet creates a fine line weight while applying pressure makes the same stroke heavier.