Drawing Couture: Turning Fashion Designs into Art

1. Trailer: So, my name is Dallas Shaw. I am a fashion illustrator. I get paid by designers to draw women in clothing, but make it really fun and approachable. So, I'm going to teach you how I draw a basic fashion illustration, which is possibly different than other people but I usually do it in three steps, which is sketching it out in pencil, and then, adding water color, and then, I always add pencil and ink to the end. And then, wrap it up. I'm really really excited to see all of your work. We're even going to feature some favorites on my blog, Dilly Dallas at blogspot.com. Good luck and I'm really excited to see what you come up with. 2. Drawing a Basic Figure: Okay. So, this is lesson one, and we're going to cover drawing a basic fashion illustration. We're going to do it all in pencil, and I'll keep the figure really basic and straightforward for all the beginners. So, what you'll need for this lesson is very simple. You'll need paper, watercolor paper is preferred. If you're just practicing, grab any paper that you have. Make sure you have a pencil and a good eraser, unless you're really, really good at this. Make sure your pencil's sharp, and that's basically it, for step one. We're just going to do it in pencil. So, I do want to talk to you for a minute about talking to clients before you start this. I'm a fashion illustrator for a number of clients, and before you start poses, you want to ask a few key questions. You want to learn as much as you can about the brand and you want to figure out what the client is looking for? Because even though you might have a really great idea in your head, if that's what the client doesn't want, then you won't make any money. So, ask a lot of questions before you even begin, find out about their brand. For example, for DKNY's avatar, you will always notice that her poses are very sassy and playful but not too cutesy. When you see the Jack Rogers avatars on Twitter, you'll notice that the poses are more classic. You can send the client thumbnails of these poses, well, just to give them an idea of capturing a pose, and that way, you can all be on the same page. Be as clear as possible at this step. With these poses, this is all stuff that you can kind of keep practicing at, but today, I'm going to cover how to draw a basic fashion illustration. We're going to have the pose be straight on for beginners, and then you can kind of change the pose as you get better. We're going to start with a basic figure just staring right at us, and we're going to start at the top. You can get really sketchy with this. So, you're going to start with a circle about the size of a quarter. I used to work for Disney. They would have me draw circles over and over and over, and it's really, really important that you can do this perfectly. So, that's something that you have to remember to do. Make sure that you're getting each circle just right. So, you start with an actual circle, and you're going to bring two lines down, and this will become the bottom of the head and go right into her chin. At this stage, you can be really, really sketchy because we're going to clean it up later. So, don't be worried about being too rigid with those lines. From there, you're going to add two curved lines, and this will be her neck. You will make this a little bit longer than feels comfortable and thinner probably, too. For her shoulders, at this point, you can just draw a straight line across. You want to think of this as where the collarbone might be, and you're going to look at what you have. The head is kind of section one here, and we're going to move right into her chest. It's pretty easy to do. Chest and torso is going to end up looking a little bit like an hourglass, but just regular straight lines keep them light and really, really sketchy. Now, you want to bring the waist in a little bit thinner than normal. This is because we have to add clothes to all of these illustrations. So, the actual body of a fashion illustration is extremely thin and extremely long, because clothes are always going to make it wider and you have to exaggerate how clothing fits especially if it's a drawing. This is going to be her chest. I always put a little bit of a guideline here just for note to myself, but you don't need to do that. This is the bottom half of the hourglass, which is what we're calling it for a minute, and these will be her hips. The second half of the hourglass should be a tiny bit longer but not much longer. We're exaggerating everything. I give myself another guideline here, just so I know kind of where that's ending. So, right now, it looks pretty crazy but we're going to keep going and we're going to add really, really long legs. These are going to be really exaggerated. So, right from the tip of the hourglass, you're going to bring a line right down, and I like to kind of just give it a little bit of a shape. There's no way to really describe what the shape is, so just kind of bring this all the way down, and do the same thing on the other end. Like I said, it's going to be a little bit thinner than normal but that's because we have to add clothing on top of it, and that's why they're so long and lean and thin. For the knees, just little circles. This is where it starts to almost look like one of those wooden figures that people learn to draw with. So, if it's starting to look like that then you're doing it correctly. When you get down after the knees you're going to do the bottom of the leg. So, I always bring a straight line down for the inside of the legs and then I bring a line that curves outside and back in. Again, just keep this very exaggerated, and then I go right down to the foot. Now, on a fashion illustration, the feet look giant, and that's because you have to show the shoes, you have to illustrate the shoes. So, we're just going to bring those line straight down, and then kind of give her an area that we can add shoes to. I like to exaggerate the ankles, but really, from the knee down to the floor, it can be a pretty straight line, and then this curved line will take you down to the bottom. Last thing we'll do is add some arms. Two little oval shapes where her sockets would be, and then what you'll do is just two lines. These should come pass the waist line. We'll just kind of taper that in. This is where her elbows would be. Then we're going to bring another kind of long triangle down past her hips. For now, you can just kind of make a small shape, one line and two on the outsides where her arms will be. So, at this point, it should really start looking like that wooden figure that you keep on your desk to help you figure out how to draw. But we're just drawing the actual figure, and now, you can see some guidelines. Before you go any further here, I like to add two guidelines to the head. You don't have to do this. I do it because I used to work for Disney and I was trained to do it and now I can't get it out of my system. So, that's where we are at step one in lesson one, and there's actually a step two in lesson one. So, at this point, you can erase and you can change anything. So before going to the second part of lesson one in pencil, I would redo this or practice this as much as you need to because you can start again. I want to get you at a good place before we add color. So, this is where we are for step one, lesson one. 3. Adding Clothes and Details: All right. So, we're now going to go into lesson one, step two. We're at a place where we just have a basic figure facing forward, no clothing added. So now we're going to start adding clothing and details. This is the part where you call your client and you make sure that you know what they want this figure to be wearing. You want to ask how they envision the hairstyle. If they want to let you have free reign that's totally fine, but you should be asking them; would do you want the hair down? Do you want the hair up? How do you envision this girl looking? Do they envision her being super smiley or very little focus on the face? The client will send you photos of the clothing. So, it's really important that you know how clothing lays on the body. But, even if you're just beginning, it's pretty easy to draw right on. If you're just practicing and you don't have a client giving you this assignment grab a magazine, flip it open and just pick an outfit and draw it. I'm going to keep it really simple for you today and we'll put her in a basic pencil skirt and a short sleeve top just so that you can see, how you draw it on the body. What we're gonna do is start with just a regular shirt. What we've already done is added the basic details. So even if it's your first time drawing clothing, it's going to be pretty easy. The shirt should fit exactly how it should fit you. So, a rounded collar is absolutely fine and you can see where that would lay on your neck and buttons pretty simply done. You just add them where you see them. We will give her maybe short sleeves and if you can see I'm keeping the lines extremely sketchy, you can do this at this stage. You want to look when the client sends you the picture and see exactly where on the arm it's hitting because while we're exaggerating all of this on a fashion illustration, the client wants you to show them how things are going to fit. So, right here we're just going to give her a really cool collar and maybe we'll give her maybe about two. So, just drawn a very simple shirt for this step and this was the original waistline, so that's where you would tuck it in. If you weren't going to tuck that in, you can bring it down to wherever it hits in the waist. Here we're just going to add this for now and we'll put her in a pencil skirt. If it's a fitted skirt you follow the lines. Very easy. So it would fit right against her hips and watch in the client's photo and see how far that skirt comes down and you just add that in. You follow the lines you already have in step one. So this step is pretty easy. Now, as you start practicing, you know sometimes clients will give you gowns and you want to give those a lot of movement and that will come with practice, but for now we're going to keep it basic and simple for you. With the legs, we're going to add that detail enough for the clothing, but I always just hop down to shoes at the bottom. For me, I usually just make up whatever shoes look good but sometimes the client will have a specific shoe in mind. So, I think we're just going to give her some pointy heels and we'll kind of figure that part out later but you just want to make them pointed and then decide if you want anything around the ankles and we'll clean all of the stuff up at a later time as well. If the client is pushing accessories, you can feel free to add them to her hands and if they're not, that's something that you definitely want to make sure that you're asking people. Does she have a bag? Should have jewelry on? Some clients will absolutely love this and some will tell you that it's far too distracting and in the end, it's not up to you it's up to the client so, even if you don't agree, just listen and do what they tell you. That's about it for this girl. We will put all the focus I guess on all of her hands or maybe add some bracelets and now she's really starting to come together. The last thing that we're going to do is add just some hairlines and some detail to her face. I usually put two little marks in where her ears would be and you won't really see these but from here you want to come up and think about where the hairline would be. This very exaggerated. Her head at this point should start to look like those sketches of aliens. That's how you know you're doing it right. You want to bring this up a little bit higher than where the forehead is going to be and you can just, I like to add a lot of movement to the hair. So, but you can put in any hairstyle you want. I mean it can just be straight and shoulder length and blunt here or you can bring it all the way down. Just follow alongside the head where it would fall and then I like to suggest that it's going this way but you can keep it very simple and just do a line here and just keep it straight and short. You're going to bring it down a little bit in the front as well just so it frames her face and now at least there's a suggestion of where the hair is going to go. This will all be shaded in back. These two guidelines that I put in earlier are to help me figure out where the eyes and nose and mouth are going to go. I like to put as little focus on the face of the fashion illustration as possible unless this suggestion is from the client that they really want a detailed face. So if this is the head, let's talk about why we added those guidelines. You start with a circle by the size of a quarter, you bring this down, bring two lines down. Just follow the outside line of that circle. Bring it right down here and meet. Now it's starting to look like an egg and these are the guidelines. So, you put one that cuts that in half and then you draw a second one that'll slice it in half again. You don't need these guidelines but it's great for a beginner. It tells you that the eyes should go in these spaces, the nose should go down here and the mouth should go here. It just helps you figure out where everything is placed and eyebrows will always go above. Easy-peasy and then you can add details after everything is in. So, we're going to go back to our girl. That means that her eyes will go somewhere near here, her eyebrows will go somewhere above and we'll give her nose and just suggestion of some lips. We can actually add this in and we have to clean all these other lines up, but right now we have an idea of at least where they should be. This is as far as you really want to take it before checking in with your client. I like to add a little bit of a suggestion to the eyes just so the client can get a feel of what our person is starting to look like and at this step, we're going to do some cleanup because you don't want to show this to the client with lines and crazy things through her face. So, what you'll do is erase the majority of lines. So, the one that cuts through her head will need to go and you don't need to push too hard because the nice thing about watercolor art work is sometimes you'll still see the suggestion of the lines and that's totally fine. But, for the most part at this stage, you want to erase those, clean those up. Get in here and take up the lines that are in her neck and this I like to leave a little bit of because we put a guideline here where her chest is. This is actually where the clothing will fall naturally so I do leave that unusually. Then I clean up the guidelines underneath the skirt because she should not be wearing anything see-through and I mean you definitely want to make sure you take some time and really get in here. I switched out erasers because this pencil has a black eraser on it and sometimes if you're using a black eraser it can leave all of the smudge lines so I switch over to a new eraser. Just a pink one is fine or white and I actually suggest not using a large one but using the one on the back of a pencil, because you can actually get into corners a lot better. Something that we really need to do is clean up before you erase. Just clean up the outlines of the lengths. It's already there for you, we're just adding it in and then you very lightly want to take this out. I leave a lot of these in because I do want to know where her knees are and I like the suggestions of a little bit of a line as well and then you can get right in here to the shoes. So, the nice part is that you can always change anything at this point. Take out a little bit of the guideline in her hands and that's about it for the stage. I'd go back in at this point and just clean up a tiny bit after I erase because this is the stage that you're going to send to your client. It's important that you send it to them and you tell them this is the last time that they can make changes. If they want you to start over that's fine, you can still do it at this point. But, once the watercolor is added you can't erase that. So send it to them and talk to them and see what they think. You should have already talked to them at this point, so none of what they're about to get in a scan in their email should be a surprise. You know you should have already decided how, what she's wearing and what the hair length is. So, at this point, we're not sending them anything that's a surprise we're just sending them details and it's still looking really sketchy and then they'll tell you what they want added or changed. I like to make sure that you like it at this point so if you don't like what she's looking like right now, I would probably start again because you want it to be in a place that both the client likes it and you like what you're up to. So, this is what she's starting to look like. I'm going to actually just finished clean up, add a few more details before I scan it over to the client. But for the most part, this is the end of lesson one, part two. 4. Coloring Skintone: So, we're going to begin the second part of this lesson which is adding color. We're going to use watercolor. It's all your personal preference. If you're a beginner, you can just grab a really inexpensive set. So for this, we're just using just a set of Reeves watercolor. You can get this at Michael's, you can get them in sets of 10, 20. So, I would say as a beginner, just pick up a very inexpensive set and learn with those because watercolor can get really pricey. You are also going to need some sort of something to mix on. These sets come with plastic. I usually just actually use a little porcelain plate. I don't know why but I always feel like my color mixes better in there and it's watercolor. You can wash this off. You need some water and so, mine is here in this little owl and then you need a few watercolor brushes. Any size is fine, it's all personal preference. So, I usually stick really tiny because the details in here are really really small and so, we're going to begin with kind of a skin tone and then add hair and clothing from there. With watercolor, you want to dip your paint in the water first and then put it right into the color and just kind of mix it a little bit like this off to the side. The nice part about watercolor is, if you don't like that shade or you change your mind, you dip it in the water and swish it around and your paint brush is clean. So, it's a nice and easy way to do that. When picking the tones for the fresh color, you can actually mix a whole bunch of different colors and you can put this paint brush right back into the other color and just kind of mush it around until you get the color you want. You can't mess it up and if you don't like it, put your paint brush back in the water and rinse it off again. It's very very easy if you're just not afraid to make a mess. I'll start with kind of a PG tint. We added a little bit of this orange to it and we'll start there. You want to move your brush around very quickly and it dries quickly, but watercolor has a mind of its own. So, you can't control it all that well and you have to be okay with that. When you want to keep moving it around, just add a little bit more water and you can fully control where you put it. Just make sure you're moving your brush very quickly and if you feel like you've made a mistake, deep it in the water and move it around some more. The water almost acts as an eraser to an extent on the watercolor because if you need it thinner, you just add water and if you want more color, you just add more paint. Like I said, it is going to run so you don't want to add too much. I start with the face and start with a little bit of color and then I add color exactly to where you would kind of add your makeup. Put it right on your cheek and her cheekbone. Put it where a shadow would hit. So just keep touching it with more color and you can add shadows hit on your own face. When I was in art school for this, we actually worked with mirrors in front of us to learn where those shadows are but I put them above the eyes right here next to the nose and I add always more color to the cheekbones. It's going to look like a lot right now but in the end, you'll hardly see those tones. So just keep dipping it in the water, adding a little bit more of the flesh tone and I usually try to not fully color it and then let the water do its job, we're just fill in the rest. Like I said, if you're a control freak, watercolor, not for you. So it just kind of runs on its own. So, I like to put it where the shadows would hit and then mix the water in between and let it do its own thing. So, now we have the top area down, we're going to move right to her arms and do the same thing. So one more time, a little bit of the flesh color, whatever you decide on. Put it where want its darkest points to be. Move the brush around really quickly, dip it in water and let the water do the rest of the work for you. It gives it a nice not to over thought look and it kind of looks undone which is what I like about it. I like when fashion illustrations look really really sketchy and we'll do the same thing for the other arm. Put the color right in where you want the darks. Move your paint brush really quickly before it dries too much out in the water and it will just fill the rest and I'm going to do the same for her hand and don't overthink it. Just laden work quickly and it usually works out. For legs, I usually switch to a little bit of a thicker brush. It's just because the area that we're coloring in is a little bit thicker. You can do it with a smaller brush, you're just going to see more of those brush strokes and working quickly with watercolor is the way that I prefer to work. So, dip in the water, back to the flesh tone, and you start where all the shadows would hit. So, if this is where her skirt opens, there would be a shadow here, bring it right along the inside of the leg. You can even go right over those circles where the knees are and just kind of put it in where right against the lines that you originally drew. Leave some white and then if you want, you can let the water fill in the rest. I sometimes go back, I'll show you in a minute and add a little bit more dark but if you do it right now, it's too wet. So it's just going to run all through her legs. So I like it to be a little bit more controlled and the dryer it is, the more controlled it is. Do same thing down here for her foot and on her other leg. So, darker around the knees where the shadows would hit and around the outsides of the leg and then very quickly use the water and just let it fill it in. Then you have these nice little highlighted parts that looks like it really gives the legs some nice accents. But the key to this is working quickly and not overthinking it. So for beginners, this is going to be really really hard, this will come more naturally on your fourth drawing or fourth painting. So right now, this is all drying. So, what you can do is if at any point you want to add more darks in, you definitely want to make sure that you're starting from the top again because look this is already dry. So you can't really mess that up yet. I will add just a few more darks into the arms because while it might look dark right now, after we add clothing, this will look like nothing. So don't be afraid to get a little bit darker there and I'm actually going to add a little bit more color to the leg because I like it when you can see the lines and this is just personal preference. If you don't want to do this, don't do it. You're the artist, so you definitely want it to feel like you. All of my work is stylized which means they all kind of have the same little additions to it and these unfinished lines are how I like my artwork to look but you have full control of what you want your work to look like. But at this point, we're just wrapping up skin tone and I feel pretty good about where it's at right now. I usually do skin and hair first. You can do this totally out of order. I'm just sharing my way of doing it. Then I usually do that because clothing wise, I like to change shades if I need to based on what our character is looking like. 5. Coloring Clothes and Hair: So, with the hair right now, it has a lot of movement. It's going parted in the middle, it's pushed back behind the shoulder, and it's pushed behind her back and you can see it over here. This is just what I like. Like I said, you can absolutely do your own thing, but hair is really, really difficult because you wanted to have a lot of different tones and a lot of different movements. I have already added in a lot of pencil lines. So, what I would suggest you to do is pick a paint brush and start with the darks. I like for it to look like highlighted moving hair. So, over here, I always have white, and black, and some skin tones, and browns, and then of some other colors. What I would suggest is mixing it a little bit on the side first. I always keep this extra sketchbook here, in that way I can test out what the color is looking like. For example, I just mixed the black and the brown and this looks way too great for what I'm trying to do. So, I'm going to add a little bit more water and get some red tones in this brown. Now, it's getting better, but I still want it to have a little bit of dark, so I'm just mixing it until I find what I like. That's why I like to work on these porcelain plates because you can mix and keep adding. So now, that I kind of have a tone that I like, I'm going to add it to her hair. Keeping totally in mind that this is watercolor and if I add it quickly and I don't love it then I can change it. So, I'm going to start where the darkest part of her hair would be, which is down here behind her ears and underneath her face. So, we're going to add these dark tones right underneath the ear. You're going to follow these guidelines that we've already drawn in. Always move quickly. You can always add more to this to really, really easy to just think quickly and go. Obviously, these pencil lines we want us to curve out and back in, so that's what you should be doing here. Curve it out and back in and don't overthink it. I'm leaving some white space in the hair and that is because I like to add different tones, which you'll see in a moment. I just keep moving it around until I'm in a place where I think it's starting to look like actual hair. I will keep following those lines. If you follow the lines and if you draw right on top of the lines, you don't have much of a choice with what you want to add here. You've got to follow the lines and you've got to fill in color. So, if you've already done a good job in your pencil drawing, adding the hair shouldn't be too difficult. Only thing that's difficult about this stage is keeping it separated so it doesn't all wash into each other. That comes with practice, but, of course, for this stage what will help, is if you separate the colors. See, I'm leaving a little opening here where there could be a natural highlight, but I'm really leaving that opening so it doesn't wash through as it's drying. I'm going to switch over to the other side now of her head and I'm just doing the same thing. I'm putting in some darks first. I'm keeping my paintbrush moving pretty quickly. Just add them wherever it feels natural and mostly over those guidelines because that's where the shadows would fall naturally. I can always go back in and make it darker. It's not easy to make things lighter so keep things light when in doubt. You can always go and make things darker in the end. Again, just follow those guidelines, leave some white space so that you can see some movement. I'm mixing three colors for her hair right now. It's an orange, a brown, and a black. If you're a beginner, just start with one or two colors or starting with one is absolutely fine. I like to suggest always doing two, so that you can learn how to mix. You have to learn no matter what so. Right now, we've got a bunch of different shades in her hair, which I'm happy about. The client, make sure that they're fine with that, but I'm really happy and I liked this pop here. So, I'm going to go back and exaggerate that color right there. Then, I'm going to make sure that it's always continued somewhere on the other side. So, let's give her some orange and some red highlights down here. So, now that we have her hair, we're going to do a little bit, carry a little bit of this over into the highlights of her face. So, I'm going to very, very lightly put in some orange tones on her hair, just around her eyes to tie it all together, maybe even around her nose. The nice part about watercolor is that once you put it in, if you add more water you can just blend that right together. After that, we're going to just start coloring in the clothing. For her shirt, I want to keep it light and white. The majority of fashion illustrations will have some sort of a white shirt or gray or cream shirt and they don't make color for that. We are going to just lightly add a little bit of the shades for that shirt. So, I want to show you how to do this most of it will stay white and we still have the guideline where that shirt folds. So, we're going to very lightly just put in a little bit of shade there, and may be under the collar, and may be in the sleeve, and the rest of it will stay pretty much blank. Leave most of it white, let it dry for a minute this will set in. You want that to look like a crispier line. Then once it's dried, I add a little bit of water just to blend and then that's actually, all you're going to do for the top of that shirt for now. For the skirt, I think we're going to give her something really bold because it's fashion illustrations, so most of your clients are going to send you some really bold things. I'm going to go with this really gorgeous fuchsia color. The great part about watercolor is that this color that I'm using is really inexpensive. A lot of colors, to get the richer colors you have to buy better paints, but what I like about the Reeves colors is you can still get these rich pops with an inexpensive color. So, what I'm doing here is I'm using a lot of water and I'm using a lot of color on the paint brush as well. If I keep going without adding more color this will get lighter, this color will get lighter, but I don't want to do that. I want to keep it really bold, so I'll use a lot of paint. If you like to see more of a watercolor effect, dip your brush back in the water and just touch it to anywhere in that skirt and as it dries it will start to give more of a flowy water color effect. We're going to leave the top part like that and hop down to shoes and a bag. The shoes, in a fashion illustration, are extremely important. So, make sure that you are choosing a color that is bold and wild because you're a fashion illustrator. Girls love shoes. So, we're going to give her some amazing emerald shoes since we're going crazy over emerald on the blog this week. Just very lightly, same thing, you don't even have to fill the whole thing in that's like the glory of watercolor. Just like that, it's fine for now. Two ankle straps, some pointy toes and we'll figure the rest out later. Just let it dry. For a bag, since we're doing jewel tones, we did this beautiful rich skirt and some bright shoes. We're just going to give her a really great mustard colored bag. Very quickly at this stage because all of the details will be added later. All we have to do is lay the color in quickly and we'll figure the rest out in pencil. At this stage, we are going to just add one more touch to eyes and lips and then we're going to wrap in the third section. I'm going to give her green eyes. Just touch it, don't even feel the rest in. Then for the lips you want a natural base. We're going to add majority the lip in pencil, so all you have to do is touch those guidelines and we can figure the rest out later. Right now, we are at the end of lesson two, and you need to let this dry completely. It will dry fast, you probably don't need much time, but before you add pencil in lesson three, it really, really needs to dry. So, take a break, walk away if you can and then come back a little bit later. If you can't touch it, then you don't want to add anything else to it. But this is a lesson two and the end of that. Then join us for a minute for lesson three. 6. Refining with Color Pencil: Now we're at lesson three and we're going to finalize your entire illustration. Not everybody does it like this, but this is how I do it. After the watercolor is done and dry, I like to add pencil and then ink to finalize everything. Not a lot of people use pencil on top of the water color, I do it's just personal preference, so if you're new and you want to skip this part, go for it but I wouldn't, I think it adds something really special to it, an additional layer. You can use any colored pencils that you'd like. I use Prisma colored pencils, I don't know why something about the pigment and the texture of them, everything goes on so nicely. I've never ever used another brand, so I can't really tell you other brands that are good. I use them once in college and I'm hooked, I'll never change. So, I'm going to recommend those but if you're a beginner obviously any set will do as you're learning. So, what colors do you choose? When you get these sets of pencils they come in so many shades. You want to get a group of shades that are in your fashion illustration, but you want to always choose one shade darker. So, for instance, you have the emerald in the shoes here. So, you want to pick a darker green, that's the same shade just darker. The bright fuchsia in the skirt, a little bit darker with a pencil and for the bag, I'm going actually a bronzy color, and then for skin tones and hair, I'm choosing a range of kind of oranges and peaches and then darker shades for the hair. We're going to start actually right at the top with her eyebrows because we didn't give her any. You can just take one of the darker shades from the hair and very lightly shade that in. The reason that we didn't do this with watercolor or why I don't do this with watercolor, is it's very hard to control. So, if you very carefully put it in with watercolor that could work but it also could not work and you could end up with a forehead of a line that's very hard to fix. So, I'm going to just very lightly shade in her eyebrows in a light shade, don't get too dark. With that same shade, I'm putting in just a few lines above her eyes just to accent where an eyeliner would be. I'm also going to take the same shading push a little bit harder and give her some lashes all different lengths are totally fine. You can do lashes differently. My illustrations will have a good lash. So, when I do that I also stylize my work and I like to bring her lash line out a little bit further. After you look at the eyes, you're going to start to see how this work is going to take shape. So, I'd like to add a little bit of pencil right wherever I feel like it and pupil of her eyes just adding each step that we did earlier but giving it a little bit more detail. The eyes are really important so you don't want to get too heavy with those we can always do that with ink. I just take the same color and give it a little bit go over our outlines in the face. This is a nice like all of the color, I think that looks really, really nice instead of like a stark black line everywhere and this is where you become a little bit of an artist and if you really want to shade areas in you can do that and get sketchy and keep a little bit sketchy too. So, what I'd like to do is do that first and then I'll take a little bit of a darker shade and I'll highlight this hair. So, under here is where we added our dark paint and I like to just go over some of those lines and even make it a little bit sketchier why not? You're a fashion illustrator but you're an illustrator, so it should still look like artwork. I like to just get a little detail in there go over the original lines. I like to work at the top first because once her face is done, the personality comes out in that. Before you go any further, you want to take those skin tones I pulled a few different ones here. This is orange but we do have a little bit of orange up in her eyes that in the eye shadow that we can make a little bit brighter, if you like that sort of a thing. I like to make her cheeks a little bit rosier and get in here for some shadows. Just where shadows would hit on your regular face and if you're unsure about that because you're new just look in the mirror and really take a look because it's easy to see. I'm going to keep her lips pretty neat for this but I will use this muted flesh tone just to give her more of a full figure right there. At this point, we're going to keep going. So, we want to keep this shirt pretty neutral. We can either use a nude or a gray. You can't really mess this up. All you're doing is going over these original lines that were pencil lines. Keep your pencil moving really quickly. Don't overthink it, gets scratchy with it and just keep moving your pencil around. I'm even going to over these buttons and over my collar lines. It's amazing how it just changes the tone of the pencil. This is where her sleeve would be and I like to just put those lines in very lightly I'm still going to go over this line I want to keep it and just do whatever feels right there. As an artist I like to fill this part in and just make it a little bit more interesting than it was to begin with. I'm going to put this in ink, this bow. So the rest of it I will just shade in. Now this color that we used up in her cheek, this peachy color, is the same color that you want to use in her arms and legs for the accents. Same places that you gave accents before just add those in very scribbly and scratching no real technique to it. Don't do too much outlining, but feel free to just fill in when you feel like it. I always bring it down to her feet too because I don't want to leave that part out and I just think that adding the pencil just adds a little bit more depth to your drawing. Add as much or as little as you want. Feel free to stylize it as much as you want. Now I'm going to get in here too because that's the shadow over her skirt and I think from this stage for the skin tone,we're done. We're also going to need to add a little bit of pencil to her bag. Just so you can see the shape a little bit more defined again go over those same pencil lines. I keep a ruler next to me in case you need to make this nice and neat but I like that you just make it into your own little piece of art. So, I'm just adding some shades to that bag. Then I'm going to do the same for the shoes. So, I mentioned that my artwork is stylized and that is because I want clients to hire me because of things that are recognizable to my drawings. I have a lot of those things but one of the things that makes my drawings really recognizable is for instance. On the shoes, usually the lasers are very swirly and exaggerated. So, I try to add that when it makes sense. There's no real theme to it I just give it a little like as if it's a little bow and that just is always signature when it makes sense. You can pick your own characteristics that you want to add to your fashion illustrations but that's something that if there are ankles straps or laces on shoes that I personally like to add just a personal touch that I love. At this point, I really like the way that this water in the skirt has taken shape. So, we're just going to clean it up without scribbling over it like I normally would, just going to clean up the outside lines and let that stand on its own. Pretty much everything else that we're going to add is going to be in ink. So, that will be the final stage. I also use Prisma color ink. Really just because when I go to pick up my pencils, they always have these really thin ink pens. You can use any kind you want. The reason that I use Prisma color ink is because look at how thin this is. The tip is almost non-existent. You can hardly see it. The lines are so thin. That it really looks like a pencil, I prefer that. So, we're going to ink her in Prisma color ink. 7. Finalizing with Ink: So, for our final step, we're just going to add ink. I'm going to use prismacolor ink pens and also a thicker ADS pen. But you can use any type of back ink you want and you can use as much or as little as you want. Basically, the only reason you're doing that is to add even more depth to what we already have. So, I always start with the eyes. Basically, you want to really get as close as you can and I use very, very little ink strokes because you don't want to mess that up. You don't want to fully outline everything, you just want to put it where you feel it will accentuate what you already have. I always add a few more lashes because I love a good lash. After that, I like to outline the face, not the entire face because I don't like to make it look like too harsh of a drawing. But I'd like to go over a few of the lines and just put some emphasis and where the ears would be and things like that. In the hair, you don't want it to get to streaky, so use those same guidelines that we put in way back in lesson one and then you just go over a few of them, don't worry about outlining the whole thing. You just want to keep it loose. In the end, if you should make a mistake in the hair and you want to fix it, just use white acrylic paint and touch it up, like if I didn't like this line and I wanted to take it out, white acrylic paint in the end will probably save the day after you've worked too hard to start over. With clients, I usually show them the work before color and then after and if there's something that I really need to fix that I didn't that white acrylic paint will be really really lovely. So, I'm just going over a few details. Basically, to separate the shoulders from the hair and the sleeves and just the details that you want to stand out, I personally like to keep a really scratchy movement without too much thinking because I like to feel really heavily illustrated. I'm just going over some of those regional lines that we put in the beginning, all the way down through her arms. Leave that bracelet for a little bit later. Just very, very few. The reason that I'm using such a thin pen for this is because you really can't, it doesn't look like it's screaming dark black ink lines, it really has the same thin fill as a pencil. I'm just going over those same lines now in the legs, bringing them right through. I also like to sometimes give a little bit of a suggestion of a ground line but that's just being overly stylized. Then, I will switch to a little bit of a thicker brush for any details that I want to stand up, stand out like this ribbon at her collar, really want that to stand on its own and be attention getter. So, I'll use the black line there. Sometimes, if I want to add in any color at the belt line just to exaggerate a few more places. Bracelets, because it's so hard to control with watercolor, I will sometimes just redraw those in as well. Any accents on the bag and then the very, sometimes, the problem of her shoes. Then, the very final touch which you cannot forget is your signature. I always put mine down here by the ankle or I've turn the paper and make it full size or I'm going to sign it way down here. I make my signature really big because I don't want anybody to not know who did it. Then, you can look at it overall and see if you need to make any changes but that is what finalizes your illustration. At this point, you will scan the same and send and send it to your client and hopefully they will love it so much that they'll hire you again next week. So, now that we've finished a complete illustration, I'd like to invite everybody to take part in an assignment. What I'd like you to do is start your own fashion illustration, she can be facing front and she could be wearing whatever you like. But basically, please you do those three steps. We want to go from pencil, to watercolor, to colored pencil in ink and please sign it and then you can scan it in and submit it on the Skillshare website. I'd like to go through everybody's assignments and see what you come up. I'm really, really excited to see all of your work. After that assignment or even in a feature some favorites on my blog [inaudible].blogspot.com, so we will be more than happy to include your websites or portfolios or blogs with our favorite. So, good luck and I'm really excited to see what you come up with. 8. 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