Transcripts
1. Introduction: Welcome to this class on how to draw fashion mockups. In this class, you will learn a way to easily draw a garment, prepare it in Illustrator, and fill it with a pattern. I will also show you how to play around with scaling and coloring to test the pattern in different variations. You can then use these skills to make your own mockups to see how your patterns would look in different designs, and showcase and promote your work. My name is [inaudible] and I'm a Surface Pattern Designer from Umea, Sweden. I am the creator and designer of Isolleto design, and I have a special love for dots, shades of pink, and playful patterns. I started drawing my own mockups when I realized that what I was looking for wasn't really on the market and since then I've been totally hooked. It's a really great way to test the pattern out as opposed to just looking at a flat image of the pattern alone. To take this class, you need access to Illustrator. You don't have to be good at using Illustrator though or even at drawing, I will guide you step-by-step. This class is great for surface pattern designers, fashion designers, or anyone creative who wants to learn a fun way to draw garments and make them come to life. At the end of this course, you will be able to draw symmetrical vivid mockups, fill them with a pattern, and know how to play around with color and scale until it feels just right. I use Illustrator when making patterns, but if you're a Photoshop user and still want to take this class, you absolutely can, all you have to do before is to convert your pattern to an Illustrator swatch file. There are a lot of good tutorials on how to do that out there, so just Google it. If you don't have a pattern of your own but still want to try this out, you can. Just use one of illustrators own patterns. I will show you where to find them.
2. Class Project: The class project is simple. Draw a garment and fill it with a pattern. It could be your own pattern or one of the patterns that comes with illustrator. Then export your project and upload it in the classroom. Feel free to share your process as you go along. If you get stuck or want feedback, please let me know. Okay, let's get started on the class.
3. Choose a Photo: I almost always use a photograph to start from because it's easier to get the right proportions and look that I want that way. If you're good at drawing freely, of course you can do that, but this is how I work. You can take a photo by yourself of something that you own or you can use a free stock photo. I tend to do a mix of both of these two, depending on what's in my wardrobe at the time. If you want to use a stock photo, two great sites for that are pexels and unsplash. A couple of things to think about when taking or shooting a photo is that at least one side of the garment should be fully visible from the front. We will only be tracing half of the garment, so if the other half is creased or hidden, it's fine. The photo doesn't have to be sharp either, but you need to be able to see contours. If you want to work with a flat image like this, you can but if you choose one with a little bit more movement and creases it will make a much more interesting mockup. I will show you why further along. For this class, I have taken some photos of a couple of garments in my own wardrobe. This top and this kimono blouse, you can use the same photos if you want to just download them from the class page. Now I'm just printing these, so that I can start tracing the next.
4. Tracing: In this class, I'm using plain printing paper, pencil, a fine liner, a light table, and a printer scanner. Now it's time to trace my garments and I have printed out my photos on just plain printing paper. Nothing fancy. You don't have to print out your photos in color. You can print in black and white if you want to. It doesn't matter. I'm using this small light table to trace, which is actually a ceiling lamp from Ikea. If you have one like this, use it. You can also trace over a glass table that you illuminate from below, or even against a window in daylight. I'm using the same paper to draw on, and I'm always starting with a pencil that I can erase easily if I make any mistakes. I measure out the middle of my top. It doesn't have to be exactly the middle, but somewhat the middle. Then I'll start to trace. I'm always starting by drawing the contours and then I'll fill in the rest of the lines inside the garment afterwards. Here I have a crease and as you can see, it only goes up there. But I'm going to draw the crease and connect it to the contour so that I get a separate section. It doesn't matter if you don't fully understand why right now, I'll show you later on. Then I'll take my pencil drawing and I'll just trace over it with a fine line there. Like that. Now I'm taking my pencil drawing and flipping it so that it becomes reversed, and then am tracing over that with my fine liner. I tried to measure the middle so that the middle meets the middle both at the collar and at the hem. You can just try to adjust so that the ends meet. Then I'll trace the rest of the garment. Like that. Now my top is done. Next, I'm going to do the exact same thing with my kimono blouse. Here my kimono has a couple of creases and not all of them goes the whole way up to the contour, but I'm going to draw them all the way up anyway so that I get a separate section here. I'm not doing that with all of the creases, but with some of them. Now my garments are done. The next step is to get them into illustrator scan. If you have a scanner, I'm using Canon TS5051, but I think any scanner would do. This is the black and white drawing. Otherwise, you can also take a photo of your drawing in good lighting. Once you have your drawing scanned or photographed, it's time to open it in Illustrator and prepare it for the pattern.
5. Prepare the File: Now it's time to open the drawing in Illustrator. I'll choose Create New file, I'm going to go with this default format that illustrator's suggesting, I'm it using RGB color mode and 300 ppi and creating the file. The first thing I would like to do is to hide the art board so that I just get a white blank background. I'll go to View, Hide Artboards. Now I'm opening my scanned image. I'll go to File and Place. I'll find my scanned image that I've saved just in a folder on my desktop, I'm selecting it and hitting Place, and then I just click anywhere on the screen to place the picture. As you can see, it's turned the wrong way, the first thing I would like to do is to rotate the picture. I'm going to the Toolbar, and choosing the Rotate tool, you can also hit R on your keyboard to do this. I'm holding down the Shift key and dragging my picture at the same time. Then I go back to that Selection tool by clicking in the toolbar or hitting the online keyboard. Now I'm going to vectorize these garments, then I go to Window, Properties, and under here you have a menu called Quick Actions. Here I choose Image Trace, and Black and White Logo. Illustrator has turned my drawings into vectorized objects. I'll hit Expand and Ungroup. As you can see, I have a lot of pieces now and this white background I won't be needing, so I'm selecting it and hitting Delete to remove it. Here, my scanner has also given me some black bits that I don't need either, so I'm selecting them and hitting Delete as well. The next step is to fill them with a pattern.
6. Fill With Pattern: Now it's time to fill our garments with the pattern. Here under the Swatches Menu. If you don't have this open, you can find it under Window and Swatches. Here you have colors and also patterns, it comes with the illustrator. You can use one of these patterns if you don't have a pattern of your own and still want to try this out. I'm going to use one of my patterns. To open that, I'll go to Swatch Libraries Menu and other library and then I just locate my file. I've saved it on my desktop. Here it is. This is my pattern and I'm opening it, by just clicking on it. As you can see, it appeared here under the Swatches Menu. I also have three color ways that I'm going to use later. I'm loading those in by just clicking on the little folder next to them. Now, to fill my garments with my pattern, I need to selects all the parts that I want to give a pattern to. I'm choosing the selection tool and I'm clicking on a part and to select multiple parts and holding down the Shift key and I'll just click on every part. Then I'll click on my pattern to feel it, like that. I'll do the same thing with my Kimono blouse. Now my garments has patterns, but as you can see they look quite flat so I want to give them a little bit more life. I'll show you how to do that in the next section.
7. Adjust the Pattern: Now it's time to give these garments a little bit more life. To do that, I'm going to move the pattern around a bit. I'm starting with my top and I'm making a copy of it so that you can really see the difference. To move the pattern around. I'm selecting the part with pattern and right-clicking on it. Go to transform and move. Here, I'll unclick the "Transform Objects" option so that it's only the pattern that transforms. Also click on "Preview". So that I can see how it looks and then I change the location of it. When I do this, I just work on my gut feeling. I'll scroll up and down with the mouse wheel. So that i get a nice placement of the pattern, something like that. Then I just do this for every part. As you can see the garment has a little bit more life than before. The next step is to give it even more life or depth. To give my garment even more realistic look. I like to make some parts of the garments darker. For instance, the inside of the top and the bottom of the sleeves here. To do that, I'm going to make a copy of the parts and place a shadow over them. I'm going to show you, I'm selecting the parts by clicking on them, holding down the "Shift" key. Then I'm making a copy of them by hitting "Control Z". After that, I'm pasting in the copy on top of the bottom parts by hitting "Control F". I'm making that copy black by just clicking on the black color here at the swatches menu. Then I'm dragging down the opacity to maybe already present. As you can see, it gives the garment bigger depth. All right, now I have fixed my top and I'm going to do the same thing with my kimono blouse. Now my garments are pretty much done. In the next section, I'm going to show you how you can play around with scale and color to really get some different looks out of your patterns.
8. Scaling: Now it's time to show you the magic that comes with working with scale and color. I have my top and kimono here and I'm going to make a copy of each and one of them. I'm choosing the selection tool and selecting both of my garments, scrolling down a bit. I get blue, and then I just click and drag my garments a bit down and before I let go, I'm hitting the Alt key and then I let go, and I have a copy. In order to work on one of these garments separately without affecting the other one, I need to group them, and to do that, I'm selecting the garment and hitting Control G and I'll do the same thing with the kimono, selecting it and hitting Control G. Now, when I double-click on my garment, I get to isolated mode which makes it really easy to just edit this one and what I want to do now is to scale down my pattern on this particular top. To select all the parts with the pattern, I'm using this magic wand tool. I'm clicking on it here, on the tool menu. You can also do it by hitting Y on your keyboard and then I just select the pattern. To scale my pattern, I'll right-click it and go to transform and scale and here I'll click transform objects so that it's only my pattern that I scale and I make sure Preview is clicked and then I'll just change the scale here using the wheel on my mouse and as you can see, the parts that I moved are remaining in the location and when I'm satisfied, I'm hitting Okay. I'm going to do the same thing with my kimono. Now you can see it makes quite a difference to work with different scales. You can't really tell that this one and this one is the same pattern really. I just love that.
9. Recolor: The last thing I'm going to do to my garments is to change the colors. I'll do that by selecting all of my garments, with a selecting tool. Go to Edit, Edit Colors and Re-color Artwork. This is the recolor artwork tool. It's a really handy and fun tool to use. I'm not going to go into that much detail on how to use it. You can do a lot of things with this tool. I'm just going to show you a really quick and fun way to play with color. Here to the left, you have the colors of your artwork. Here to the right, you have your color groups that appears in the swatches panel here. I am going to use, I think, this color group and I'll just click on it to change the colors. As you can see Illustrator immediately changes the colors of my garments, and I'm using this button, that randomly changes the color order. I'll just click on it and as you can see, I get some new and exciting color combinations. It's a really fun button and really addictive. The only bad thing about it is that you can't go back once you've clicked on it so be sure before you do that. I like that. I think I'll go with that one and when I'm satisfied, I'll just hit OK and here Illustrator asks me if I want to save changes to my color group, but I'm just going to say no to that. This is my garments with a new color.
10. Export: The final step in this class is to export my garments so that I can showcase them on social media or any other place I would like. Before I can export them, I need to group all of my garments, so that I get all of them in the same picture. I deselect them and hit in control G, for group. Then I go to Window and open the asset export tool. Here I have some exports settings. I can change the resolution if I like, or choose another format, but I think I'll go with PNG and 300 ppi. Then I just select my garments and since they're grouped together, it's enough just to click on one of them and then I drag them into the asset export tool. When I'm satisfied, are just click "Export". I think I saved it on my desktop, hit "OK" and that's it. Now I have a picture of my garments that I can use.
11. Thank You!: This is the end of class. Well done. I hope you feel inspired and eager to start drawing your own fashion markups. Be sure to share your work in the class project gallery and if you have any questions or reflections, don't hesitate to contact me. Thanks for watching.
Sanna Jonsson, Surface Pattern Designer & Illustrator
