Transcripts
1. Introduction: Fashion illustration. I am so excited for you guys to give these a go. This is one of my favorite exercises of all time to do. It is so easy anyone can do it and it is so much fun. But before we get started, let me introduce myself. My name is Anne Smerdon, and I am a professional artist from Australia. I run an art school called The Artory, in a little coastal town called King's Cliff. I teach students each day, every week, and I'm so excited to be able to help you as well. I was about 22 years old when I first launched my first clothing range. But you don't need to know about that because today you're going to design your very own line. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to be designing our own range, and drawing up fashion figures. We're going to use my two-step method that is full proof for drawing up any fashion figure. You're going to master human proportions as well as feminine [inaudible]. It's so easy. Don't worry at all if you have no experience using fashion figures or fashion design, that doesn't matter at all. I'm also going to show you how to draw different fabrics in quick and easy little lines. Things like pleats, dots and any scrunched fabric or [inaudible] , they are so easy to draw in pencil. I'm going to show you how. But also, I'm going to teach you to tap into your imagination and not rely on a reference. That's why we're not using any references for these artwork. You can follow along with me or you can create your own designs. We're going to be creating a couple of proxies and a couple of different styles, and the good thing is that you can use any old artworks that you don't really like. Just chop them up and they're going to be the inspiration for our fabric. Without further ado, let's get into it.
2. Realistic figures made easy: What you'll need for today's project is some watercolor paper. He doesn't matter the quality of it or what brand it is, as long as it's watercolor paper can't be normal paper. I'm using one that I spoke a little bit of paint on, but it doesn't matter. We are just experimenting and having fun today. You'll also need a jar of clean water and whatever watercolor paints you want to use today. Watercolor brushes, it doesn't matter if you're using cheap synthetic ones or natural hair one. I've got some artists budget tissue paper. Toilet paper is what is more commonly known as and of course, your drawing utensils and your scissors as well. And I've got some old artworks here that I have kept and I've chopped up so that I can use that as well. We'll get to that later. But the first thing that you need to do is cut out the little shapes that we have in the course description. And I'll attach those for you. So you need to cut out those two little shapes. This top one here is the torso and the bottom line, the hips. So it's easier if you cut them out on two thicker card. That way you are going to be how to trace around them, nice and easy. So this thing you wanna do, we're going to create two figures today. So the torso is at the top and then the hits are at the bottom. You could to place them in whatever direction you want. Just make sure they're up in the top section of the page because we only have the head to attach to it, but we've got long legs, so we need lots of room blurred. In fashion illustration, we make the legs much, much longer than in real life. So make sure your toaster and hips sitting somewhere up the top on whatever angle you would lack them. So I'm going to start off with this torture and a little bit of an angle here. And I'm going to trace around that shape with my pencil, just holding it in place with my fingers. And then I'm going to position the hips. So I'm going to put the hips on the other direction. What you don't want to do is have a big gap between the torso and the hips. We want to actually overlap them a little bit. So there'll just be a little gap. So from there, I'm just going to trace that hip shape. And that is our starting point. So from there, I like to put a central line or a center curve lining that helps me to work out what angle the head will be on. And then I'd have a play around with how the legs are going. So this might take a few girls to make a posture that looks natural and feminine. But something like that seems to work with the balance of her torso tilted that way. The leg out here will counter counter-balanced. And I'm probably going to put the arms on the hips and maybe an arm down like that. So I start off with just guidelines. And then we're going to use this shape to help us to get the proportions right. So the top straight edge of the torso is one length of the arm so that from there to there is the shoulder to the elbow. It's also from the elbow to the wrist. So I attached that at the top of where my torso is and I just draw that line in. And we'll have there to the rift. And same as the arm here from the top of the torso. That full length is the elbow joint. Another full link is to the wrist. So go ahead and put that you work out where you want to put your arms. And then the length is a similar method, except this time it's going to be 1.5 the length of the torso to the knee. So then one torso length and a half to the ankle joint and the same on the other leg. One torso length and a half. That's why we've got that one line in the middle. So one torso length and a half is to the ankle joint. Now, drawing in the limbs or fleshing it out, you're super easy. We're just going to use round sausage shapes with a slight variation in them. So in this instance from this section of the hips, just going to around sausage shape that goes into a little bit of a point. So it's skinnier here and wider at the top. And the same for this side. Think long and slender and thin rather than wide and flat. And on this one, it's going to be widest about a third of the way down where the coffee's. So that's the widest point of that lower limb. Same on this side. Why this point is about there and it's about one to three, so it's about 1 third of the way down. Drawing ankles is so easy. And feet are just a triangular shape. The little curve and a little curve to form the toes. Same thing here. We might make them a little straighter, a little curve, and a little curve there. The answer is exactly the same method only with a little bit of a variation on the shoulders. We just kind of put a little bit of a curve just above the pointy corners of our torso. And then we're going to dip that down into the torso and up and around again. So you'll notice there's not a big distance or a big gap, a big loopy shoulder. It's just a slight curve, only so slightly above the points of our torso. And it only dips down just a little bit into our torso. From there, the arms, again, more of a sausage shape that comes to a skinnier point, just like this leg here. And just like that lower limb, they're wider at the first third and then they come to a point. The widest point again is about a third of the way down on the arm. And I just do two lines for the hands. Exactly the same method on this arm. And I'm just gonna do a couple of little lines to form the hand on the hips. We don't want to worry too much about putting all the detail in the hand. Just enough to kind of create a little hand-shaped is all that you need. We don't want to draw too much attention to the hands. It's all about the clothing. We've got our center line now that helps us to work out where the neck is. Think longer and thinner than you would. And then just a night long, oval shape, maybe a bit of a square jaw for the head, where during the head all the way up to the crown. So the hairline and probably be about here. But we want to draw in the whole crown of the head to work out where the bus line be. It was going to be parallel with the shoulders. So the shoulders we're on that angle. The bus line will be on about the same and it's just a little bit higher than halfway. So halfway would be about there. Is bus line just a little bit higher. So from there we can rub out our working lines or straight lines down the middle of our body. We've got our limbs in. I've put them in nice and light because we're going to add our clothing over the top. But before we do our clothing, Let's add a second figure just next to this one on the left. So we're going to do the same thing except I'm going to make the hips go the other direction this time. So I'm going to put the torso on a little bit of an angle. Remember to get your hips overlapping just a little bit and hold them there. While I trace around. So I pull those away and I have that shape. Now the same technique we're going to put in a curve down the middle of the body. And this time we might have the legs crossing over. So this one's going to be slightly on an angle. And maybe that one can be slightly on an angle as well. And we might have the arms swaying with the walk. So models when they walk tend to cross their feet in line with each other rather than being side to side. So that's where we've got them crossing quite close in the middle. And now all we need to do is work out our proportions and our length. So the top of the arm, from the shoulder to the elbow is one length of the torso. And then from the elbow to the wrist is one length. This arm here is just going to fall behind. So we may not have much of it popping up. And then the lengths are one length. So you'll notice that I'm going from the middle of that hip section. So roughly about the middle point and lining up the torso, 1.5 length, 1.5 lengths. So 1.5, oops, half-lifes for the other limb, 1.5 lengths. And then we're going to add our feet on the base of that will put the rest of the legs in firsts around that coming to a point round. But coming to a point. This one sitting a little lower. So we're going to have that the leg in front. Remembering that the widest part of the calf is about a third of the way, damn. Think long and lean. And that leg is going to be behind, so a little bit higher up on the ground, the arms. That's why curve above the shoulder and then the dip. We've got the shoulder muscle and then our sausage shape going into the point where the elbow is widest, 1 third of the way down about there. And then we'll just put the same shape hand on that. And then this here is tucking behind. So we don't actually need to put a lot of detail into that. Our center line in our torso shows us the direction of the neck. And then we can add in our oval shape for the head all the way to the crown rate. The bus line, remember, is parallel with the shoulders. It's not quite halfway between the hips and the torso. It's just a little bit higher about there. So once you're happy with those, you can rub out your working lines. You can pop your hip and torso away unless you want to make a few more carrot Rabat, you're working lines until you are left with the body.
3. Designing your collection: So now I have rubbed out my working life and I've just gone in and darken up the lines that I am happy with. And I've done them a little darker than I normally would. Just add that you can see them nice and easy on the screen. Now is the fun part. It's designing your clothes and there's a few little prompts for that. A great way to start is to think about where the join is for your tops in your body. So the bus line or just under the bus line can be wear, a dress might be pulled in or attached to a skirt. The hip line, of course, is a great place to start or stop things as well. And even lower, sorry, the waistline and even lower on the hip line as well. So thinking about where you want to divide your garments up is a great way to start. I might start this one at the hip line. And the top might be flicking out just a little bit, passed the torso there. So think about the direction and the energy of the form. So this form is flicking out to the side. So anything I might have out here is going to be freaking out to aside and around the body because that's the direction that the hip he's going. Anything on here will be a little bit ruffled or scrunched up in compression. So that's where I'm just going to put a few little wiggly wobbly lines is what I call them. Just so it looks like where that bending the fabric is all scrunched up. Maybe I might make this skirt down and up like that. And so it's just scrunching in there. And as you go along does lighten your figure lines or your body lines. And sometimes he might put it in the first time and think are just needs a little adjusting what that's what design and design drawing is all about. Nothing is permanent. Everything can be changed. Your brainstorming ideas here, so it's fine to rub it out and rework. So I might have a little figure homing skirt underneath here. And let's rub out the figure lines underneath and see what that does. And you can copy the same design that I've done here or you can make your own. Feel free to Google a picture or look up a picture and Just things like that. Use some inspiration to start you off. So you'll notice, as I do my fabric lines, There's lots of subtle S-shaped. So for example here it's curving one way and then slightly curving the other way. Saying with here curving one-way, slightly curving the other way. That's how fabric moves. So when you're designing or when you're drawing lots of slight S curve is perfect. Now maybe up here I want to show you how to do some crinkle, patent, some dots and ruffles. So let's make this a one sided top. And I'm going to put in a guideline for big Roughly color. And on the edge of that I'm going to do is examine just a rough zigzag and then each of those lines just going to draw a line that tapers off. Following that curve. They're thinking about that fabric wrapping around the shape. That gives me that nice Oracle shape. It might stick out. A little bit there as well as it wraps around the body. Maybe it's coming down here behind. So I'm going to just put those ruffle lines in as it goes around. So that might be enough for that desire. Perhaps you want to add some boots on to that with some laces. They might be a little bit wider than the legs. You can come up with your own designs here. And again, laces are super easy. Just a little squiggle, like you're signing your name. And that should be perfect. Now this one has a little flick of the hip, again out this way. So we might get a little bit of movement out that way. But I want to show you how you do big soft volumes of fabric to answer designing things about hard structures, such as this crinkled fabric here. And think about soft flowing structures. So maybe here we've got billowing soft fabric. So again, you'll notice is a really subtle S-curve in that. And maybe it's got a little frill at the end. And again, this one will billow out a little bit, but it's going to be tucking behind. Let's give her a nice high caloric style color. And you notice again there's a little S curve. There are lead or curve one way and slight curve the other way. So I want to show you how to do some pet. So I'm going to put in a curve. So some high wasted parents, we might add in about detail. So as fashion drawing is all about sketching ideas and coming up with ideas on the fly. We don't put in a lot of detail. Everything is just a few lines of suggestion, like a few pockets suggest it because we don't want to spend time on all the detail and we will lose our ideas. So as the body is walking, the fabrics that are going out this way and then down that way. And this one's probably got a flute out that way, so it'll be tight at the top. And then let's give us a nice wide leg flares. Again, another S curve there. And this side's going to hug the figure and then probably pop out just a little bit on that side. So as you go along, rub out the figure behind. Make sure that's all looking okay. So you can see the energy of the fabric is falling out with the movement. Maybe this side will be a little bit bigger now. So he just adjust that. There's nothing wrong with rubbing out and adjusting as you go. Now at the crotch, there might be a little bit of a gather, so a few little crinkle lines is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Perhaps then this bell sleeve might come out a bit bigger there. And maybe that's a little crop top with some rubbing hands, a little bit detail and texture. And again, Rabat, the figure that is hidden by the clothes. Great, Okay, So I'm happy with that design. I think that's all looking okay. The movement of the fabric makes sense. I've got plenty of those flowing S-curves. Might need to rub it out. Some of the neck here. And I've got that big Catholic and maybe I'll put a bit of rubbing on that color. You'll notice I haven't put too much detail on the face and that's just my style. You can go ahead and draw in the face. There's lots of different styles or more of your heads look too long, too small, or too big. Fashion illustration is about the clothes. The fact that there's a figure wearing them, it's really irrelevant. They're just the coat hangers. So once you're happy with your wife, that's when you can get some inspiration from. You will left over pieces of artwork that you might have chopped up into different shapes. So I might think about how I can use some of this as an inspiration and how I can cut them out. Maybe I'll make some little patches, some little lines out of that. Maybe that might follow that full. I could just use that as color inspiration. Maybe this shape here. I quite like the look of that shape. So what I might do is cut out something a little bit similar to it and tweak it from there. You can of course, trace those shapes if you need to. To make it a little bit easier. Looks like the top of the hips is about they are. And I can see that it goes down to about there. So it doesn't have to be perfectly the same because they just pencil lines. And we can move that pencil lines anytime we like. And there's a little curve at the bottom that I haven't put in. So I can cut that out and seek that all I've missed a little bit there, but that's not a problem. We've got a second paste there. So again, I'll try and match the shape of it. So try and match the shape of it fast. That it starts off talking under this pace. So that's a big clue. Again, it's easier to just use some tracing paper to trace it. I'm just going to move it out of the way so I can match where it is. The hip is up here. And you don't have to use leftover pieces of paper heater and 12, you, you can just call a straight in with your watercolors. Or you might want to paint some spear pieces of paper in the colors that you want that you unlock. Think that's roughly about it. And now little squiggle line, we can draw back over the top. So that's my starting point. I'll go ahead and put in the cut-out for that skirt underneath, whether I want to do that in a different color or maybe the matching color, I can use that. This one here. I might go ahead and paint in using some of these as a little bit of inspiration scene as I probably don't have. Well, I might have a piece of paper big enough to cut those pants down. So I'm gonna go ahead and use some tracing paper to trace the shape and I'll show you how to transfer it onto here.
4. Clothing your models: If you've got some tracing paper, go ahead and grab that. If not, I'm just using a sheet of baking paper. And what I'm gonna do is just trace around my design. And this is a lot easier than you guesswork method that we did for the other figure. And we want it to go on this piece of paper, but we need to flip over at tracing paper and flip Ariba app colored paper so that we're drawing on the wrong side. So press fairly family. What you're doing is transferring the graphite from one side on to the other side. So then you can see your design, cut it out. And you can just use some PVA glue to attach these pieces of paper. But I don't like to glue them into rod at the end. So that I've got leaving. All of my design options are open. So here we have the pen and matching skirt. And I do really like these colors paired with it. So I might do the same thing for this little bit of shirt here. I'm going to trace the shape of it. It's just pretend that's like that. And I want that to fit on here. So I'm going to flip that are evolved. Flip this or above. Again, I've got another join on the back, so we'll just pretend that's not there. You can see I've already been designing all day because I love it so much. Hopefully you'll love it too. So now I've got my shape. I just need to work out which lines it is. And then I can cut out my top. They'd little zigzags for the plates. That's the wet. I've been trying to think of it this whole time and I couldn't think of it. Plates. Don't worry about those. Put those in pain or over the top. So that works nicely. And I'm not just be out and make the top as well. Using my baking paper or tracing paper. Don't worry about the details that we've drawn in that when they are covering our EVOC because we can draw them straight right over the top. Trace through shape. Flip that are above, flip or V0 piece of paper. All my goodness, I'm not going to see anything now. And I may not be adequate fitness. So that's okay. We can do one of the arms that off there. So we're going to chop them off. Hopefully, I can work out which line is the right one. I think I've got it. So you probably have this many lines on the underside of your painting and harm. Cut it down. I find the best technique the cutting is to move the paper, rotate the paper and rotate the citizens at the same time. That's how you can get some of those tricky curves. Oh, that worked well, I locked that little detail down and I'm like watch the output is other pastes get a little bit of that, the bottom as well. I think maybe, maybe, maybe we'll say, we'll find that. Sometimes when you do this and you trace an upside down, you get these beautiful little delights that you didn't know you were on the underside of the paper and you didn't plan for it. And that's just so much fun when that happens. And that's really a great thing about design. It helps you with your design. And sometimes we need to not think and kind of switch off our Brian and just let chance happens. With design comes about, sorry, stick that on that side. And I think that's going to look great. I'm gonna go ahead and grab some glue. I might just cut out maybe one more, one more piece for that little skirt. Then go ahead and grab some color and then I'll show you how to do your paperwork or any extra watercolors.
5. Expressive watercolour details: Okay, so now that the ruler has dropped all my pieces, we can add the watercolor. You want to make sure that the glue is dry, otherwise you're going to ruin your nice watercolor brushes. So now that it's dry, we can go ahead and start to paint. And you can use whichever watercolors you like. Try to use similar colors to what you've used, are ready, and that will create a color harmony. I've mixed up a dark here with Alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue. We're going to outline the figures, but remember that fashion illustration is all about the clothes. So we're just going to outline the figures, give a little suggestion of the figures. But really we don't want to put too much detail in. We just want to put in a little bit of that detail that we did with pencil, like some of those little bits of fabric goal where the fabric is gathered or pocket because of the position. So just thin lines. You use a small brush. You could use a pen if you wanted to. But I find that the brush gives you those lovely thick and thin lines. And that's really, really beautiful to look at the variety of the lines. When we get to the site, I think I might make the boots doc and probably just leave a little bit of a highlight there to make them look shiny. And again, just a little bit of a suggestion. Don't worry about painting things in perfectly. You want to kinda do a bad job of painting here. Because you want to give the idea that we're just really quickly sketching out something and pain it just to get out ideas. So it's not about perfecting your drawing or your painting, is about quick, fast ideas and getting those onto the paper. Now up here, we cut that shirt smooth, but we can just paint back in these little crinkles, a little shapes of the plates. If you're like me, too lazy to cut all those shapes out, we can just paint them in again. Now you can just use a pen if you find, given a thin line with your brush is a little tricky. Sometimes it takes a bit of practice and be experienced during a thin line. So that's okay to use a pin. When it comes to the hair. I like to use my brush with funny little shapes to create this suggestion of hair. So I just use some funding, the new shapes like that just to put the hair in. We're letting the watercolor do the work. It's not about the figures, it's not about the clothes. So make sure you go all the way down to the hairline, do a zigzag shape. And just suggests the hair rather than painting it empathically. Remember it's all about the clothes. So go ahead then and put in the rest of your lines around your figure. Putting the color. If you have lawn, Maybe you've done your InDesign, That's fine. And just go over those edges again. Putting any little fabric details, maybe the ribbing under the shirt here. And then a little gathers of the fabric onto the arm. And again, when it comes to the hands and feet, we don't need to worry about paying them perfectly. We just suggest them. Just suggest that there's a handshape there. And we get to have beautiful flowing pants. You want to go over where we had our pencil lines and putting any gathered lines, maybe some pockets, maybe a belt you might have on yours. And again, it's all about suggesting not painting things in perfectly. So you'll see with my pockets that I've got broken lines. It's not a continuous line. That's great. We don't have to go back and fix it. A broken line is just fine. And again, when it comes to the fate, we just do exactly the same as we did With our pencil lines. Just go straight over it with our paint. Now, I like to put in a little bit of additional color. So I'm going to use just some of my doc to put in a shutter. So what I'll do is I'll just water down some of that dark. So it's not Sorry, Doc. And then I'm going to put in a shattered just starting at the base of each foot. And the key here is to make it on the same angle. And think long and lean. You want to pull a line as long as it's on the same angle and it's a little bit louder than your doc, that's going to look like a shutter. And I'd love to painting a little bit of extra color on that pleaded color. So I'm just going to get bit of pink. Now that the lines of dry, the dark lines of dry, we can paint straight over the top with some color. And again, do a messy job here, doesn't have to be perfect. We want to just get the idea and quick. And I might match that to the shoes or via and I think I might leave it there.
6. Final thoughts: Okay, fashionistas, I want to see what you have come up with. No, really, I actually really want to see what you've come up with. So please post your work to the project gallery so I can have a look. I can be delighted with what you've created and I can get some inspiration, maybe even from you. I'd love to see it. Please post it there and enjoy creating your next collection of gamma.
Anne Smerdon, award-winning watercolour artist
