hi everyone welcome back to another video here on my channel
today I wanted to share some tips with you on how to improve fashion illustrations
the following tips that I will mention in this video are actually kind of just mental notes
for myself or advice that I want to give myself after I recently completed a fashion illustration
of a dress that I made which was my previous video as soon as I finished that illustration
I immediately thought to myself that I’m not very happy with that, that's really not how I want this
illustration to look like so I need to improve the way that I create fashion illustrations
and so these are some of my notes that I’m giving to myself so that future me can hopefully remember
these things and apply them into my future style or the way that I create fashion illustrations
number one is the way that I sketch, so when it comes to fashion illustrations especially when I’m drawing
on my Fashionary sketchbook there's already dotted templates that make the entire process
so much faster and much easier however I find that the way that I sketch
fashion illustrations is completely different to how I sketch portraits, when I’m doing
fashion illustrations because I already have a template the sketch that I do is quite rough
and I don't really think about how the fabric is going to flow, where the creases are gonna go or
any kind of shadow or shading that I want to apply once I start colouring so it's just super rough
and eventually I think about all of those things when I’m in the colouring process when it comes
to portraits I actually create a very detailed sketch from the very beginning so that I already
know where the shadows are, I already know where different details are going to go so for example
if I apply that to fashion illustration I already know where the creases are gonna go
the shape, the exact shape that I want for the clothes so that later on when I’m colouring I’m
not thinking about those things I’m just colouring so that is actually what I wanted to change and
that is something that I applied for this particular illustration, so with the shading you
can see two layers there's one underneath which is my really rough sketch done in grey lead I
use a 4H pencil and then on top of that I add more detailed sketches and this is a pencil that I know
will show through eventually once the illustration is complete so I absolutely don't mind that the
pencil sketches show through, therefore I’m using a much darker pencil and in this case I am using
the Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor in venetian red one of my favourite colours from their set, so
this way I am able to map out where the shading is going to be and I do that simply
by hatching. I actually really love this method because it allows me to block out the shapes
of where I’m going to place for example a darker shade of watercolour versus where I’m going
to place the lighter shade of watercolour all of that thinking all of that planning
I’ve already thought of that in the beginning so I highly recommend that
you start off with a sketch that is as detailed as you can possibly muster, and possibly plan
things early on in the process as well so that everything else after that goes pretty smoothly
the next tip or advice for myself that I’m also sharing with you is to add faces to your fashion
illustrations. yes I have absolutely seen a lot of fashion illustrations out there with very stylized
face or no face at all and it works however for me personally I love the idea of adding a face
to fashion illustrations, however I do find this really difficult because one it takes
a lot of practice you need to be doing this quite constantly to be comfortable enough to draw a face
that small. I am very used to drawing portraits that is probably the same size as my hand
so I try to fill like the whole page and draw a portrait that big, that allows me
to capture details to add colours and make it more realistic however when you shrink that down
into what is basically the size of my thumb for this fashioned illustration you end up losing
a lot of the details and sometimes it may have to be a little bit stylized, so that's something
that I have to practice and obviously I have to master if I really want to keep drawing
faces on my future fashion illustrations. I tried that for this illustration it was very difficult
and I’m still not super happy with the outcome of the small face I did juxtapose that with a larger
um drawing that's probably the smallest size that I’m very comfortable with when
it comes to drawing the face where I can add as much detail as I want but keeping the size
small, any smaller than that I for sure struggle but I really love the look of a semi-realistic
face on a fashion illustration, I think it just adds some elegance to the illustration
especially for example if you are trying to do an illustration of a wedding dress for a
client or something like that or for me when I’m doing costume illustrations for a specific actor
then I would love to be able to capture their likeness or their face in my own illustrations
so that is something that I need to work on and hopefully after this video it keeps on improving
I’m just gonna have to fix that later
the last tip that I want to talk about and that I want to share in this video
that will hopefully improve my fashion illustrations in the future and if you
want to apply this with your own illustrations then hopefully it will improve yours as well
that is to add details and layers especially when it comes to colouring
this is when you're able to add texture as well so that you're able to indicate the
kind of fabric that the dress or the garment is made out of - unfortunately I don't think I have
fully succeeded in this illustration that you are seeing right now because I honestly had no idea
what the fabric of this dress would be made out of so I didn't take that into consideration at all
however all I knew was that I wanted the fabric to be quite shiny and it also would be a little bit
stiff, so that the highlights that I would try and add onto the fabric would reflect exactly what I
was trying to achieve in terms of texture I didn't even think about that so hopefully in the future
I will consider what texture the fabric is so that I am able to add that kind of detail in the
illustration as well. I feel like that really adds to the semi-realism of this fashion illustration
I also recommend to layer with watercolours whether that's how many layers of wet on
dry paint you add onto your illustration or how many colours or shade variations you add
onto the illustration, definitely layer with your watercolours. that is something that
I tend to shy away from when it comes to fashion illustrations because once again it's the scale
I feel like I don't have enough space in the drawing because of how small it is
to add details but that's not true because they absolutely make brushes that are miniature size
to help with drawings that are like this, if you want to draw smaller there are brushes for that
so highly recommend that you use the appropriate materials to create illustrations of this scale
or whatever scale that you were working with, so I just need to one get used to using miniature
brushes when it comes to using watercolours. I absolutely love using small brushes for line work
but not when it comes to watercolour, so that is something that I need to be working on
and I did add layers with watercolours and with pencil when it came to colouring in this
illustration but I feel like in the future I want to be able to kind of add more details to this
like what if I used paint markers for example to layer on top so that I could add highlights
or even like bead work things like that just don't be afraid to add as much detail as you can
even though the scale that you are working on is relatively small. it is totally doable
but once again it just requires practice. I 100% believe that the illustration really comes
to life when it has all of these details but of course that is your personal preference if you
prefer to keep it abstract then that is totally up to you and just disregard everything that I
said in this video, but if you want to achieve a very similar style which is more semi-realistic
um which is also my kind of style then hopefully these tips will help you