Learning to illustrate fashion

For the past 15 weeks I've been taking a fashion illustration course at the local Tafe (or Community College for you Northern Americans). I had been looking forward to the course for a long time, especially because it had been postponed twice due to venue and enrollment issues, and there really isn't much in the way of illustration courses in my home town.

We had an ambitious curriculum, and to be honest I think we only got through about half of it. The school allocated two hours a week, so by the time you got there, unpacked, talked about what you were doing for that class, you only had an hour to an hour and a half left. Not enough time to cover everything!

Some of the main things we did touch on included: 10-head croquis (basic fashion figure), basic shading, draping, simple faces / hands / feet, contextual backgrounds, collage, watercolor and ink, pastels and charcoal, drawing from magazines, and presenting a finished fashion image.

All of those were just brief overviews though, and we didn't event start to get into trade sketches, storyboards, using Adobe Illustrator, or get to expand on faces / hands / feet (something we were all struggling with). So, I guess now it is up to me to take what I have learned, practice, and try to expand on it. I have some good books, and it is just a question of finding the discipline to sit down and practice now that I don't have a class to go to.

I enjoyed learning how to stretch a regular-sized human into a 10-head croquis (most people are around 8-heads) but I think now that it is no longer a course requirement I might spend some time trying some more realistic 8 or 9 head figures.

Here is a little bit of the work I did during the course, I'd love to know what you think, and whether or not you can see any improvement over the last 15 weeks. You can click on any of the images to read more about them.

Here is one of the first finished pieces I did in class (rough draft and finished watercolor):

Some more pieces I worked on, using ball-point pen, watercolor, copic markers, and collage:

This piece I worked on for a bit longer, using watercolor and ink. If you'd like to see the process, check out the blog post.

This is the last piece I submitted for class, also using watercolor and ink...but with a touch of glitter!

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