Fashion Sketches: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

Having good fashion sketching skills will help a candidate get a good score in design entrance exams like NIFT and NID. On the other hand, good fashion sketching skills can help one go far in the fashion design career.  

For an aspiring designer, being able to draw best fashion illustrations is very important for success. The ability to make fashion illustrations will give designers a distinct voice that can be used to communicate with viewers or potential customers. Also, illustration comes first before concept becomes a reality.

But before the student can perfect his art in fashion illustrations, he has to master another art known as fashion sketches.

A fashion sketch can be considered skeleton of main item. For instance, it will not have any accompanying figure, but it will deal with subjects like length and size of garment, orientation, fitting and other such technical elements. On the other hand, a fashion illustration adds meat and muscle to skeleton. This means adding color, texture, shading and movement so that sketch comes to life and communicates a message.

How to draw fashion sketches from scratch?

Start with shape of garment 

A fancier term for the shape is silhouette. When drawing the shape, you need to be aware of the height, size (how broad or thin), the alignment, etc. 

Adding details to garment

Now you can proceed to add details to the garment. When we speak of details, it refers to both the decorative and essential elements. Decorative parts may include pleats, fastenings (buttons and zips), necklines, pockets, and collars. The details give context to the sketch and help the viewer understand the underlying theme.

Fine-tune the sketch

Sketch may have unnecessary elements. There may be lines that you can remove, or illustrations in the wrong places. You need to clean the sketch so that only the mandatory elements remain. 

Don’t use pen to draw fashion sketches

As a beginner, it is recommended not to use a pen for the preliminary sketch or even for the detailing. It is because the sketch in that case can’t be edited easily. Instead, use a hard, good quality H pencil. 

Using colors in sketch

Unless you become an expert, it is better to restrict yourself to watercolors, which are easy to handle and learn. In contrast, oil colors need more specialized handling.   

Using croquis for drawing fashion sketches

Students can also use croquis for drawing fashion sketches. A croquis is particularly helpful for a beginner who may not know where to start and how. Croquis is used to outline the technical aspects of a garment, for instance, fit and shape, length of sleeve, height and placement of the seams and darts. On the other hand, it puts less emphasis on figure drawing.

How to draw a croquis is given below.

• Use a hard pencil and thick paper to create the croquis.
• It is important that you have a particular idea in mind before you start creating croquis. Some authors recommend that you use separate boards for texture, fabrics, and colors. You can use magazines, photographs, etc., for the purpose.
• Croquis has disproportionate body drawing compared to a human body. The student needs to bear this in mind when creating the croquis. The other thing is related to its standard length, which happens to be nine times the length of the head that is being drawn.
• You can use the croquis to better illustrate the garment or event movement by laying it out in different ways. For instance, you can change the posture of the head, legs, or hands. 

Process to draw a fashion croquis

To create the croquis of your requirement

• Draw a straight line. The length of the line will represent the extent of the model from head to toe.
• Divide the line into ten parts. One part will be equivalent to the length of the head
• Draw the head, neck, shoulders, torso, legs and feet. Torso will be around 2-3 times the length of the head. The pelvis will be around the same length as the head. The length of the feet and legs should be proportionate.
• To sketch the shoulders, chest, waist and hips, you need to add horizontal lines through the straight line. You can try various combinations to create different poses.
• Fill in to create a full figure. You can add curves to body parts that need them, for example, hips and waist.
• Next, you can draw another layer upon it. 
• Add facial features. This exercise will bring the photo to life
• Once you have created it, add colors and shading. You can use different brush textures to give context and show contrasts.