Summer 2014: Festival Fashion Illustrations

A new fashion label got in contact with me as they wanted some illustrations depicting their garments on models in order to show another collaborator who would go on to produce the clothes. After meeting up with Izzy I wrote down all the styles, materials and lengths of the garments and she showed me her mood boards and gave me some simple sketches to work from. I then searched the web, mainly asos.com to find models who I thought would work well with her concept and whose poses would show off the clothes best. I also gathered a range of images that I thought were in some way similar to Izzy's designs which I could use as a help to draw them. She requested that they be drawn in pencil as she was not 100% certain on some colours and some were to be produced in various colours, so I stuck to shades and trying to convey the materials.

First I used my sketchbook to draw some initial ideas out imagining how the outfit would be. This was good as it allowed me to visualise the image however the illustrations themselves were not laboured over and the proportions and poses of the bodies and garments were not very accurate.

So I then went on to use some of my collected research images as reference and combined a few ideas with my already imagined drawings to create some final illustrations. Throughout this process I had sent across some progress shots to Izzy to check whether they were following her designs accurately and in some cases she did want a few changes which were easy enough to do, such as flaring the paisley trousers more. However most of them she was pleased with!

After I had my set of final illustrations on A4 paper in pencil, I decided to scan them in and edit them slightly on Photoshop in order to get that finished look. I got rid of any extra pencil lines or smudges and dots, also using the smudge tool to smudge the skin in order to allow it to appear more smooth and also so that it took a background step to the garments themselves. I also went on to Levels to darken the shadows slightly more.

Once I had finished this I saved them as both Ps and Jpeg files, emailing the Jpegs to Izzy, and then also printing them out in the correct size for her.