Have you always wanted to learn how to create those sleek fashion illustrations you always see from famous designers? Maybe you’d just like to perfect your skills? Mood wants to help!
Not only can you learn from pros like Project Runway All-Star, Benjamin Mach, at MoodU, but you can also grow your talent at home with some of the amazing illustration products the Mood Fabrics carries online!
Let’s start with literature.
Whenever you try something new, it’s a great idea to do some reading – and for that, Mood has you covered. We’d recommend Erica Sharp’s Cutting Edge Fashion Illustration.
It’s so fantastic, we often use it in our classroom. From traditional to digital to mixed media methods, Sharp covers all things illustration. She offers clear advice on how to portray colors, patterns, and textures, how to create your own fashion portfolio, and even supplies step-by-step tutorials.
Then there’s 9 Heads – A Guide to Drawing Fashion. This is a must for our students. Besides showing how to master the techniques for drawing the fashion figure, 9 Heads is also a comprehensive guide to drawing all kinds of modern fashion garments, silhouettes and constructional/design details. Involving a new chapter on Composition and Fashion Shorthand (a guide to composing groups of garments for professional standard portfolios), a complete set of tutorials on how best to utilize Photoshop for fashion illustrations, and a CD-ROM containing full demonstrations conducted by Nancy Riegelman herself, 9 Heads leaves no future designer with anything less than all of the basic tools in formatting fashion illustrations on a professional level.
Now for the fun stuff – supplies!
Of course, you’ll need pens and paper. However, you’re art is going to reflect what it’s created with. You definitely don’t just want a dollar store pad.
For your next masterpiece, try a marker pad, like this Bienfang Graphics 360, which has translucent pages. Or, if you think you may still need some help with figures and proportions, a Fashionary might be perfect for you!
A Fashionary is a sketchbook, textbook, and template book all in one! It’s the perfect tool and resource for brainstorming, fast sketching and quick referencing for students, designers and home sewers alike. They come in male/female specific fashions and include up to 400 templates, or croquis figures, for instant sketching!
Finally, the pens!
Or, more accurately, markers. When sketching for fashion, you always want to use markers, like this set by Prismacolor. With chiseled tips, these markers have advanced ink formulations which provide rich saturations with smooth silky ink flow and coverage. Each marker is double-ended and contains 4 different line widths perfect for professional use.
If you’re looking for perfection though, take a look at this Colors For Fashion Marker Collection, which was made as a collaboration between 9HEADS and Mood Designer Fabrics specifically to go hand in hand with Nancy Riegelman’s Colors for Modern Fashion along with the entire 9HEADS series. Providing 24 quality twin tip markers for professional use, this set contains a full and effective range of contemporary fashion colors for extensive design applications.
