Hello Fashionistas! We're very lucky today to have the famed Fashion Illustrator Alfredo Cabrera as our contributing editor to show us how to sketch up a beautiful fashion illustrations! He is a seasoned fashion designer whom had designed for Geoffrey Beene, Polo Ralph Lauren, Victor Alfaro also had lend his talented fashion illustration skills to ad campaigns & window displays to Henri Bendel, Missoni, Gianfranco Ferre, Tommy Hilfiger, Hollister and many more famous fashion houses. Today, he gave us a step by step tutorial how to draw a beautiful fashion illustration! so now get your pencils and color markers ready!
A good friend suggested that a “How To” post on drawing M & B would be of interest. The task: Babes sporting one of Marni’s sweet little cocoon suits for fall. I’ll try to go step-by-step.
Step 1: Consider the silhouette and what pose will show it best. In this case, hands in the pockets will emphasize the cocoon shape and knees together will keep the slim skirt slim. Map out the gesture. Be sure she’s standing firmly on the plumb line.
Step 2: You aren’t technically “drawing” yet, so you don’t want to use contour and fashion sketches should be editorial, so SIMPLIFY; block out the masses of the figure with geometric shapes.
(Tip: Once you have a well proportioned figure who’s standing you can create dozens more by simply changing the placement of the arms and leg that isn’t carrying weight. Flip these figures on a Xerox machine and you double the number.)
Step 3: Dress the figure. After you’ve drawn a zillion of these you can skip step 2 and just start blocking clothing shapes on the skeleton. Be mindful of proportion: Where does the jacket hem hit? How many skirt lengths fit into a jacket length? Don’t be afraid to exaggerate a little to get at the “essence” of the look.
Step 4: Using your penciled shapes as a guide, block out the skin, hair and clothing shapes in color. Don’t just “fill in” what you’ve sketched but try to build the masses with color. It’s ok to go outside the lines or not fill them in to the edge.
Step 5: Build shadows and start adding texture in color. Don’t draw in ribs or cables or other texture in pencil, but in color- it’s closer to visual truth.
Step 6: Render the tweed. This beautiful Marni suit is in a great saffron and black, nubby tweed. We’ve already laid down the yellow base color and shadows, now we’ll go in with the side of a black Prisma pencil. My trick is to use a textured surface (shown peeking from beneath the sketch) to get the slubby look.
Step 7: This is the point to create darker shadows, punch up texture and add prints or patterns- BEFORE going in with a highlights and holding line. I used a white gel pen for the pattern on the sweater and a darker brown marker to add dimension to the sunglasses and block out the shoes.
Step 8: Believe it or not, this is where the actual drawing comes in. Some artists like a soft look and may use a soft pencil for a sensitive thick & thin contour line. I like a more graphic look and uses ball point and felt tip pens to get variety of line. Don’t outline everything; you may even want to leave some areas undrawn. (Baby’s hair never has more than a few curls drawn in.)
Finally, add highlights with a white Prisma pencil and a white-out pen, which you can also use to clean up bleeding edges and mistakes. Voila! You now know more about Babes than you have any right to.
XOXO Alfredo Cabrera
************************ Ok everyone! isn't this tutorial fabulous & easy to follow? Remember, practice makes it perfect! So don’t get discourage when your first couple sketches doesn’t look as good as Alfredo’s ( well to my opinion, not many people can sketch as good as Alfredo! His sketches are just one of the kind fabulous!). So whenever you have time, sketch away! Let your creative mind go wild and develop your own style of fashion illustration!
If you are interested to see more of Alfredo's fabulous artworks, don't forget to visit his official blog "Mamie N Baby" ! Click on the link here to visit mamienbaby.blogspot.com
I love being part of an online community of designers.It's a great ways to get feedback and inspiration, as well as provide the same for other designers. I have recently had a few comments by other web designers about my own site, commenting on the use of certain elements,such as the type as images and not using the latest css for my site. Now, I made a conscious decision to design my site to look a certain way, and focusing on new technology would mean that I would be trying to incorporate my design into this framework, rather than finding the technology that suits what I want to say.
Personally I feel it is one of the reasons that our clients come to Blossom. We focus on the way things look, then how they work, not the other way around, whereas most web designers focus on how things work, then how to make this functionality look good.
I prefer the marketing and branding approach being strong, because most visitors don't care whether you have used a particular javascript framework, or a certain style of div tag. They look at the site, and if it's pretty and "speaks" to them they will stay.
Maybe this is the difference between graphic designers who can create websites and purely web designers. Blossom's focus remains squarely at the marketing needs of our clients, and we use functionality to meet these needs, whereas many of the web design firms out there seem to be looking for ways to use the latest piece of web wizardry.
Either way, it's good to have diversity in a field, and clients choose the focus that they want for their website, branding and marketing mix.
Since I was a kid, I’ve always loved anything that’s in bright vivid colors and growing up in the 80s and 90s, when “More is more” very much the mantra in the fashion scene and glammed-up supermodels reigned supreme, of course Gianni Versace was one of the designer who inspired me to perused fashion design as an carrier.
I am sure all of the fashonistas remembered the super talented designer Gianni Versace! Whom dominated the late 80s and early 90s fashion world by storm with his vibrant, colorful & daring designs that has set himself apart from the rest of the designers & lured us into his fashion fantasy world till he was tragically allegedly killed by his casual encounter Andrew Cunanan.
After Gianni’s death, his sister Donatella Versace had shown strong courage to take over this fashion empire and continued his late brother’s legacy and successfully brought the company to another level of glamour & style that we all love today!
Versace 2010 Spring-Summer
Donatella Versace (born May 2, 1955) is an Italian fashion designer, as was her brother, the late Gianni Versace, the founder of the Versace clothing brand. Her current title is Vice-President of the Versace Group and Chief Designer of the fashion line. She owns 20 percent of the entire stock market assets of Versace. Her brother, Santo Versace, owns 30 percent. Donatella's daughter Allegra Versace inherited 50% of the company stock after Gianni Versace died.
Allegra Versace (Left) & Donatella Versace (Right)
Versace was one of the 1st fashion house that’s responsible for the early 90s “Supermodels” phenomenon! & paid each supermodels $10,000 per show, back in the days that’s a record high price for a 30 minutes show!
Gianni Versace 1992 Ad Campaigns
Versace 1997 Ad Campaign Featured Rock Singer Bon Jovi
This plunging deep V-Neck Versace dress skyrocketed Jennifer Lopez's career & capture the world's attention! OMG! can this dress be anymore FABULOUS?! We Love J-Lo & Versace!
Here is an exclusive video of Donatella Versace, interviewed by Colin McDowell for Net-A-Porter.com Click on the video below to see
Donatella, thank you for carrying on your late brother Gianni's work and his company so we can continue to enjoy and admire Versace’s fabulous creations season after season! And YOU GO GIRL! Donatella! It’s not easy to be on the 24/7 non-stop Glamazon! It's a hard work but someone's gotta do it right?!
Here is a video to walk down the memory lane of Versace’s 1992 fashion show features ALL the top supermodels …. Ah the golden era of fashion in the early 90s !
To see more of the fabulous VERSACE collections, please click here to visit their official website Versace.com
