 Hi everyone, welcome back to another video here on my channel. Today I wanted to share some tips with you on how to improve fashion illustrations. The following tips that I will mention in this video are actually kind of just mental notes for myself or advice that I want to give myself after I recently completed a fashion illustration of a dress that I made, which was my previous video. As soon as I finished that illustration, I immediately thought to myself that I'm not very happy with that. That's really not how I want this illustration to look like, so I need to improve the way that I create fashion illustrations. And so these are some of my notes that I'm giving to myself so that future me can hopefully remember these things and apply them into my future style or the way that I create fashion illustrations. Number one is the way that I sketch. So when it comes to fashion illustrations, especially when I'm drawing on my fashion sketchbook, there's already dotted templates that make the entire process so much faster and much easier. However, I find that the way that I sketch fashion illustrations is completely different to how I sketch portraits. When I'm doing fashion illustrations because I already have a template, the sketch that I do is quite rough and I don't really think about how the fabric is going to flow, where the creases are going to go, or any kind of shadow or shading that I want to apply once I start coloring. So it's just super rough and eventually I think about all of those things when I'm in the coloring process. When it comes to portraits, I actually create a very detailed sketch from the very beginning so that I already know where the shadows are, I already know where different details are going to go. So for example, if I apply that to fashion illustration, I already know where the creases are going to go, the exact shape that I want for the clothes so that later on when I'm coloring, I'm not thinking about those things, I'm just coloring. So that is actually what I wanted to change and that is something that I applied for this particular illustration. So with the shading, you can see two layers. There's one underneath which is my really rough sketch done in gray lead. I use a 4H pencil and then on top of that I add more detailed sketches and this is a pencil that I know will show through eventually once the illustration is complete. So I absolutely don't mind that the pencil sketches show through, therefore I'm using a much darker pencil and in this case I am using the Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor in Venetian Red, one of my favorite colors from their set. So this way I am able to map out where the shading is going to be and I do that simply by hatching. I actually really love this method because it allows me to block out the shapes of where I'm going to place, for example, a darker shade of watercolor versus where I'm going to place the lighter shade of watercolor. All of that thinking, all of that planning, I've already thought of that in the beginning. So I highly recommend that you start off with a sketch that is as detailed as you can possibly muster and possibly plan things early on in the process as well so that everything else after that goes pretty smoothly. The next tip or advice for myself that I'm also sharing with you is to add faces to your fashion illustrations. Yes, I have absolutely seen a lot of fashion illustrations out there with very stylized face or no face at all and it works. However, for me personally, I love the idea of adding a face to fashion illustrations. However, I do find this really difficult because, one, it takes a lot of practice. You need to be doing this quite constantly to be comfortable enough to draw a face that small. I am very used to drawing portraits that is probably the same size as my hand. So I try to fill like the whole page and draw a portrait that big. That allows me to capture details, to add colors, and make it more realistic. However, when you shrink that down into what is basically the size of my thumb for this fashion illustration, you end up losing a lot of the details and sometimes it may have to be a little bit stylized. So that's something that I have to practice and obviously I have to master if I really want to keep drawing faces on my future fashion illustrations. I tried that for this illustration. It was very difficult and I'm still not super happy with the outcome of the small face. I did juxtapose that with a larger drawing. That's probably the smallest size that I'm very comfortable with when it comes to drawing the face, where I can add as much detail as I want, but keeping the size small. Any smaller than that, I for sure struggle. But I really love the look of a semi-realistic face on a fashion illustration. I think it just adds some elegance to the illustration, especially for example, if you are trying to do an illustration of a wedding dress for a client or something like that or for me when I'm doing costume illustrations for a specific actor, then I would love to be able to capture their likeness or their face in my own illustrations. So that is something that I need to work on and hopefully after this video it keeps on improving. The last tip that I want to talk about and that I want to share in this video that will hopefully improve my fashion illustrations in the future and if you want to apply this with your own illustrations then hopefully it will improve yours as well. That is to add details and layers, especially when it comes to coloring. This is when you're able to add texture as well so that you're able to indicate the kind of fabric that the dress or the garment is made out of. Unfortunately I don't think I have fully succeeded in this illustration that you are seeing right now because I honestly had no idea what the fabric of this dress would be made out of. So I didn't take that into consideration at all. However, all I knew was that I wanted the fabric to be quite shiny and it also would be a little bit stiff so that the highlights that I would try and add onto the fabric would reflect exactly what I was trying to achieve. In terms of texture I didn't even think about that so hopefully in the future I will consider what texture the fabric is so that I am able to add that kind of detail in the illustration as well. I feel like that really adds to the semi realism of this fashion illustration. I also recommend to layer with watercolors whether that's how many layers of wet on dry paint you add onto your illustration or how many colors or shade variations you add onto the illustration definitely layer with your watercolors. That is something that I tend to shy away from when it comes to fashion illustrations because once again it's the scale. I feel like I don't have enough space in the drawing because of how small it is to add details but that's not true because they absolutely make brushes that are miniature size to help with drawings that are like this. If you want to draw smaller there are brushes for that so highly recommend that you use the appropriate materials to create illustrations of this scale or whatever scale that you were working with. So I just need to one get used to using miniature brushes when it comes to using watercolors. I absolutely love using small brushes for line work but not when it comes to watercolor so that is something that I need to be working on. Layers with watercolors and with pencil when it came to coloring in this illustration but I feel like in the future I want to be able to kind of add more details to this like what if I used paint markers for example to layer on top so that I could add highlights or even like bead work things like that just don't be afraid to add as much detail as you can even though the scale that you were working on is relatively small. It is totally doable but once again it just requires practice. I 100% believe that the illustration really comes to life when it has all of these details but of course that is your personal preference. If you prefer to keep it abstract then that is totally up to you and just disregard everything that I said in this video but if you want to achieve a very similar style which is more semi-realistic which is also my kind of style then hopefully these tips will help you.