Friday, September 25, 2015

Illustration: Legs and Faces

I'm doing a bit of catch-up with posting, since the first month of classes has completely thrown off my blogging schedule. I haven't sewn anything since the last wedding we went to, but hopefully I can rectify that next week, before the next onslaught of assignments and exams starts up in mid-October.


Here are a bunch of photographs of the better attempts in my work, over the past two weeks, where we focussed on legs, and then faces.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Dart Manipulations

Dart manipulation is magical. Using a basic sloper or master pattern, you can do all sorts of things to the placement of each dart, which completely changes the look of the garment without changing the overall fit. Even a simple change can let you do something like this:


We've been doing these basic dart manipulations in my flat pattern class for the past few weeks, on paper. And if it isn't obvious from this blog's name, I'm a big fan of starting out on paper, whether it's a paper prototype for your interface design, or learning about textile weaves.

The dart manipulation above is the one I'm about to show you in this post, where we add the side seam dart into the waist seam dart, to create one bigger, combined dart.

Friday, September 18, 2015

Fashion Illustration - Stick Figures

One of the classes I'm taking this fall is fashion illustration, which is turning out to be much more fun than I expected. I really can't draw to save my life, never mind drawing people! So it was a relief to learn that we would be starting out drawing stick fashion figures:


Far from being basic stick figures, though, there is a bit of a proportion and height formula which makes it easy to follow. Understanding that each line represents a basic bone structure also helps.


Occasionally, adding props and a martini spices up class drawing time a little. :)


It's amazing how much you can get out of just a few well proportioned lines!

The next step has been to start "blocking" our stick figures, or adding a bit of muscle to our bony ladies.


"Runway model." Hahaha.



Some of these drawings are actually based on fashion models, but most are strictly out of my imagination. You can see various notes that I've taken along the way; if you're wondering about this last lady and the wall of text between her legs, I was jotting down some pointers my instructor had for her crotch and thigh placement.

The next things we are working on are developing our leg drawing skills and faces. I've had a lot of difficulty blocking out feet, so this is going to be a slog.