Fashion Drawings are the blueprint for any design, and can vary in style and amount of detail. A flat sketch is usually used to outline the shape and silhouette of a garment. Fashion drawings can also be three-dimensional fashion figures with texture, shading, and movement lines for fabric draping.
Fashion illustration is incredibly important in fashion design, just as much as paint is to an artist, equations to a mathematician, and medicine to a doctor. It acts as the voice of the designer, communicating his/her vision to the viewer. Fashion illustration is considered the first step in bringing your design to fruition, and it propels the design idea from conceptualization to realization.
Every design begins as a sketch, and a fashion sketch is the first step in bringing your fashion creations to life; you can almost call it the blueprint for a design. These sketches aren’t accompanied by a figure, and their core purpose is to communicate your design and all its technical elements, such as length of garment and fit, to the viewer.
Fashion illustration is the art of drawing, sketching, or painting fashion concepts and design ideas used to visualize a garment before it’s produced. Unlike a flat sketch, fashion illustrations are more detailed with the addition of color, texture, shading, and movement lines. Fashion illustration is more stylistic.
Designing a garment from scratch takes creativity and a good sense of one’s environment; how one uses various objects around him or her to create beauty and life. Semester two (2) and three (3) students of BlueCrest School of Fashion & Design had the opportunity to step out of their comfort zones to draw inspiration from their environment and put it down on their sketch pads.
Creating designs inspired from the environment gives room for fashion illustrators and fashion designers to be themselves and explore their world of creativity. As the lecturer for this course, I am deeply impressed with the level of enthusiasm and passion displayed by the students. They did amazingly well and are looking forward to the next class.
The writer is Beatrice Dede Addy,
Lecturer at the BlueCrest School of Fashion & Design.
