Working with Texture

Yay! Today’s all about coloring and giving texture to your precious outfit!

The whole lesson and videos come from my course Fashion Markers, and I had a blast creating them!

Are you ready?

Texture

You know that texture is the 4th element of a simple fashion illustration, as we talked about it in lesson 2.

Whether you want to create your simple fashion illustrations to represent your fashion designs, or the outfits from the runway or magazines texture helps you to represent the type of fabric and its features more accurately. Is it fluid, sheer, and light? Or is it stiff, solid, and heavy?

And, despite the level of detail, you can suggest the type of fabric just by adding a bit of texture. You don’t have to make the garments look extremely realistic to let people know what kind of fabric they’re made of.

For example, in the following image the material is implied by the color, but with the texture it is reinforced that the material of the jumpsuit is denim.

Get Rid of the Flat Color

Today is the second part of the coloring process, you’re going to color the garments of you fashion illustration, and I’ll show how I do it.

To give texture to your fashion illustrations you can use different kinds of materials, and complement the features of some of them with the characteristics of others. So, with every new layer of color and details you build up the texture and make it look more AWESOME!

That’s exactly what I do; I complement the main material with other tools.

• I add a layer of color – with main material.
• Then a new layer of color in some places – with main material.
• Once the color base is done, I continue adding texture details – with other material, like brushpens, color pencils, fineliners, gelly pens, or ink pens.
• Then I add another layer of texture details, shadows, and hightlights – with a tool I haven’t used yet.
• And I do the same until the fabric texture looks like I want it to look.

To clarify the process check out the videos after the next step.

But, what texture details should you draw?

This is the fun part. In Fashion Markers, I show the step-by-step to draw the fabric textures, and I describe the kinds of details you can add to create them. But, you can follow this exercise to come up with the texture details for the kind of fabric you want to color.

1 | Observe the fabrics from your source of inspiration.

If you can get them physically that would help a lot better. Observe the texture and each detail of the fabrics:

• How do they reflect light? Are they shiny or matte?
• How do they work with gravity? Are they fluid or heavy?
• How do they work with the body? Are they close or far from the body? Do you need to add some ease?
• What else can you see? Does it folds and gathers? Is it stiff?
• What little textures do you see on the fabrics surface? For example, in light jersey I see small dots and thin rows, so when I illustrate light jersey in a simple fashion illustration I always draw this kind of details.

2 | Determine how you want to translate your observations

Now it’s time to think about how you can represent all the observations you took note on the last step, for example:

• If they reflect lots of light you may want to leave some white spaces, or use your white color pencil or gelly pen more heavily.
• If they are fluid fabrics, then you may want to add lots of gathering with your brushpens. And, on the other hand if the fabrics are heavy you may want to leave the garment without any fold or crease.
• If they have folds and creases you may want to emphasize them with an extra layer of color or with brushpens or with color pencils.
• For the little textures will you go literal and realistic, or more abstract?

3 | Experiment and practice before

Once you have different ideas of how to represent your fabrics, practice in a scrap piece of paper.

Or if you want to see exactly how the textures are going to look on the garments, and how to improve with every round of practice, you can create more sketches of your fashion illustration and experiment on them.

And, here’s something I shared with one of you during the week via email, and I think it can be helpful to remember when we feel fearful or impatient 😉

“Each and every piece of work you create takes you to another level of proficiency and mastery. We can’t be perfect the first time, even less if we haven’t defined what’s perfect for us. But, we can be better each time.”

Now on to the videos!

The first video is an introduction of how to illustrate a fabric texture as a swatch, and then in a garment.

The following three show you how to color and give texture to outfits.

And the last two are a sample of the videos to illustrate fabric textures from my course Fashion Markers.

Today’s assignment is

1. Read today’s lesson, watch the videos, and use your workbook.
2. Grab the materials and colors you decided to use in the last lesson.
3. Observe your source of inspiration.
4. Determine how you want to represent the textures of the fabrics.
5. Experiment and practice.
6. Share your progress, doubts and questions via email, or if via Instagram with the hashtag #FashionIllustrationCourse.

Can’t wait to see your creations! I’m super thrilled!

Lots of LOVE!

LESSON 7

LESSON 9