about fashion > Marking Criteria

Marking Criteria

Often an illustration or design student might make the same mistakes on a continuous basis and be unaware of it. This will cost you precious marks unnecessarily. Since this is a visual industry, if your drawing skills are lacking, subconsciously you’ll be seen as less-than adequate. Don’t allow this to get to you, use a good set of poses that you trace from as your guidance when doing your designs. This creates uniformity and good balance of proportions. The templates will ensure you dont draw ‘out of the lines’ of good fashion proportions - the rest is up to you!

-Annie Kim

These are some of the common presentation mistakes for which students will be penalised:

• Not drawing hands, faces or shoes on your figures (sometimes this technique can work for some illustrators (see above image) but confirm with your lecturer.
• Your figures seem to be floating in mid-air (use foam tape to mount them, or borders around the figure)
• No headings
• No fabric sample swatches
• No fabric labels
• No technical drawings
• Figures get lost in a maze of messy backgrounds and borders
• Incorrect labelling on technical drawings (see technical drawing page )
• Figures too small and insignificant
• Untidy finishing or colouring-in
• Paper not neatly cut out
• Any decoration that falls off the board, not stuck down properly
• Use of rulers and curves when drawing technical drawings – no free-hand!
• Ignoring any criteria on a brief – you will be instantly marked on the brief interpretation and physical requirements such as board size
• General poor quality of drawings - childlike fashion figures and bad use of shading or highlighting
• Drawing the figures/garments too light - the colours must be drawn bold enough to differentiate from each other - dont fade away into the background!
• Bad colour interpretation – do the colours match?

Top

Common Errors

When you teach yourself how to draw, you often make the same mistakes over and over without a teacher to correct you. Check out these errors made:

Only using a hard pencil:
If you have no very dark shadows and the whole picture is rather pale, check your pencil. Are you using a Number2 (HB) pencil? These are too hard to draw with (though they are handy for light shading). Get a B, 2B and 4B for darker values. Read more about pencil grades.

Drawing from a photo:
This is the major cause of beginner drawing problems. Using flash photography flattens the features, giving you nothing to work with. When the person is facing you, it is very hard to see the modelling of the face, as the perspective vanishes behind their head. Have the person turning slightly to one side so you can model their face, with natural lighting to give good skin tones, and a natural expression to show their real personality.

Incorrect Head Proportions:

-Fiona Wylie

Because of the way we focus on a person’s features, we usually draw them too big and squash the rest of the head. Learn about the correct head proportions

Twisted Features:
Because we are used to looking at a person straight-on, we naturally try to make their features look level when we draw them. If their head is on an angle, this results in strange distortions in the picture. Sketch guidelines first to ensure that the features are on the same angle as the rest of the face.

-Sarah Singh

Being Afraid of Black:
Often when shading, the shadows don’t go past dark grey. If your value range is restricted to in some cases half what it ought to be, you are limiting the modelling and depth in your drawing. Put a piece of black paper at the corner of your drawing, and don’t be afraid to go dark. Really dark. Improve your range of tone.

Outlining in Value Drawings:
When value drawing, you are creating an illusion with areas of tonal value. When you use a hard drawn line to define an edge, you disrupt this illusion. Let edges be defined by two different areas of tonal value meeting.

Drawing on the Wrong Paper:
If your drawing is pale, it might be the paper. Some cheap papers have a sheen on the surface that is too smooth to grab the particles off the pencil. A thick notepad has too much ‘give’ under the pencil to allow you to apply enough pressure. Try a basic photocopy/office paper, or check the art store for cheap sketch paper. Place a piece of card under a couple of sheets to give a firmer surface. If you are trying to do even shading, some sketch papers can be too coarse, giving an uneven texture. Try a hot-pressed Bristol board or similar smooth drawing paper. Find out more about paper.

Wiry, Pencil-Line Hair:
If you draw every hair as a pencil line, you’ll end up with a horrible, wiry, unnatural mess. Use feathery pencil-strokes to draw the shadows. Most often in fashion illustration the features are ’suggested’ not always drawn photo realistically.

Top