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Faces:

Your own fashion design figure for your garments should be worked on day and night. You should be able to draw fashion hands, faces and bodies with practice. You can practice with the ones on this website, but as a professional you must eventually be able to draw figures from scratch. Seasoned fashion designers are able to do this because they have practiced with fashion templates over and over again.

 

When designing a garment you must make the clothing the primary focus. The detail of the fashion hands, face and body shouldn’t cause you the most concern, but it does form the backdrop of the illustration. Many fashion designers leave the face blank and you may choose to do this if you wish, although it can sometimes make the template feel impersonal. A pretty, inviting face can draw the viewer into the picture, and attracting the audience is a big part of fashion design. Figure into the equation your drawing ability. If illustrating is not your strong point, try to draw understated lines; don’t over-power the sketch. As with everything else in life, practice makes perfect!

 

 

 

Try to look at as many other fashion illustrators’ work as possible; look at their figures for fashion design; keep seeking inspiration – their line work and hand detail will assist you in your own work. The face is probably the most intimidating part of the entire fashion illustration but, as with the nine heads principle, practicing drawing fashion hands and heads will eventually allow you to draw these body parts correctly.

 

Face Grid:

Begin by splitting the face up in half and then draw a line in the very middle. Split the face plane into the grid, as seen here.

 

                                                             

 

Head: Draw an oval head, and then draw in the guidelines for the centre, eyes and mouth.

 

Eyes : Using the eye guideline, draw almond shaped eyes. The space in the centre of the eyes (bridge of the nose) can be the width of one eye, and half an eye on either side of the left and right eye.

 

Eyelids: These are rendered by drawing a curved line above each eye, following the shape of the eye.

 

Eyeball: Draw a ball inside the almond of the eye. Hide part of the circle inside the almond, otherwise you will end up with a staring face, not an appealing look!

 

Eyelashes and -brows: Draw the top lash line slightly thicker, try not to draw too many separate eyelashes, this just looks messy. For the brows, draw a thicker line at the right place above the eyes.

 

**Remember that the eye is not a perfect sphere. Figures for fashion designs should look like the real thing, even when stylised. The cornea bulges out in front of the iris (the coloured part), so that the while the iris looks flat, reflections from the front of the eye show a curved surface. **

 

 

 

The drawing above illustrates this.

 

More about the eye:

·          Note that when viewed from an angle, the pupil sits in the plane of the iris and, being in perspective, is oval rather than circular.

·          The iris is not a solid tone, but has streaks of colour, dark around the edge.

·          At this angle, the rim of the lower eyelid is visible. Use the lightest hint of tone here, except where shadowed.

·          The whites in eyes aren’t really white. With all fashion design figures, a bit of artistic licence can be taken when drawing the eye. However, to make the eye look more realistic, make sure you include a bit of colour, as well as little visible blood vessels. Remember to reserve pure white for your highlights. The shape of the lids changes as the eye moves. We tend to think of the eyes as being mirror images of each other, but when gazing to one side, they can look very different. Expressions can drastically alter the shape of the eye in your fashion design. Figures that are smiling have different appeal than figures that are stern.. Pay attention to the lines and wrinkles around the eye, not just the lids themselves, otherwise the eyes will just look misshapen. Pay careful attention to placement of the eyes. If drawing without any aids, refer to the key ‘landmarks’ of the face, checking the angle and distance of the inner and outer points of the eyes in relation to the ears and nose.

·          To begin with, use construction lines to indicate the planes of the face and then place the pupils and draw in main lines of the lids and brows. Including wrinkles and lines at this point can help provide reference points. Don’t get too detailed at first, but work up the whole face, adding further reference points and ensuring that everything fits together. Some people prefer to focus on a single area at a time.

·          Careful observation is the key. Observing the tiny details of light and shade in the eyes will bring the subject to life.

 

Tips : Sometimes a little artist’s licence is needed if light is poor or when working from a photo for your fashion hands, face or body. Adding a little curved highlight cutting across the pupil and iris, a shadow under the lid, or detail to the iris can brighten flat eyes. Don’t automatically outline the lower lid - often the lower rim is highlighted and needs to be lightly indicated. Observe the subtle changes in tone which indicate the eye socket and the planes of the nose and brows, which help to sit the eyes into the face.

 

Lips: Above the mouth guideline draw in a stretched out “M”. Below the line, draw a curved line. For the centre lip line, draw an even more drawn-out “M” line.

 

The Nose:   Draw two curved shapes on either side of the centre front line.

 

Ears & Hairline: Ears can be drawn from the eye guideline to just above the mouth line. Hair is sometimes drawn as a soft outline or shape, rather than a formal detailed hairstyle. It is your choice, but if you find you are not particularly good at drawing either of the features demonstrated here - rather draw as simplistically as possible.

 

For detailed hair: One of the more common mistakes is to attempt to draw every hair as a pencil-stroke. As the pencil cannot hope to represent the many changes in tone and light in a hair strand, this effect is usually disastrous. Another problem is lack of care - you should spend at least as much time on the hair as on the face.

 

Drawing long hair is in many ways easier than short hair, as the ’surface’ tends to be a little smoother, with broader sections of highlight. This light is less dispersed in long hair than in short hair. Curly or frizzy hair can be more of a problem, but if you take your time and observe carefully, it is quite achievable. If you are using a model for your figure for fashion design, you might need to ask them to tame their hair a little with conditioner prior to sitting, but the representation of frizzy hair can be achieved by a free-flowing design. Fashion design figures can look a bit out of control if you draw each hair in turn, though.

 

First, look carefully at the model or reference photo and identify the major sections of hair. Curls will often be rather flat, like ribbons curling back in on itself. Try to ignore odd strands at first, concentrating on the main bulk of the hair and lightly outline the main shapes and sections.

 

Next, draw in the darks with a soft pencil, being careful to leave the highlights well alone. At this point, you might wish to lightly sketch in prominent lighter hairs that need to be left, bringing the darks up close beside them so as to avoid problems with erasing them. Where strands of hair cross each other, small marks may be necessary to separate them. Make sure you follow the direction of the curl. Now that you’ve got the basic structure of the hair and put in the darks, you’ve won half of the battle. Drawing lifelike hair is in part a test of observation in drawing fashion design figures and partly a test of patience. This approach will certainly work for quick sketches when applied judiciously, but for really lifelike hair, you will need to take your time and pay attention to detail.

 

Now draw in the mid-tones with pencil-strokes following the direction of hair. Draw the darker lines separating sections of hair, and patiently draw the dark areas showing behind lighter hairs. At this point you can use a harder pencil over the darks, filling in the paper-grain and blending the tone out along the hair. For super-smooth and shiny hair, using a blending stump along the hair can even out the tone, making the illustration look more lifelike, a key to drawing fashion hands, faces and bodies.

 

To finish off, add a few stray marks to loosen up the drawing around the edges. Some sections of hair are smoothed with a stump and highlights picked out with an eraser. The original drawing is a little sharper than shown by this scanned image. After blending tone and erasing, use a hard pencil to lightly re-define nearby areas and keep them crisp. Your fashion design figure should be taking shape.

 

NEW CONTENT: Tips for Drawing Hair on your Fashion Design Figure

 

·          Draw the hair in all sorts of styles depending on the theme - ponytails, short, bobbed, long, curly, wavy etc.

·          Don’t draw the hair as one mass, draw the highlights and definition. It should vary in tone.

·          Draw women’s hair with long strokes, rather than like men’s hair which is drawn using shorter strokes.

·          Women’s hairlines are higher, which emphasises the roundness of the forehead.

·          Outline tufts of hair rather than drawing sketchy hair that is emphasised hair by hair.

·          Don't draw the hair too uniform or solid, it will end up looking like a hat!

·          Lines for hair should direct away from the scalp and flow in the direction of the desired style.

 

I have opened the site for guests to post their personal tutorials on drawing faces. I think this is a good way to gain more perspectives on alternative drawing techniques. Click the artist’s name to learn more about them or see their sites. Click the thumbnail to see an enlarged tutorial:

 

Brandon McKinney - Elaborate grid technique to draw the face, drawing eyes from different angles. The tutorial includes advice on noses, mouths and ears.

Zirconia - Clever shading and highlighting techniques for drawing eyes that be used for PC or hand drawing techniques.

Mueymue - Not a tutorial, but just depictions of eyes with good shading and reflections.

Tentopet - Use this eye template for all your drawings, it covers all angles that eyes can be drawn in.

Nelesia - Brilliant colouring-in tutorial done in Corel Painter that can be applied in hand illustration as well.

Crucifyofmine - An absolutely amazing colouring-in tutorial for lips.

There are more visitor tutorials on the free tutorial page related to general anatomy that cover aspects of the face as well. The thumbnail tutorials belong to the artists, please do not attempt to redistribute or copy the contents thereof. Please contact the artists for permission to use their work on other sites.

 

NEW CONTENT: General Drawing Tips

 

·          Rather try to "suggest" features on your fashion design figure than drawing it in, and if in doubt – don’t draw it in at all.

·          Features on figures for fashion design are often smaller than you think. For instance, the hand can almost entirely cover the face. Fashion hands, although exaggerated, should always be in proportion to the body.

·          Ears and eyes are in line with each other between the nose and the eyebrows.

·          Eyes are positioned halfway up the head, often we draw them higher up – it’s a common mistake.

·          Eyes are generally positioned one eye-width apart.

·          The iris of the eye is half covered by the upper eyelid and this creates a shadow on the eyeball.

·          Eyelashes become bushier and thicker towards the outer corners of the eye. Bottom lashes are shorter.

·          The bottom lip is generally always fuller than the top lip.

·          Lips are not drawn in a straight line as they curve horizontally around the face.

·          Rather than drawing teeth individually, suggest it by drawing a shadow in between each individual tooth.

·          The nose actually starts at the forehead and there is an indentation where the bone ends and the cartilage begins.

·          Made up of planes that form the sides top and the base, the nose has a ball at the bottom and wings on either side where the nostrils flare.

 

Your fashion design figure should look complete. Figures for fashion design are simple to draw when you know how! With these drawing tips for illustrative fashion, hands, legs and faces should be far easier than ever before.

Next: Drawing Legs