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Fashion Marking Criteria

Often an illustrator or fashion student might make the same mistakes on a continuous basis and be completely unaware of it, costing you precious marks unnecessarily. These fashion criteria must be adhered to. As this is a visual industry, subconsciously you’ll be seen as less adequate if your drawing skills are lacking. Don’t allow this to get to you. One of the best ways to combat this is to use a good set of poses that you can trace from for guidance when doing your designs. This creates uniformity and a good balance of proportions. The templates will ensure that you don’t draw ‘out of the lines’ of good fashion proportions. The rest we leave in your capable hands.

 

Some of the common mistakes for which fashion students will be penalised include :

• Not drawing hands, faces or shoes on your figures (this technique can work for some illustrators,  but confirm this with your lecturer)
• Your figures seem to be floating in midair (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 that is not properly stuck down
• No use of rulers and curves when illustrating technical drawings. Free-hand is not acceptable in technical drawings.
• Ignoring any specific fashion criteria on a brief - you will be instantly marked down on the brief interpretation if physical requirements, such as board size, are not adhered to
• General poor quality of drawings - childlike fashion figures and poor use of shading or highlighting
• Drawing the figures/garments too light - the colours must be drawn bold enough to differentiate from each other – do not let the colours fade away into the background!
• Bad colour interpretation - do the colours match?

 

Common Errors

For any self-taught fashion student learning how to draw, the same mistakes are often continuously made as they don’t have a teacher to correct them. Some of the common errors include:

 

Only using a hard pencil:

If your shadows are not dark enough and the picture is rather pale, check your pencil. Are you using a Number Two (HB) pencil? These are too difficult to draw with (though they are handy for light shading). Get a B, 2B and 4B for darker values. Read more about pencil grades to learn which pencil is suitable for each situation.

 

Drawing from a photo:

This is one of the chief causes of drawing-related issues for fashion students who are beginning to discover their own sketching skills. Using flash photography flattens the features and gives 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. It is best to have the model turn slightly to one side so that you can reproduce their face with natural lighting. This gives good skin tones, and a natural expression which displays their real personality.

 

Incorrect Head Proportions:

Because of the way we focus on a person’s features, we usually draw them too big, squashing the rest of the head. Learn about the correct head proportions to further enhance your own set of skills.

 

Twisted Features:

Because we are used to looking at a person head-on, we naturally try to make their features look level when we draw them. If their head is on an angle, the result is a strange distortion in the picture. It is best to sketch the guidelines first to ensure that the features are on the same angle as the rest of the face.

 

Being Afraid of Black:

Often when shading, your shadows won’t go past dark grey. If your value range is restricted to half what it ought to be, you are limiting the modelling and depth in your drawing. Lay 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 and watch you pictures come to life.

 

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 the edges be defined by the meeting of two different areas of tonal value.

 

Drawing on the Wrong Paper:

If your drawing is pale, it might be the paper. Some cheap papers have sheen (a gloss effect) on the surface that is too smooth to grab the particles off the pencil. A thick notepad has too much ‘give’ under the pencil, which stops the application of necessary pressure. Try 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 for 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 and discover what it takes to make your drawings extraordinary.

 

Wiry, Pencil-Line Hair:

Drawing every hair as a pencil line will create a figure with a horrible, wiry, unnatural mess of a hairstyle. Use feathery pencil strokes to draw the shadows. Often in fashion illustration, the features are ’suggested’ and not always drawn in a photorealistic manner. This over emphasis on drawing each individual strand is a common error that fashion students make.

 

Employ these handy techniques and improve your fashion markings for the next exam or assignment.