Fashion Illustration

A quick sketch on a newsprint paper done with charcoal.  I was trying to get the model’s gesture and facial expression. I don’t remember exactly the duration of the pose but my best guess is that it was a four minutes pose. Fashion Night Events sometimes have seven minute long poses for simple costumes and four or two minute long poses for elaborate costumes.  There aren’t really any hard and fast rules. Artists who use other media like watercolors get a lot more done in a short time – using large washes.

Fashion drawings are fun.  One of my favorite fashion illustrators is Rene Gruau.  He knew human anatomy and was gifted with amazing craftsmanship.   The exaggerations of the human proportions in his drawings and paintings aren’t boring – as is usually evident in many of the fashion illustrations these days.  In fact, I don’t understand why it’s ‘required’ to draw 10 or 12 heads long human bodies in fashion illustrators.  Why not just make the drawing interesting and appealing? Also, one should pay extra attention when models have their arms on their hips or stretch their arms pointing at something.  It’s almost inevitable that the arms will move.