Fashion Sketching

Fashion sketching is a way of drawing out designs of fashionable clothes. It gives you a guide or outline as to how you will design your fashion clothing creation using the designers’ concept. It is an important tool that illustrates the phases of garment creation, from fabric and colour selection to action construction of your clothing. Sketching allows you to communicate your ideas to others by planning the design details. A handy tool is ‘flat schematics’ where you can create perfect symmetry of your model by marking the centre front line so your drawing is in proportion and flows. You can also try the ‘trace-and-full approach’ where you slide an existing figure under a blank sheet of paper and draw the garment to fit the outlines of the figure. By using the croquis, a systematic figure, you will achieve accurate proportions for creating flat garment sketches.

There are various places where you can learn how to utilise fashion sketching. The FIDM, Fashion In Design and Merchandising) school has many courses from the basics to expert advice. For beginners, try out the ‘Chanel Basics’ course where you will gain a better understanding of how designers work their magic by learning to sketch basic fashion designs. It is run by FIDM instructor, Barbara Sultan who brings to life innovations that have been pioneered by Coco Chanel, such as the classic Chanel suit.

Another fashion sketching course is run by the FBI (Fashion Business College), such as the ‘Fashion Design Illustration, Rendering and Trade Sketch’. You will learn how to use a variety of drawing and painting medium in fun and exciting way to illustrate your designs. You will utilise trade sketches for the production of your own clothing designs.

Lastly the AIFD, the Australian Institute of Fashion and Design also holds courses in local areas for fashion sketching. They have fashion design and styling distance courses that are aimed at aspiring fashion designers from all regions. The ‘Fashion Design and Styling Correspondence Course’, shows how designs can be created through research and development. They target key processes of developing your creative side, drawing and illustrating, finding inspiration, working to a brief, understanding the market, and designing a cohesive collection using a portfolio of designs. There is also an instructional DVD to show you how to draw the fashion figure, colour and render different fabrics.

So as you can see, there are various fashion sketching courses available in all regions to help improve your fashion creations.