Line Interest

Giving a little expression to your lines can definitely liven things up. A little wiggle or wrinkle at the elbows or waist gives your sketch some movement and gives it less of a “stiff as a board” look. You can also play with the pressure used to draw your lines – maybe thick for an outline and thin for inside details. This is also easily achieved by using thick and thin markers if the smudgy look of pencils isn’t your thing. One other option is to use a fashion croquis, but don’t sketch the body. Just overlay your paper and draw the sweater on just like you would with your flat croquis. I am cheating a little with this example, it was done on Illustrator, but the idea is the same.

Add Color

Markers and colored pencils can also help bring your sketch alive. This is especially important when trying to communicate colorwork in a sketch – and even more so if you haven’t swatched in the intended colorway.

If you happen to be computer savvy, you can also scan in your swatch and use it as a pattern to fill in the sketch. It might save you some time and might look better than if it was done by hand. The sketch can either be hand drawn and scanned in, or you can sketch a flat in Adobe Illustrator.

A Touch of Pattern

When adding a pattern to your sketch, there is no need to overwhelm the sweater by filling the sketch completely with pattern. Leave a little bit of white space and sketch just enough of the pattern so you can get the overall idea. Try to keep the pattern to the same area though, don’t jump around too much.  Or in other words, don’t place your pattern on the upper left hand corner of the body and the right hand sleeve. Keep it all to the left as sketch 2 below.

Sketches and Finished Designs

Here are a few more examples of my actual submission sketches accompanied with a picture of the finished garment. The Double V Cardigan from Interweave Spring 2010 was drawn in Illustrator (last sketch), the other 3 were done by hand.

Q & A

Finally, I had a few questions from my last post I would like to answer:

I was wondering… on your croquis, why do the sleeves look like they’re sort of folded behind the garment, rather than the sleeve seam meeting the body at the underarm? — Karen

I put the sleeves a little behind the garment for three reasons: to save space, to keep the focus on the body, and to add personality to the sketch. When we drew technical flats in school, the sleeves were drawn away from the body and they took up a lot of space on the page. When you are drawing one sketch on a page, maybe that doesn’t matter so much, but when jotting down ideas, your page can quickly become very crowed with all those sleeves sticking out all over the place! Since you are looking to get the general idea of your design across, placing the sleeves a little behind the body also helps to keep the main focus on the body. While the sleeves can be a design feature of the sweater, more often than not, the most interesting details happen on the body of the sweater or just carry over to the sleeves. Finally, by placing the sleeves a little behind the body, it gives the sketch less of a board like feeling.

Is there any software to do this? — Maryse

I use Adobe Illustrator when I am working with sketches on the computer, but it still helps to know how to sketch by hand before moving on to the world of computer aided design (or CAD). There are also other programs such as Corel Draw, U4ia, Premavision, and Color Matters – but Illustrator is probably the most user friendly and most widely used. Marnie has a wonderful post on how to draw schematics in Illustrator that can get you started if you were interested in learning more. The post does deal with schematics, but the same functions are used when you are free sketching too and reading through her tutorial will familiarize you with what tools you need and how to use them.

Thanks for the questions! And if anyone out there has something on your mind, let me know! Feel free to leave it in the comments or to email me at melissa AT neoknits DOT com.

Flat sketching

Flats can either be technical and to scale like a schematic or they can be a little more stylized and fashion like. They are called flats because that is what the garment looks like when it is laid down on a flat surface. I will start off simple with a more straightforward technical sketch then move into showing you how to add a little more personality to your sketches in a later blog post.

Croquis

Croquis are a guide you can use for sketching. There are fashion figure croquis, but we are going to be starting off with a flat sketch version. I created my croqui in illustrator full size with typical measurements I use for a junior small, then scaled it down to a usable size. The measurements don’t have to be the exact size of your sweater for your flats, it’s more important to sketch the correct proportions so it’s easy to “read” your design. My flat croqui has major waist positions and lengths marked as a guide. To use your croqui, just lay a sheet of paper over the top and trace over, or when you’re first practicing, laying a sheet of tracing paper over the croqui makes it easier to see. If you happen to have a light box laying around, that also helps if using a more opaque sheet of paper.

Click on image for full size croqui you can print out and use for practicing

For our first sketch, I’m going to work off of a garment that has already been made. I’ll be sketching this lovely striped cardigan.

So let’s take a look:

It has long sleeves. It’s probably about 22″-23″ long. The body length hits at about the same point as the sleeves. It has a set in sleeve. The front neck drop begins below the armholes. The bottom rib pulls in at the hem. It doesn’t have waist shaping.

The sketch:

Using the croqui under a new sheet of paper, begin drawing out the sweater paying attention to the shape and proportions of the sweater. Try to make your lines as smooth as you can, instead of “sketchy”. It will get easier with practice! Promise!

Start out with a simple outline of the garment. Try to make it as symmetrical as possible. Notice that the button placket goes past the center line of the sketch.

Next fill in details such as neck finish, sleeve and hem trims, buttons, and stripes. My stripes aren’t too straight, but that’s ok, it can be fixed later.

Finally, I take a thick sharpie marker and trace around the outside of the sketch. Then I fill in details with a Extra Fine rolling ball pen. When the ink is dry erase all of your pencil lines. (Don’t be impatient, the ink will smudge!)

My sketch isn’t exactly perfect, but it conveys the idea of the sweater well. You can see where each area is supposed to hit on the body and that it is a striped sweater.

I know this explanation is pretty simple, but the key to learning how to draw well is careful observation and practice, practice, practice! The easiest way to practice is to start off with something already in your closet just like we did above. Study the proportion of the sweater and how the hem, sleeves, neck drop, and details all relate to each other.

In my next post, I’ll give a few examples of sketches I’ve done for submissions and pair them up with photos of the finished garment. Also, I’ll cover how to add in stitch interest like lace and cables and how to give your flats a little more personality. After that, I will move into the fashion figure croqui.

If you happen to have any specific questions about fashion sketching, please drop me a line! I would be happy to answer any questions in the next few blog posts.