For this exercise I was tasked to draw a range of people in different clothes, varying my attention to sometimes draw the whole outfit and at other times to focus on specific garments. In this exercise, I started to lean into my ADHD as a strength rather than trying to combat it as a weakness.
I started the exercise by trying to work quickly. Using my sketchbook and a coloured pencil I used an online life-drawing resource that I sometimes use for warm-ups or studies. It allows you to choose filters for the photographs presented. Given that I wanted to concentrate on outfits I set it only to show me clothed models. I started with some quick sketches that were on screen for 30 seconds. I wanted to see how I would combine gestural drawing with getting a sense of clothing. Normally in life drawing the subject is largely unclothed, so this was a new challenge for me. I then added in some more poses at two minutes length, to start adding some extra detail.
It was a lot of fun to do this kind of drawing again. I do find that I can try to draw too literally, so working more gesturally to get the impression of something was good for me to free up my arm and my head in equal measure! I particularly liked the guitar player, as the head area ended up being more angular and stylised which I really liked.
But now I was bored with life drawing! Normally this is where I would procrastinate as the activation barrier kicked back in. Instead, I asked myself what would be fun - what was my internal toddler drawn to right now? The answer was my fountain pen. I told my toddler "Ok, use the pen". My toddler didn't want to draw people any more.
"So what do you want to draw now, my ADHD toddler?"
"There are hats in the coursebook, can we draw hats?"
"Sure."
And so I did, I found as many different varieties of hats as I could from internet sources and proceeded to sketch them in ink with my fountain pen.
I even ended up changing pens and colouring in. Whatever was fun. Once I had filled a page with hats I was bored again. But I liked the pen lines, I wanted to use a different pen though. "Ok, let's change pens - pick up those biros!"
In finding pictures of hats, I found hats from all around the world. My brain latched onto regional headwear, and I remembered the traditional dress of men in Oman, where I lived as a teenager.
"Ok, let's draw Omani national dress," I agreed with my brain.
I am actually really pleased with these drawings, I took time to notice, but I made a point of keeping my arm and hand loose as I drew, making instinctual marks, over-drawing when I went wrong and sometimes not taking the pen off of the paper in the way of a continuous line drawing. I am particularly happy with the sketch in red ink, above. But after that page was filled, my brain was ready for something else yet again.
I found a book in the OCA/UCA library about developing one's fashion illustration[3], which was really helpful as it combined information with practical exercises. One of the things that it asked the reader to focus on was silhouette and gave different ways to do this. I remembered that silhouette is really important in character design and animation so that the character is easily identifiable by the viewer. So I decided to do a page exploring this more. I started with black silhouettes and then experimented with blocking out key garments in colour using markers, and then adding lines with a pen to fill in the minimum information needed to communicate the pose. I was pleased with the female figure in the green bodysuit as I think it communicated her body shape (not everyone is a stick!) and I used only a few marks for the skin area, but I think the brain fills in the gaps well.
The next day, I was sitting down with the family watching TV, and we were catching up on one of our family favourites "The Great British Sewing Bee". I realised this was an excellent opportunity to try and capture clothing, and given that it was TV I had to draw quickly (as my wife would not tolerate me pausing every few seconds!). I tried to capture the garments in all three stages of that week's competition with a black pen.
I felt that I had a good amount of sketch work and went back through the pages looking for some candidates to develop further, you can see my notes in the pages above. I selected three candidates.
Exaggeration One - The Guitar Player
For this illustration, I used my original sketch as a reference but did not try and sketch over it. The library book I was reading had a whole section on exaggeration, something I have struggled with outside of caricature. I found the information really useful and the exercise and examples in the book were enough to get my brain working more creatively. I disassociated my drawing arm from my brain and allowed my instincts to control my decisions. My drawing exaggerated the size of the hands, legs and feet; proportions went out of the window.
I was working digitally but used Rebelle to give myself the most analogue experience possible. I have been doing some personal side courses on character design recently, and one of the practice things I took away from the teacher was the way he uses the warp tool digitally to push his drawings as far as possible (and then a little bit further) to create much more interesting and dynamic poses. I tried this myself and with a few different tries and aborted attempts I found this tip to be really useful. I was definitely happier with the line of action and energy in the pose as a result.
I then experimented with adding colour. I imagined I was working physically with the media. I added in a guitar as if it was collaged and stuck onto the page. I used a scanned texture from the exercise in section one and used that to represent an animal print on the leggings. I layered in acrylic markers and then created a pattern for the top by scribbling with oil pastels, and 'cutting' it to shape. I used gouache paint for the boots and skin and played around with watercolour and ink for the hair. I was trying to see if I could get any cool effects with wet-on-wet and accidentally forgot about the angle of the paper, which caused drips. Rather than cut out the hair, I left it all in place as I liked it so much. Lastly, I removed the pencil sketch and added in select lines using inks to add definition where it was needed. The final touch was a simple shadow underneath using watercolour.
Exaggeration Two - The Eccentric Mountie
Next, I chose the eccentric figure smoking wearing a Mountie-style hat. I like the combination of the formal suit with a militaristic hat. Again, I used my sketch as a basis for the illustration but did not trace it. My first lines explored giving him a tiny lower body with spindly legs, but I changed my mind to just focus on the existing composition. I sketched using a coloured pastel. I had an outline which played with proportions a bit. I worked loosely and quickly, and I naturally started to get the shapes blocked in an angular way.
I switched to painting in blocks of colour using acrylic paint straight over the top, and I suddenly went into a flow state that was completely focused on intuition and impulse. This felt just like when I was creating my Spindrift portraits, so I went with the feeling. I chose exaggerated colours, not caring what the original photo was like. I used crushed paper to create a textural area for the pocket square and then used ink with an airbrush to add shadows. They were messy and on the face completely out of whack proportionally! I loved it and just worked with what was there.
I then used chiselled marker pens to add contours and folds which brought definition to the illustration. This was so much fun! I wondered if the image had enough contrast to stand out, and I experimented with a darker painted background which I abandoned in favour of the cleaner view of the natural paper. I used an acrylic marker to add in the gold rims of the glasses and white ink through an airbrush for the smoke of the pipe.
There was not enough definition to make the smoke stand out. I experimented with different options and settled on a dark zig-zag pattern behind the figure to add enough separation between the smoke and the paper.
I really like how quickly and loosely I worked, and how I embraced any weirdness and imperfections. You can see a lot of the construction marks in the image and yet it all seems to work (at least from my point of view!).
Exaggeration Three - The Smoking Jacket
For the last illustration, I combined elements of two of my sketches from The Great British Sewing Bee. I liked different elements and sought to combine them into one illustration.
One of the designs was inspired by a Harry Styles-esque sensibility. One that is more androgynous, blurring conventional lines and expectations. This influenced my choice to use pink handmade paper as the substrate for the illustration. Using pastel shades of acrylic paint, I blocked in the major shapes as impressions of the hair, jacket and legs. My aim was to learn from the experiments I had done with silhouettes in my sketchbook and replicate a similar approach when constructing this combined illustration of a man walking in a smoking jacket.
Again, I used one of my scanned textures to add a pattern to the jacket, which I set to Screen blending mode and then cut to shape as if I was overlaying a piece of cellophane to a physical illustration. Next, I decided to play with adding in some contours, for which I used marker pens. I chose bright saturated colours to contrast with the pastel colours already present. When I go the lapel, I chose to draw a pattern inspired by a third smoking jacket from the TV show which I had captured in my sketchbook. Thought about what I could do for the features, and realised that I had painted in the skin in a way that broke realistic proportions. This informed my choices for adding line work to the face. I drew small, focusing on a simple way to capture the essential features. I added some light-touch marks to suggest musculoskeletal contours on the torso.
I had 'cut' out a shape for the foreground hand in the smoking jacket, and added some simple contours to give it more definition. Having an arm in front of the body like that can make for a confusing silhouette, but I tried to make sure that the arms had gapping and the legs were in an easily-readable position so that the brain would put most of the information together. The feet caused me a little bit of a challenge, but with practice, I got the angles I wanted. I added a watercolour shadow where I experimented with varying the angle of the paper to make the paint run. This was fun, and I decided to leave everything as it was.
I like this illustration as well, it was fun and I was amazed at how quickly I could work when I leant into intuitive choices.
Working process
Here is a video of the working process for all three illustrations:
Possible future steps
Thinking of where character design and fashion design overlap with silhouettes made me think about other permeations of fashion design that sit in genres that are closer to my personal interests and tastes.
This made me think about how the same processes must apply to those who work in costume design. Costume design itself shows up in multiple genres. From stage to screen and videogame entertainment. I found this quite exciting as I had not really put that together in my head before.
I have never been one to sit down and draw my own fan art of existing properties - something that actually bugs me. I am SUCH a geek and love coming up with character ideas in my head for my favourite geekdoms. When it comes to my art, my brain always seems to insist that it's 'unique' and then gets paralysed when it can't find a unique idea!
One area I think I could explore this idea more is in the realm of roleplaying games. I run a weekly game with friends and I am constantly having to come up with characters for the players to interact with. I follow an artist that takes commissions for characters in the Star Wars universe. I noticed a video he had posted which gives some insight into his process, and I can see how he takes a silhouette and gradually refines the image. Roleplaying games are a great opportunity for me to explore character design and costuming. Roleplaying games also benefit from having narrative images and maps, so I think this could be an extremely exciting avenue for me to explore in the future.
References
Adobe, Karman, B. and Hong, Z. (no date) A beginner‘s guide to fashion illustration, Adobe.com. Available at: https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/illustration/discover/fashion-illustration.html (Accessed: 17 July 2023).
Digital Media Webmaster (ed.) (2013) Designing stage costumes, Victoria and Albert Museum. Available at: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/d/designing-stage-costumes/ (Accessed: 17 July 2023).
McKenzie, S. (2014) Creative fashion illustration: How to develop your own style. London: Bloomsbury.
Sfia, M. (2016) Costume design: Interview with illustrator Evyn Fong, Talk Illustration. Available at: https://talkillustration.com/costume-design-interview-illustrator-evyn-fong-2/ (Accessed: 17 July 2023).
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