Sketching Holiday Fashions

Whether you’re a designer or a pure lover of fashion who doesn’t “know about design”, if you love fashion then sketching holiday fashions is playful, opulent, dreamy, and pleasurable.

You can work over a simple template (subscribe here to get Flat Sketching workbook and Croquis template and design right away!) or you can sketch your own figures.

Today on Periscope livestream we sketched from scratch- creating three fashion evening/ holiday dresses with swatches.

>>Catch the replay here

Here are a few highlights:

First you’ll see me sketch out the figures. At left, Plus size fashion figure, center: maternity fashion figure, and at right: junior fashion figure.

Before we do that, we go through some fabric selections for our holiday party :0). Here is what we collectively came up with during the livestream: shimmery jewel-toned solid fabrics.

(note: I’ve never done mixed groups like that before! it was fun!)

My Freedom Fashion online course is all about giving you these skills to sketch figures of all body types. Learn more.

Next, we take our swatches and sketch out a pantsuit, because EVERYONE KNOWS I’m obsessed with pantsuits!

I think it’s really interesting to mention that as I sketch the second dress, it inspires details that I then come back and work into the first pantsuit…. and the last dress, so that the group has a cohesive theme with draped and gathered fabrics.

You’ll find as you create your own sketches that the ideas start to flow as you open the way by drawing and thinking…. You DO NOT need to know what you are going to draw before you come to the paper.

The blank paper is there to draw IT out of YOU!

This exciting process is what I hope for all of my students to enjoy in my courses.

So here, below, you’ll see where the draping concept came in, inspired by the pregnant body. Gathers and rouching/ shirring  are the details of the maternity dress in the center. As I sketch holiday fashions, I get more and more ideas.

Now, if you look to the jumpsuit at the right again, you’ll see the new adjustments I made to the jumpsuit! What do you think? I ‘d love to see your comments below and hear what you think about these designs and the process!

You’ll get a ton of insights to my process if you watch the whole video lesson.

To keep you curious, I didn’t post the completed set of sketches. You can catch the finished pencil designs on my instagram or by watching the livestream.
I plan to add colors tomorrow or tonight and you can catch those in a future video or blog post!

But you can see how the details of the draping/ shirring become the theme of these holiday fashion sketches.

I am thrilled with how they came out.

WE discussed whether we should use contrasting, color-blocked fabric for the draping, or whether to only use contrast fabric for the big flower hair and earring accessory designs.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?Do you like watching? Is sketching something you are comfortable with yourself? Why don’t you sketch up some evening looks now and share them in my Fashion Tribalistas Facebook group?

You can learn more about drawing shirring, gathers, flares, pockets, collars, and other details in my Craftsy class– which is on sale through the holiday! $20!! Or go into the entire FREEDOM FASHION semester where you’ll get cozy course community and guidance from myself and your peers all year long in an online intensive fashion sketching program.

Thank you for enjoying this process with me and happy holidays!

I love you all!

Laura