Digital Fashion Illustration apps
Today I’ll share with you a series of digital fashion illustrations I made with apps on my ipad over the past few months –of the fashion designer Layana Aguilar. (yes, I teach and coach on model drawing, analog and digital fashion illustration, and fashion technical design so make sure you join a course or reach out if you have questions about working together info@fashionillustationtribe.com )
I am so inspired by her for so many reasons:
Layana Aguilar- She’s a mom, she’s a fashion designer in NYC, my beloved city. She’s Brazilian, and you may know I am a singer and dancer of Brazilian music, fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, visit every chance I get, and love so many aspects of the culture (including the rich traditions of fashion design and handwork in fashion).
She makes a lot of dance videos wearing and modelling her own designs, and that’s what really gets me. SHE MODELS HER OWN DESIGNS. Integrates music into the experience.And works a lot in tandem with a fantastic fashion photographer Rodolfo Sanchez.
And what else do I love?
The EMOTIONS of her COLORS. I’ll let the illustration below speak for themselves :0). You KNOW i am all about the healing energies of color!
Freehand, digital ipad fashion illustrations have such clean, brilliant luminous color to them, depending which app I use.
I usually find I can get brilliance and clean brightness in my fashion illustrations by using digital fashion illustration apps that I can’t get when I use gouache, especially if I’m photographing it- though scanning it helps.
Yet, I still usually strive to re-create the EXPERIENCE and feeling of analog gouache when I create digital fashion illustrations, and I also continue to use gouache in my regular practice to keep the feeling real, tactile, high quality, one-0f-a-kind, and alive.
ANALOG FEEL: ORGANIC PAINT AND PENCIL EFFECTS
CLEAN COLOR
Digital fashion illustration apps have “color picker” tools that do save so much time on the “mixing” and “matching” of colors, the waiting for colors to dry, and the problem of pencil or ink colors bleeding into your paint colors.
Ipad apps make it easy to adjust any missteps along the way in creating your fashion illustration, too.
On this page I used two different digital fashion illustration apps:
notice that the illustration above has a more gritty, pencil and watercolor paper, organic feel, while the illustration below has a smoother, slicker appearance.
Can you feel it?
In my work, I am always trying to keep the earthy, natural, human, organic vibe alive in the sketch, People who work with me usually are atrracted to that style and also like to keep a sensual, natural, wild feeling to their fashion illustration or fashion design drawing style.
(Look how much movement these full skirts have ! – above and below)
CLOTHING THAT MOVES AND FLOWS
Surely that is what I love to capture in my digital fashion illustrations as well as my “natural ” work in gouache.
Here, again, you can compare the digital fashion illlustration apps that I use: the illustration that you see above is done with the “slicker” app, and the digital fashion illustration that you see below is done with the more organic, gritty, natural feeling fashion iillustration style.
Compare the two with your eye to see the subtle differences in how each app affects my style. In both cases, I wanted to replicate my classic style of pencil sketching, flat gouache color, dynamic shading, and pencil used to accentuate fashion design details in the garments.
Opaque and sheer fabrics in fashion illustration
If you look at the illustration above and below this text, you’ll see again, two different fashion illustration apps with two different feelings. I teach both of them in my ABOUT FACES course, and I teach ONE of them in my eveningwear/ special fabrics design and fashion illustration course called FABRIC,FORM and FLOW. Notice that both of these fashion illustrations show sheer fabrics and opaque fabrics incorporated together into a single design.
How do we show separate layers, how do we define different fabric weights and textures? How do we define the proportion and silhouette of a look, and how do we infuse it with our own style??
These are all questions we can work on together using traditional art supplies or digital fashion iilustration apps.
I’m currently taking applications for private clients
and I’ve linked some of my courses in today’s post. May this be the year that you commit to and celebrate the creative voice within you. I’ve got 25 plus years of teaching at Parsons School of Design online and on campus, to guide you with confidence, compassion and insight to the truest expressions of your heart and soul.
Love
Laura
