gaouche fashion illustration technique laura volpintesta — First I almost ALWAYS sketch out lightly my image…. like a road map for where I’ll be laying down my gouache

Illustrating fashion designs in gouache:

Do YOU GET NERVOUS approaching the blank page?

That’s normal.

I thought I’d share a few photos step by step of myself illustrating fashion design from a photo/model/dress/design/fabric that I just loved by KachiDesigns, (who I discovered through AfricaFashionWeek (AFW) and follow on Instagram).

My remedy for “blank page freeze-up” is pretty simple: make a gentle, light mess on it. It takes away that cold, sterile feeling.

First I sketch out really loosely and build up the figure on the page, adding the garment secondly.

I’m not too nervous about “imperfect ” lines showing later when I’m illustrating fashion because most of those lines disappear under the opacity of gouache (the type of watercolor I use in my online fashion design courses. They are my “thinking” lines, and they inform every step I take to build the illustration.

I clipped my Bristol Vellum (the kind of paper I used) to a 1/4 ” thick board so that I would have a portable, angled surface to work on. This will do wonders for your body’s comfort. If you work in a small place you can have lots of drawing boards with different illustrations drying while you work on others and working this way saves your back!

And as I always say:

If you’re uncomfortable when you’re working, its likely that your models won’t look to comfy, either!

Mix the base colors for garment and skin, hair, and fill each flat shape with a flat color. Make sure that one shape dries before you color an adjacent shape, because otherwise they will feather and bleed into each other.

I ALWAYS do the skin first when illustrating fashion designs. Then garments, then hair. That’s just my routine.

Add a pinch of black to each base color to create your shadow color.

Look for chunks/ shapes of shadow to create 3d form. I even added the shadow on the page as an element of composition here, as well as the orange blocks just for fun.

What I didn’t do here was tape down all four edges of my page, which means the illustration curled up a bit after it dried. Don’t do that, okay?

Block out any other major colors or patterns with an artist-grade colored pencil after all that is dry.

Remember a bendy-lamp can speed up drying. Go get a healthy drink or snack.

WATER!!

I got the ikat effect and strips/stripes with paint.

gouache fashion illustration african ikat fabric, illustrated by Laura Volpinetsta — Dress, gouache fashion llustration, dress by Kachi Designs, Africa Fashion Week Caftan Kaftan, by Laura Volpintesta

Bring in colored pencil for definition and crisp edges, small details.

Colored pencil is also great for color -correcting any color that dried and ended up …um…”wrong”.

THIS IS PLAYTIME!!!! Enjoy.

We do a lot of this in my online courses. But I usually teach through video there. We go REALLY DEEP in the foundations if illustrating fashion and have a wonderful time finding our unique beauty to redefine and shine through design!!!!!!!!

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Do you like the dress???? LOOOOOVE the dress by @Kachidesigns (on instragram) from Africa Fashion Week ( #afw @afw @adiree #illustrationtribe)

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Love always,
Laura