PLUS SIZE Fashion Illustration Tutorial
How do we define
plus size fashion Illustration?
...I’m using the term “PLUS SIZE FASHION” ;widely used out there.
BUT, even the tallest, skinniest models are “plus size” compared to the way so many fashion illustrators and designers are drawing.
BEAUTY, AESTHETICS, FUNCTION and PROPORTION in ACTION
“Plus size” is the overwhelming majority of figures and bodies according to those exaggerated “norms”, especially when you figure in that most fashion illustration out there is still drawing a body that literally only exists on paper..
I love us! All of us.
Let’s draw our bodies.
AND LET’S DRESS THEM!
STANDING “ACTION” POSES
Over 20 years teaching fashion model drawing and fashion illustration, I’ve learned that it is easier to learn via dramatic poses and a little bit harder to learn via SUBTLETY.
So i’ve seized this opportunity to use an exaggerated / extreme body position to TEACH and i’m sure that will help you understand the mechanics of the body!
YOGA POSE MODEL
I hope you enjoy today’s video below where I show you how to sketch a plus size fashion model in a yoga pose.
The pose is not a typical “fashion pose” but this actually makes it even a BETTER learning tool due to the exaggeration of it.
I also have other plus size resources for you here!
MASTERING THE FIGURE
While mastering figure drawing is a great way to deepen your drawing skills, PERIOD,…
Figure drawing/ model drawing skills in themselves are so different than learning to draw anything else.
There is a flow and a life force in the human that poses a unique drawing challenge- and reward!
It’s a gem!!!!
Plus Size Fashion Illustration
The way I was taught to draw models for my fashion design degree at Parsons the New School for Design in the 90s is so embarassing, I can’t even share the photos of my sketches… and I used to be so proud of them! Yikes.
The emaciated, the literally looked like bones.
And I was an A student! I was rewarded for drawing that way.
I was brainwashed into being at odds with my own body! So sad.
When I look at those drawings today I can see the deep sense of disconnection with my own truth that was built in to the very system that I was learning within.
I shudder to think how deep the implications of that are. For all women, and for institutions and artists that perpetuate this disconnect.
LIVING AND LEARNING
Do you know what happened as soon as I gave birth to my first child?
I stopped picking up fashion magazines (or, in today’s language, “consuming fashion media”. This was before social media or the internet….
It was so simple, easy and natural, as I became immersed in the miraculous and utilitarian nature of my very real body, fashion imagery became almost comical to me.
FASHION IS OUR ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
Fashion is a beautiful art form!!! And so, we can bridge the gap easily by simply REMEMBERING WHO, HOW, and WHAT we are.
From that day on, as a Parsons Fashion Faculty faculty, I would never give an A to a student drawing such horridly distorted figures. Because I wasn’t teaching that.
I made sure of it. There was no way my soul would let me.
Even though back then as a student, it was a “rule” and a “norm”.
Many today are still in that mode. But once you feel clear, that which doesn’t serve falls away.
And that’s what I see happening for so many of us women.
PLUS SIZE FASHION CROQUIS
I don’t like having male or female teachers tell me that I have to lie about the female body in order to sketch fashion. Even the DRESS FORM doesn’t lie, why should a sketch?
COME ON!
Plus size fashion moves into a whole world of shapes and sizes that are as relevant and loving to be stylish as any person.
Let’s explore these shapes, proportions, approaches, and create a language of our own with a point of view and celebrate beauty and fashion.
how the WAY I LEARNED Fashion illustration
was so disconnected, but now it all makes sense.
As the fashion and textile industries have become one of the most major harmful, disconnected systems on the planet regarding waste production, corporate corruption, sometimes dangerous messaging, environmental and humanitarian abuses. From models to factory workers, there is so much to heal. #fashrev
When we learn in ways that are integrated and “make sense” in a holistic way for our very nature, then it is my belief that we go out into the world creating businesses and art that reflect the same.
AND THAT IS WHY I STARTED MY FASHION EDUCATION SCHOOL/ business!
I love the craft and the art of fashion, but as a woman (and we were 97% female population when I was a student)
INSTITUTIONS: HOW WE LEARN MATTERS
the way we learned fashion was TOTALLY at odds with the reality of being a woman.
If fashion was going to change, it had to change on the school level. Or, outside of these schools altogether.
I mean, if we worked slavishly (wow we really did) creating for bodies that were in no way reflective of our own, how was that going to produce a generation of designers to change the paradigm of using sweatshop labor abroad and caring about their bodies, if care for our own bodies was removed from the processes?
CHANGING PARADIGMS, CHANGING INDUSTRIES
As students, if we normalized and prioritized abuse to our own bodies, how could we care about the environment and Mother Earth?
As young women going out into the world, how were we going to build lives in this crazy industry that supported us AS WOMEN and incorporate our family lives?
The “great” fashion design jobs I got out of school in NYC (mid-1990s) totally obliterated my personal and social life outside of work.
That’s why I created Fashion Illustration Tribe.
Learn with empowerment.
CREATE from the heart and the soul.
Learn without losing connection to yourSELF.
Don’t forget to sketch along with today’s video and get on your way designing, illustrating, sketching, patternmaking, creating your unique world of fashion design and art TODAY.
ENJOY!
love,
Laura
