Essential Fashion Illustration

This book’s aim is to submerge the reader in the world of illustration.

The first section ranges from how to start to draw a human figure to the techniques to stylize and synthesize it. This section provides a large amount of figures in different poses, as well as hands and feet — often the most difficult parts — in diverse postures and angles. However, in the field of fashion it is also essential to know how to draw fabric, and even more important to know how to draw the folds of clothing. The items of clothing are presented as much in technical drawing as in figures in movement, and forming light and shadow is also explained, as this gives quality to the illustration.

The second part of the book revolves around color and the different techniques with which one can work: watercolor, wax, pastel, and so on. All the drawings that appear constitute a brief exhibition of the changes that the fashion world has experienced and with this in mind a path has been laid which starts in 1900, illustrated in watercolors, and finishes in 2000, illustrated in pencil.

The goal of this volume is to uncover the reader’s desire to paint and to provide him with some of the secrets that will encourage him to do so. After all, experience is the most effective way to learn, whatever the subject.

Maite LaFuente is an illustrator and professor at the European School of Fashion Design in Barcelona, Spain. She is also the director of her own illustration studio, specialized in fashion drawings and design. As an illustrator, her works have been published in important fashion magazines such as Elle and Marie Claire. She currently lives and works in Barcelona where she is currently preparing a new book on fashion illustration.