Adobe Photoshop: the ultimate tool for life, success, and fashion illustrations

Part of the design curriculum at CSU requires students to take several Fashion Illustration courses, one using hand drawing techniques, the other using an obnoxious program by Lectra Systems called Kaledo Style.  If Lectra had not completely overhauled their software, I probably would not dislike it so much.  Sadly, they did and that’s that.  I won’t be mentioning it again.  But Photoshop?  Nope, it’s not taught by our program, so I had to teach myself.  And I love it!  I could spend hours just tinkering away using the paint tools, and one day soon I hope to buy a Wacom tablet since the computer mouse can only go so far (about 4-5 inches actually, not very convenient when you are trying to illustrate hair).

My Capstone project marked my first venture into the “real” digital art world.  How did it turn out?  Well, I’m in love:

If you click on the images you get a larger view.  The sizing of this column squishes things slightly.

These are fashion illustrations, they are not meant to look like real people (in fact, the average human body can be divided into about 8 head lengths high, whereas a fashion figure, the croquis, can be well over 10 heads high). Illustrations are supposed to give a visually stimulating depiction of a garment’s details, drape, fit, and texture in relationship to a body.