I started drawing those girls to work my drawing muscle when it came to the female clothed figure. Like I already said back then, I would love to take Jane Davenports classes on this, but the money's just a bit too steep for me. It is on my wishlist though. Still, practice can be done without classes and after the mail order catalogues I have now moved on to my favorite piece of clothing: gorgeous dresses.
It's odd that I, who couldn't care less about fashion in real life, love things like fashion photography and images of very elaborate long dresses. But since I have little knowledge in drawing these things I need models. And models in gorgeous gowns are in short supply in my everyday life. ;-)
So I got to thinking and decided...to buy a bridal magazine! Anybody who knows me will now burst into laughter. If there's anyone on this planet who is not into weddings and anything that goes with it it's me, but aaah....all those dresses are beautiful. And I only need them to practice with, I can change whatever I want.
And so I got me a new (huge) sketchbook to go with the magazine and I intend to fill it with beautiful ladies in beautiful dresses inspired by wedding gowns or party dresses. And here's my first model:
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| An advertisement from Bruid en Bruidegom, dress by EnzoAni. |
Ah yes, dreamy in white. Well, that's gonna change! And so is the background. I did a line drawing first.
I drew the woman first in pencil and then went over the lines with a pitt brush pen. Then I decided that I would put something different in the background than curtains and leaves: my circles and ribbons! Ha, you never know what your old sketchbook ideas are good for, do you? You can see what I mean by that over here.
When the drawing was completely done and the pencil lines erased. I decided to color her in with gouache, and here's how she turned out.
As you can see I gave a little more life to my ribbons and circles by adding extra lines and swirls. I wanted them to be more festive. The dress turned purple with green/aqua flowers. I don't know if I would want to be caught dead in a dress like that, but in a picture it's pretty nice if you're a colour junkie like myself.
Here's some details of the drawing:
The drawing measures 30x 40 cm (about 12x15 inches). I still have a lot to learn about how fabric moves and how to really make folds come to life, but I do like the result. I hope you do to. Anyway, I still have a whole sketchbook left to fill up with more drawings/paintings like this, so I intend to get plenty of practice. Of course it will take forever before it's full, but one day I hope to have a whole collection of beautiful ladies in beautiful dresses and to have gained the skill of being able to draw them out of my head. I will keep you posted.
Are you practicing anything right now? I would love to know what skills you would like to improve.
Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy week!