Intro

Today I will be talking about how to draw clothing which will include:

 

1. How to draw folds

2. How to color different types of fabric

3. Tips and tricks for better clothing art

 

Let's get started!

1. How to draw folds (practicing)

The easiest way to draw folds is to think of it was a loose piece of fabric pinned on the body or a wall and then imagine two things:

1. a tension/gravity point

This is the point where the fabric is pulled, or where the fabric starts to fall

2. folding/stretching point

This is the point where the fabbric is held up from, or where the fabric is falling from.

This makes it easier to imagine where the folds should be as it helps to think about where the clothing stretches and gathers.

Practice using this tactic with different objects before using it on the body to get use to drawing the folds.

(practiced on differnt shapes)

Note that this does not stay true for all situations. f there is a stranger source of tension, the fabric would bend towards that.

One example would be wind. Even if the gravity was pulling a fabric down, if the wind was flowing left, right, or up, the fabric would sway that way.

if you compare the two, you can tell that the gravity/tension point, or the place where the fabric droops moved significantly to the right as the wind is pushing it.

2. Apply to real clothing

Drawing clothing is very similar to drawing on shapes.

Imagine pins or the folding/stretching on the areas where the clothing start to fall. This includes shoulders, arms(if lifted) or even the belt or waist area where the fabric is gathered. After you do this, thing about how the fabric would droop from that area.

Ex:

if the pins are here:

then the fabric would fall like this:

This is a little different for pants and shirts.

Firstly for shirts, it is a little different because there is not belt to hold it down. The fix is quite simple though, you can just do the same thing, exept do not draw the gather part.

Example:

 

For tight shirts, think about a tight fabric on a cylinder. But near the chest, the edges, where it sticks out the most, there are no folds because it is too tight. But in the middle, there is a loose spot, which is why there are folds

For shorts/pants, it is a little more complicated. You have to think about which part of the body is the tightest when wearing pants and think about how it would fold. This area is the crotch are or the joint area where you move your leg back and forth. Also, reaserch to see the where the zippers and pockets are for more accturate shorts/pants!

Now you know how to draw folds!

2. Coloring normal fabric

The very first thing you need to do is create the base.

Base:

Now, let me correct some mistakes that most people make.

 

1. The first one is adding too much hightlights. Normal fabric isn't that shiny. Avoid from adding too much hightlights to avoid making it look like satin or leather.

To fix this mistake, I like to not add seperate hightlight but to use an airbrush to make some parts brighter. These parts are the parts that stick out, like the shoulders, chest area and so on. And only use hightlight lightly and sparingly.

after using airbrush to lighten some parts:

2. The second mistake happens when you start shading. This is making the colors too grey. Most people just get the color they are usin and go down to the dark side like this:

this is okay, however, it makes the drawing less vibrant. So, I recommend doing this to get the color for shading:

Going diagnal on the color wheel like this gives more pigment to the shading, which gives more color to the overall feel of the drawing, and the drawing it self.

3. The third mistake only shading in the areas with outline. you have to think about the places where the fabric sags, not only the lines that you drew. For example, if a fabric is folded like this:

Most people might color it like this:

 

But if you look at it from the side, you would see that the middle of the two folds would go down, which would creat a slight shadow. Because this shadow would not be that strong, use and airbrush to color the middle like this:

Lastly is a tip. If you want some style to clothing, you can add highlights in vibrant colors in the same color tone at the end!.

 

Now add it all together!

3. Coloring vinyl/leather

When coloring leather or vinyl, it is important to know the properties of the fabric. Leather is very reflective, and even if the color is dark like black, there will always be white highlights. Reflection does not just mean white; vinyl/leather reflects the color in it's surrounding, so don't be afraid to add color! And when drawing it, know that this fabric is stiffer then normal one, making the folds more rigid.

 

4. Drawing stockings

To draw stockings, first you need to draw the body to put the base for the color coming throught the sheer fabric. (please note that the body was drawn for the purpose for teaching sorry if it makes you uncomfortable.)

Then color the areas you want the stockings to be in the color you want

you can end it here, but stockings when stretched, you can see fibers that make up the stockings. You can hatch on some parts of it to up the quality.

next, add highlights in the place where you think there needs to be highlights.

This is great for leg stockings!

Also, stockings are suppoed to be skin tight so not that you do not really have to draw folds!

5. Spicing up your clothing art

1. ruffles

You can decorate any clothing pieces especially the collors. Ruffles are wavy pieces of fabric that drapes. If you examine it, you can see that the folds happen in waves, triangles or s's.

Using this eximination, you can figure out the easiest way to draw ruffles.

First, you can start with waves. From the waves, you can make lines that leads up to it, and make sure the fill the triangles.

This is useful for adding details liked ruffled collar to a shirt!

2. Lace

There are multiple types of lace, but the one I recomend drawing is trimming lace. Drawing trimming lace starts out similar to drawing ruffles.

First, you draw the base. The base of the trimming lace is almost n pattern shape like this( mnake sure to leave space for the connecting lines) :

and then, look at where the folds, or the curves that you drew, are and connect it to the main part of the outfit you are drawing.

This is great for adding details for dresses skirts, or headbands!

3. Adding details

A clothing can be good with nice folds, coloring but if it doesnt have enough details it can be boring. So here are some things that you can add to make a clothing better!

3.1. Lace

Lace does not just have to be at the edges of clothing. Adding it inbetween fabric is great for spicing up an outfit, espacially dresses or gowns.

with this techique, you can make fun see through parts like this:

To make this easier, you can download lace brushes like these:

3.2. buttons

adding buttons to outifts is a nice way to add nice details to the drawing. To draw buttens, first draw a circle with four circles in the big circle.

then color the base color

and then shad around the circle. Buttens are most often made of plastic, so make sure you blend it well.

Now add the highlights; similar to the shading, the hightlights are well blended as the surface is smooth.

now you can add buttons to clothing to make it more high quality!

4. Using brushs

Use all the material you can to work faster! using brushes like earings or lace or shoe laces allows you to not waste time and work faster!

I recommend these brushes:

6. Other material

Here are three more fun things you can draw to enhance your fabrics!

1. sweater material

For sweater material, it is important to blend it a lot or draw in a painty material to make the fabric softer. Look at references to see the pattern of how the sweater is knitted.

After you draw the braids, use a light or thin brush to make little fibers.

2. gold/metal

metal is VERY smooth. So, you need very bright highlights and very blended colors.

 

so, the easiest way to color old is to put all the colors down first and then blend it with blur and adjust it with finger blur.

blended:

3. Silk

silk is basically the same, exept it is even more blended then gold. to make it more real however, you have to draw more folds.

Also, another tip is that silk is very soft and very thin; the folds are less rigid and softer.

7. Tips, tricks and examples.

The best tip I can give is this: practice.

Practice drawing fabric a lot! Also, draw fabric in different places; in water, where there's a lot of wind and things.

Also, look at real life references as well as drawing and try to analyize to see how fabric drapes or falls.

Here are some examples:

Can you tell the how it folds?

You can tell that because it is in the water, the fabric is floating up. Also, as it flows further, there are less fabric, so it has less folds. And from the waist, the main stretching point, it is going out.

So using these things, you can draw more accurate folds

Also important to drawing fabric is knowing the stiffness of the fabric

really stiff fabric has more rigid folds where as softer ones folds more softly.

Another important point is learning to use opacities;

for transparent clothing, you can just color it normally and lower the opacity.

Now get on Clip Studio Paint and draw clothing on your own!

1 social media account: Tiktok: @whale_dsk

Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@whale_dsk

clip studio paint account: mc_374D7