Exercise C1: How to Draw Clothes

A quick reminder, the Holiday Anime Faire is today Dec. 5 2009, in Fremont!
Holiday Faire Contest submissions will be posted here soon

Hi Guys, Ian here! To draw clothes, there are many tips and reminders to keep in mind as you draw. Each one makes the clothes more believable and real looking!

I’d like to start our Clothes series with some links back to our previous lessons, to show how the simple things build up into great drawings But first, let me just leave this drawing here, and we’ll get back to it later in the lesson:

Okey, let’s jump right in I have three things to show today!

Clothes are basic 3d forms, lying on top of basic forms!
Clothes will get wrinkled, by scrunching or pulling.
Wrinkles wrap around the 3d forms.

Part 1: Basic 3d Forms

In our basic exercises, we covered how Cylinders are used for Drawing People. Let’s take that to the next level! First, a quick review: Think of the body parts as tubes. Clothes are going to be tubes that wrap over the body parts.

Here we see:
A) a hollow cylinder up top, and a solid cylinder below.
B) If we twist the hollow cylinder, it’ll get a yin-yang twist in it, and starts to look a little more like a sleeve. The arm, even with muscle details, still has the same shading as a tube.
C) A different kind of wrinkled tube makes the sleeve look like it’s folding on itself.

These wrinkles are made by adding a shadow shape that matches the line shape on the same side. When drawing these, I drew the edges first, then added the shading to match the line. The arms do this a little, too! Can you see how the shadow curves around to match the edge?

A little bit of 3d Cube Study can also help when drawing clothes! When clothes are really stiff or have folds like this skirt, check out how the ridges resemble cubes rotating in 3d space:

To keep the illusion going, the arrows point out how the shadow should consistently build on the same side of the folds.

Even when the clothes don’t have such sharp corners, shadows may build up like this. In this skirt, I drew the wavy edge on the bottom first…

… and then I built repeating shadows wherever the curve tucked upwards.

Part 2: A wild Wrinkle has appeared!

There are two basic ways that clothes can wrinkle. First, if clothes are tight, they will scrunch up where the body bends. Because the scrunching makes the edge zigzag, the shadow should follow that zigzag.

The second type of wrinkle is from tension, and is sometimes called a “drapery” fold. To “drape” means to hang down like bunched curtains. The arrows here show how the knee is catching the loose pants on one side, and the heel is lifting up the back of the cuffs. When the clothes are loose, the lines will really point to and from the tension points! Once again, the shadow follows the line shapes.

Part 3: Wrapping with Wrinkles

To push it further, the wrinkles on these clothes are like details on a can or a tube. They should wrap around the contours of the 3d leg! Let’s look at tight and loose on a 3d leg.

Let’s pull this all together, and see how it contributes to a final drawing!

click to enlarge

On her mini-jacket, and elbow sleeve, I am combining smoothish edges on the clothes with a wrinkly shade. This makes a good thin leather or super tight and super scrunched look. For a thick leather look, the edges could be changed to be more bumpy.

For her shirt top, I am using a smooth edge and smooth shading. This works well for clothes that are close to the body, and that hang smoothly.

Lastly, for her dress, I am using tension points, super loose cloth, and drapery. Let’s go left to right!
- Between her legs, the cloth falls into a slight valley. I use the two lines of her legs to be the tension points, and do an even zigzag between the legs.
- Next, I am thinking of her hip/butt as one tension point, interacting with her knee as the second tension point. Near the butt and knee, you can see the lines radiate from the tension points. In the middle of the fabric, I have hooked the lines into each other. First, one from the hip, then from the knee. They hook together like a zipper, alternating from one side to the other.

More to come!

Our contributors are hard at play and work to draw more fun clothing lessons. We also will be posting the Holiday Faire Contest submissions over the holidays. Can’t wait for Christmas! Bye for now ^_^