Welcome to our crash course in fashion flats! Come and take a deep-dive into the world of fashion with flat sketches, also known as tech sketches, line drawings and design development sketches (DDS). You'll be an expert by the time you're done reading this!
- Fashion Design Body Templates
- Sketches Of Bodies
- Fashion Body Sketch Templates
- Body For Fashion Sketches
Poses for fashion illustration is a set of professional template cards tailor-made for developing fashion illustrations and sketches. It is packed with a wide range of occasions, dimensions, and body shapes - to provide all the practical poses you'll ever need in your career. Originally, fashion sketchbooks were exclusively used by fashion designers, which means that many of them have a very “high-fashion” model-type body shape, and in some cases, have a stylized body that is more alien than human! Traditional croquis have elongated bodies.
It All Started in The Caves
Since the dawn of man, humans have sought out ways of communicating, sharing ideas, practices, customs and beliefs. The scribes, painters and stone cutters of ancient Egypt (3200 BC—30 BC) were among the first 'commercial' artists, working as paid or conscripted artisans for the Egyptian nation-state.
With the development of the modern fashion industry in the 19th century, designers started using technical sketches to communicate their design ideas so teams could work on them.
What's a Flat Sketch?
A flat sketch is a two-dimensional technical drawing which illustrates a garment with basic solid lines. It's like a 'blueprint' of your fashion design —much like an architect's blueprint for a house before they can begin to construct it.
The word 'flat' refers to the way that they are drawn: imagine the garment is lying flat on a table so that you are viewing all the details from either the front or the back.
Aside from front/back views, some brands will include drawings of details or the side views to show how panels travel around the body or how sections of the garment should be constructed.
Why Flat Sketches are Important
As an essential part of the garment specification sheet or tech pack, they give your pattern-maker and your manufacturer's sewing teams all the information they need about the technical components of a piece. How else will they understand your vision
Difference Between Flats and Illustrations
A fashion illustration captures the mood, proportion and color of your design, it's more of an interpretation of your idea. Whereas the technical sketch helps translate the garment into something 'universal' which a whole team of people can understand and work on.
A fashion illustration is transformed into a technical sketch to create a 'blueprint' for the pattern and construction of the garment.
Creating Fashion Flats: The Essentials
1) Include multiple views of your garment
Sometimes just front/ back views are not enough for a factory to understand your design requirements. Ideally, you should include side views, inside and other details to show how the garment should be constructed.
2) Be as Detailed as Possible
Develop templates that are detailed so you can use them later in other tech packs. Remember that with Techpacker you can save design details inside cards to be used again as needed.
3) Keep it Simple
Add details as explained above but don't overcomplicate things either. Avoid shading and use plain black and white sketches to clearly represent your design.
Read more about how to ace your flat sketches every time!
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Tech Developments to The Rescue!
Tech flats used to be hand-drawn using rulers and black felt tip pens and indicated the scaling of the original design sample measurements.
Today, most brands use Computer Aided Design (CAD) technologies that enable virtual true to life prototypes, instead of real samples. However, CAD technology isn't cheap and has a steep learning curve. Which is why most designers prefer Adobe Illustrator to create their flats.
The Technical Designer
There's actually someone who only specialises in technical flat drawings. In fact, their role should be to link the Design and Production teams. They are essentially the engineers of fashion.
Funnily though, no two Technical Design jobs are ever the same. To learn more about all the things tech designers can do check out this article. The learning opportunities in this field are endless!
Watch ▶︎
Here's a video from this insightful post by the University of Arts, London that we highly recommend for you to get on the right track doing flats!
Interesting Resources
→ Free fashion flats in Adobe Illustrator format and tips on how to create flats
Designer Nexus (You need to sign up for free first!)
→ Check out this designer who looked into creating a Web-based Design Support System for Fashion Technical Sketches. Her idea was to enable users to design realistic garments in the form of technical sketches over the internet.
What's next?
Once you have your flat sketches ready, it's time to add them to your tech packs and send over to your manufacturers so they can get started to turn your idea into a product.
In 3 simple steps, Techpacker allows you to add all your flat sketches as cards, make comments and send PDF-ready tech packs to your manufacturers in the blink of an eye!
Related post-
Fashion Design Body Templates
A fashion sketches consists of the figurative fashion drawing of a slightly exaggerated, idealized and stylized human figure (male or female) along with the clothes and accessories adorning it. You draw the human figure with your clothing design and present everything about the style of clothing, embellishments you want to add on it, then pepper it with the attitude you want to convey with that particular style – there you have your fashion sketch laid out for the world to take notice.
Fashion Sketches is the art of communicating fashion ideas in a visual form that originates with illustration, drawing, and painting and also known as Fashion sketching. It is mainly used by fashion designers to brainstorm their ideas on to paper or computer, using digital software like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, which helps them to communicate easily with their team. Fashion sketching plays a major role in designing to preview and visualize the designer’s thoughts and make decisions before going to actual clothing to reduce any wastage.
Apart from fashion designers, fashion illustrators get commissioned for reproduction in fashion magazines as one part of an editorial feature or for the purpose of advertising and promoting fashion makers, fashion boutiques and department stores.
History
Fashion illustration has been around for nearly 500 years. Ever since clothes have been in existence, and there has been a need to translate an idea or image into a fashion illustration. Not only do fashion illustrations show a representation or design of a garment but they also serve as a form of art. Fashion illustration shows the presence of hand and is said to be a visual luxury. (Drake, 9).
More recently, there has been a decline of fashion illustration in the late 1930s when Vogue began to replace its celebrated illustrated covers with photographic images. This was a major turning point in the fashion industry.
How To Draw Fashion Sketches
First and foremost you should practice at improving hand-eye coordination; this can improve your drawing skills. You can start practicing drawing by sketching someone you know. Maybe they can be persuaded to model for you. The right incentive works every time – like chocolates at my house.
First and foremost study the proportion of human body thoroughly – The biology books you sold the day exams were over would have been of use now. That is ok. There are even more wonderful books ( and not so boring) available to teach you everything about human anatomy as well as the muscle tone and how to draw various poses , how to get the balance line right (the imaginary line that is made from the base of the center of the neck down to the floor which gives the body a balanced proportion and helps in drawing position) ; how to add your style and movement to the basic figure.
You can look at similar drawings made by other designers or figurative photographs in magazines which will guide you in developing your own style. One easy way is to practice by tracing over a model in a standing pose from a magazine
Fashion Designer Beginners Guide
Create A Good Croquis: A croquis is the basic drawing of a model pose that you can trace over and over again while sketching your fashion ideas.you can find your croquis to use online or in books or you can create your own once.
Developing Your Own Style: Focus on creating sketches that express your unique esthetic with each element .there are a lot of things that determine the unique style of your illustrations.just select and create your own style and your own creativity.
Fashion Illustration Importance: It is a Great Way To Showcase Your work.to be a good fashion designeror illustration is to make as many sales as possible, and if You Really Want prospective Customers to Say Your Work Illustration Will Be a Good Way to Do Date.
How To Draw Men’s Fashion Sketches
Figure Dimensions
Sketches Of Bodies
Start your fashion sketch my marking how large the figure will be. Leave a little bit from the top and a little bit the bottom of the sheet then pull the centerline. Slightly higher than the actual middle of the centerline is the figure halfway. The head and torso will be drawn above this line while the legs will occupy the lower half.
Head And Torso Guidelines
Divide the upper half of the figure in four equal parts. The head of the model takes up almost the whole upper most 1/4. Leave a little bit from the 1st and a little bit from the 2nd part for the neck of the figure. Leave 1 head from the ground up for the feet of the model.
Details
Erase all the unnecessary lines and start adding the fine details of the figure. Draw the collarbones, the hands, and abs as shown. The abs are starting right below the chests and are most visible above the belly button. The third pack of abs is always ending at the belly button. Refine the knees and the feet of the model.
Fashion Body Sketch Templates
Finishing Touches
Body For Fashion Sketches
Clean up everything, add a face, toes and of course the design you have in mind. In case the figure still looks somehow feminine you might want to check out the “differences between male and female body” tutorial.