Tuesday Tip: Denim

Back by popular demand, here is a new Tuesday Tip! A few people have asked me about how I render denim and jeans, so I've put together this little tutorial. To start you need to choose your denim color. The two colors that I use most frequently for denim are the Pantone 652-T (which I used in these examples) for lighter denim and the Copic marker in Agate B99 for dark denim.

1. Take your chosen color and fill in the garment with a solid wash.
2. With the same color, draw thin diagonal stripes. This can be with the fine tip end of the marker (this Pantone marker has 3 tips) or with a colored pencil in the same color.
3. Draw diagonal lines with a white pencil. *This is the key step to rendering denim effectively!
4. Using Cool Gray 90% pencil draw the seam lines. Then you have the option of taking a yellow/orange pencil to draw stitch lines parallel to each seam line. (This is not a must)

Something to keep in mind is that you can also add shadows and highlights within that first step. If you leave some white streaks, they will act as your highlights. And by applying a second layer of the marker to select edges and folds you can create shadows. This is exactly what I did to render the jeans shown in my "doodle" at the top of this post. For older posts with more of my illustrations of denim click here, here, or here.

I know everyone really enjoys the Tuesday Tip posts, therefore I've brought them back, however I can't promise to write one every tuesday. They are extremely time consuming so for now I'm going to shoot for one every 2 or 3 weeks. Enjoy!