Fashion Illustration Exposed

A little while ago, I was contacted by the lovely Julia Stanescu of Fashionarium. She asked me if I would be willing to write two tutorials as a contributing fashion illustrator. Well I jumped at the opportunity and now I'm excited to tell you about the fabulous new book Fashion Illustration Exposed.

This book empowers readers to easily explore practical techniques of fashion illustration while learning about the tools and steps that ten fashion illustrators (including yours truly) employ. Mediums such as watercolor paint, pen, collage, and photoshop are all touched upon. (It has even inspired me to dig out my old watercolors and guaches that I haven't touched since college!)

It's such a thrill for me to be included in this book. I hope you all like it and like myself, learn something new. Fashion Illustration Exposed is available as a printed paperback as well as a downloadable ebook, which ten of my readers can purchase with a discount of 20% off. Its available by clicking here, and the discount code is brooklit. (The discount is only available to the first 10 Fabulous Doodles readers to purchase.)

Bridal Illustration Art Wall

Hello everyone! I'm sorry about the lack of posts lately here on Fabulous Doodles, its been a very busy summer. I've been juggling freelance product design work, website illustration clients, mile-stone birthdays, family reunions, traveling for showers and wedding events, and new bridal clients. Tis the season, I guess right!

Large 13"x19" poster size prints available in my shop: www.Brooklit.com

I thought it would be nice to share this art wall of some of my favorite framed bridal illustration prints. I created it a while back for a presentation. Wouldn't it be perfect for a wedding planners office, or maybe a bridal dress salon?

Fabulous 4th

(Renaldo Barnette illustration of Michele Obama for Kai Milla, and sketchbook illustration.)

I hope everyone is enjoying a long weekend of barbecuing, fireworks, and sinking your toes in the sand. But just in case your stuck indoors and happen to be looking for some fashion inspiration on this fine holiday I pulled a few illustrations from some of my favorite designers.

(Bob Mackie costume illustrations for Cher and Pink.)

See, you can be fabulously patriotic sporting red, white and blue and not look like a walking American flag! Happy 4th of July to all my fellow Americans.

(Audrey Schilt fashion illustrations for Ralph Lauren Collection.)

eDrop-Off Illustrations

The past few weeks I have been busy working on illustrations for a website relaunch called eDrop-Off. Now that the site is up and running I can share the illustrations with you! eDrop-Off is based out of Chicago and they are the leading designer consignment shop specializing in selling designer and luxury items on eBay. They offer the chicest designer labels, so my illustrations had to be on par with Chanel, Gucci, and Oscar.

They were such great clients to work with, very trusting and easy going. They loosely provided me with descriptions of what they were looking for (like "classic Chanel suit") and sometimes a pose (like "knees together,") and let me render how I saw fit, choosing colors, fabrics, hair, and accessories.

Every time we were about to be done a few more illustration requests were added, so it ended up being a pretty big job consisting of 8 girls, an authenticity seal, a stack of magazines with a designer shoe on top, a customized Tiffany bracelet and a bulletin board with "designer" push pins! I also did a few fun things for their launch party, but I'll share those another time.

The team at eDrop Off was an absolute delight to work with (thank you Nicole!) and I wish them continued success with the new website and in their new location.

Visit eDrop-Off to check out my illustrations in action, see all the fabulous designer items for sale, and maybe even send them some of your own. It's free pick nationwide, although I can't promise your UPS person will look like this one! (below)

New Cards & Bookmarks

Last weeks "Girls Night Out" sale was a success in that it had a great turn out and raised a substantial amount of money for a great cause, however I personally did not do so well. The positive side of this is that since I made sure to stock up for the sale by printing lots of new items I can now add as new listings in my Etsy shop; Brooklit.

Here are some of my favorite new cards. You may remember the girl in glasses and jeans from my denim "Tuesday Tip" tutorial. I liked her so much that I made her into a birthday card. The other fashion illustration's that adorn the new birthday cards are two of my more popular prints, Carrie and Mystie.

I've also made a fun new bridal card with a combination of some custom bridal illustrations and original ones. The bride card is blank on the inside which makes it suitable for any bridal occasion; engagements, showers, bachlorettes, weddings or even anniversaries.

My bookmarks continue to be popular, so I've expanded the selection. They're a nice, less expensive, alternative to purchasing one of my girls in art print form. And with summer now here, what better time for a fun new bookmark for all your summer reading.

Tuesday Tip: Sequins

A while back you may remember I wrote about my favorite tools for fashion illustration and I mentioned the whiteout pen. Well to successfully render sequins a whiteout pen is vital. (At least for this fashion illustrator!) It's also best when choosing your marker to pick a very wet and saturated marker, like a Chartpak and a classic black Sharpie marker.

I happen to really enjoy rendering sequins, especially all-over sequins (a-la Diana Ross or Cher.) There are a few specific steps to it, but don't stress, its pretty hard to mess up. And once you complete them the results are stunning.

1. You begin by coloring the base of your design. Its important to leave white streaks where you want your highlights. Let it dry a little then add a second coat of your color to areas in shadow (see example #1.)
2. Outline the design, draw any seams, and add any extra shadowing with a dark pencil. I use the Prismacolor cool gray 90% pencil. (#2)
3. With your black Sharpie stipple dots all over the garment (#3). Load up on dots in areas that are white and are going to be a highlight.
4. With your whiteout pen place a dot on top of each black one. Get a rhythm going and it will be over before you know it. (#4)
5. This is not a necessary step, but I like to add a few faint "X's" with my finest tip black pen to create subtle streaks of light. (I use a Micron pen, tip size 005)

The white dots will absorb the color you put down first, especially if you used a very wet marker. The dots will turn into a lighter shade of your color. This is why if you look at my examples, they don't look like white sequins on colored fabrics. It looks as though I've actually painted all these little colored sequins! And the tip of the Sharpie, being almost the same width as the whiteout pen, creates the perfect shadow to make each sequin pop.

Above are illustrations from my Etsy shop of Carrie and Samantha (from the first SATC movie), both sporting fabulous sequin pieces. Carrie is available in a print, magnet or bookmark, and Samantha is on a bookmark.