Tuesday Tip: Illustrating Leopard

Have you always wanted to learn how to accurately illustrate leopard print? Well its your lucky day, and you may be surprised to learn that leopard just so happens to be one of the easiest and most foolproof prints to draw and draw well. Being an animal skin, leopard print is organic, some parts are clustered and messy and some are open and spacey. You really can't make a mistake with this one I promise.

1. The first step is to choose your color way, and the three markers you'd like to use for the print. With the lightest one you lay the ground color for the print. I chose a dark tan color, in order to render a more realistic leopard print.

2. Let your base color dry then add a second "coat" in streaky and somewhat rough stripes, one being down the center and then as few or as many as you'd like to each side. This will add depth to the print.

3. Choose a marker that is darker than your ground color and randomly draw comma or kidney shaped "spots" with it, as I've illustrated for you in step three with brown.

4. With your darkest marker (I used black) draw three dashes or kidney shapes of varying lengths surrounding each of the kidney shapes you drew in the step three. Its as though you're messily outlining each spot with three dashes.

5. Add highlights, shadows and any garment design details with your black and white (or white charcoal) pencils. And ta-da! There you will have a classic leopard print.

Its been quite a while since my last Tuesday Tip post, but I figured what better way to get back into the tutorial mode than by showing you how to render this fun and classic print. Since I drew the tutorial in standard leopard colors I thought I should also show how easy it is to use the same steps but with colors that are a little more on-trend. Gray, black and white shown above, is a little more pop and edgy and the purples below are a colorful alternative.

If you're hungry for more you can check out my previous Tuesday Tip here, and come back next week because I'm working on another one for you. (I promise not to wait almost 2 years for another one this time!)

***I'm also taking suggestions so let me know in the comments section if there's a tip you'd like to see to help improve your fashion illustration skills.

Related posts you may like:

• Custom Fashion Illustrations for Love Gold
• My New Illustrated Books Now Available
• Inspired by Grey Gardens

Instagram Addict

As my friends can attest to I'm a bit of a picture taking fanatic, therefore my favorite iPhone app has quickly become Instagram. In the past few months I've become a little obsessed and have been sharing everything from sneak peaks at projects I'm working on and quick sketchbook doodles, to my diy's, glimpses into my apartment and the occasional shot while out and about in the city. Shown here are a bunch of my recent favorites, but you can check out more of my pictures by following me, Brooklit. (I often share my photo's from Instragram through twitter too, which I also go by Brooklit.)

Instagram has many wonderful aspects to it but a favorite of mine is the ease of editing your images with color effects, brightness and adding a blur which you can easily adjust the size and focus of. Its so much quicker and easier than importing to photoshop. Its also fun to see what your friends are up to and "like" and/or comment on images that they post. (Here's a peak of my latest Instagram pic of a new Tuesday Tip I'm working on.)

You can now turn your Instagram photo's into something more; prints, books, magnets, even iphone cases. My friend Holly Becker of Decor8 recently did a wonderful round up of printing options for your Instagram shots, which you can check out here. I'll certainly be placing orders from a site or two from her list soon.

(All images taken by me on Instragram, @Brooklit)

Copic Marker Guest & New Print

As you probably know from reading Fabulous Doodles I love my Copic Markers, so needless to say I was thrilled when they contacted me and asked me to write a guest post of a bridal illustration tutorial for their blog. Instead of featuring one of my custom bridal illustration client projects I decided to create a new, and more stylized, bridal print. If you'd like to read about my process from start to finish you can check out the guest post I wrote on the Copic Marker site.

I like this new sketch so much that I decided to add her to Brooklit Bride, my Etsy bride shop. I rarely alter my sketches once they're completed but I did tweak this print in photoshop so its slightly different than the one Copic featured. I elongating the black sash to just beyond the gown's train. Proportionally it just seems to work better. Hope you like the newest Brooklit Bride print, sultry, sophisticated and sexy Victoria.

New Print: Meet Mae

Meet Mae, the latest print added to my Brooklit Etsy shop. This look was inspired by a uniquely draped Zac Posen dress I spotted on Shopbop. The detail I found most enticing about the dress is gathered rounded godets along a dropped waistline that form a full skirt. Rounding out the godet tops is something I've never seen before and was inspired to incorporate it into one of "my girls."

I named her Mae because it just seemed to fit her soft and coy demeanor. Doesn't she look like she's just standing in a corner daydreaming about her future first love? To purchase a print or to see Mae in more detail, click here for the full listing in my shop.

Italy Textile Design

 Not long ago I was commissioned for a unique project by Italian handbag designer Alexandra de Curtis to sketch an Italy themed print for a textile. The fabric will be used to line the interior of her collection of fine leather tote bags and clutches. In addition to a couple of stylish Italian girl fashion illustrations, her logo and sketches of some of the bags, Alexandra provided me with a list of iconic-ally Italian things that she wanted me to add to the design. In the "swatches" shown here you can see a cup of cappuccino, wine, designer shoes and sunglasses, art, the coliseum and even a Vespa were all drawn in along with key phrases and cities.

Hopefully this is the first of many more countries I will illustrate for Alexandra's line but in the mean time I'm thinking I need to book a trip to Italia asap. (I've been twice before, but Italy is just one of those places that never gets old.) The bags with my illustrations inside are due out next year, I'll keep you posted once they're available. Ciao bella!

Armani Costume Designs for Lady Gaga

Georgio Armani recently released the latest costume design sketches for Lady Gaga's next world tour, and I couldn't wait to share the avant garde illustrations with you here on Fabulous Doodles! In Gaga's first tour, The Monsters Ball (perviously featured here) the wardrobe, which I actually had the thrill of seeing in person when I attended the HBO taped concert at Madison Square Garden, was simply spectacular and this next round of costumes looks like it will not disappoint.

I don't know about you but the sketches really remind me of the work of Bob Mackie. Aside from the obvious reasons that they're whimsical and sparkly costume sketches that are full of personality and attitude, the figure proportions, rendering techniques, and overall look of the artwork is just so similar to the work of Mackie. It really adds to the shock factor for me that they're by Armani, whom I completely have pigeon holed in my brain as being the go-to tailored suit design master.

One idea to take note of, for you aspiring designers, is that the illustrator has used the same figure to build upon for the more than one look. You can clearly see that these sketches, although drastically different from one another in the costume design, are the same exact pose and most likely drawn over the same figure. This is a sketching shortcut when your working to focus yourself on the designs and not get overly involved in sketching new poses and figures for each look.

Thank you to Armani for releasing the sketches and fingers crossed in a few months I'll be thanking Gaga for putting on another incredible show! Anyone have tickets, feel free to send them my way. ;)