12 Digital Fashion Design

I might have mentioned in my post about my fashion design module that I used my tablet to do the design. I got a tablet at the start of last year because I'd been interested in having one for a while and wanted to use it to work on designs. Unfortunately I've learnt that while colouring and adding textures is certainly much more of a breeze, drawing and controlling the brush is definitely much harder than drawing with pencils! However last year I still managed to draw some in my free time... not very professional but I'm rather proud of them anyway because of the time I invested in each.

 one of my first designs... a wedding gown which was supposed to be very light mint, with a lace yoke and tulle overlay. Obviously my attempt at drawing lace was quite futile but... alright, I always fail at drawing lace. And details, actually.

 ...the skirt was supposed to be peacock feathers for this one.

 I love this, except for the face. At this point in time I was still using Paint and not Photoshop to do my drawings and I accidentally coloured black into the face and couldn't undo it, much to my detriment because until then I had been working for HOURS to get everything else right. As you could probably imagine, digital art is not like art on paper because you can't see the whole canvas at 100% when you're working on it, it's got to be detail by tiny detail so many a time I zoomed out only to see that the part I had been painstakingly sketching out was disproportionate. This dress, if I remember correctly, had a sheer long-sleeved yoke with origami-like folds for the bodice and peplum skirt. And totally awesome feather heels! I wish I had them in real life.

 Inspired by one of my favourite books, Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale. It's a GREAT story and you should really read it! In it, the heroine Isi is a naive princess sent to the neighbouring country of Bayern to marry its crown prince, who she's never met. However on the way her lady-in-waiting and soldiers rebel against her and steal her title, going on to the city masquerading as the real princess. She is left to fend for herself for the first time and does so by becoming a goose girl (hence the title)... This plot is complicated by the fact that she has nature-speaking, or can speak the language of the wind as well as birds. The story tells how she matures and grows strong as a person and eventually fights to get her rights back.
I wanted a dress to capture her at the end (the book's the first in a wonderful series). Isi is a truly remarkable character- she's humble, graceful, and really like a normal person until you realize she's royalty. Like a swan, really- so I designed this gown with flower appliques on the bodice, sheer sleeves and -though you can't really see it here- a circlet round her hair! And royal blue for the background for obvious reasons.

 Inspired by a woman I saw during one of my holidays in Malaysia, who was wearing a yellow top with a lace bib. This is a little Alice-in-Wonderland-y, but I love the hair! I wish I was a redhead, actually. They have all the fun ;-)

 One of my favourites EVER. It took AGES to do on Photoshop and in the end it still didn't really look like it did on paper and in my head but overall still beautiful. If I can remember correctly it's that shade of light pink featured at the side, with black chiffon wrapped all around in the style of a bandage dress, but with a very frilly cascading one-sleeve. This was after my fashion design module when I rather liked the idea of firmly pleated ruffles.

Inspired by a Gucci design. Not really well drawn..

I'd designed this dress earlier and wanted to try drawing in the style of an advertising campaign, in this case H&M's. If you're wondering about the 'secret kook society' that keeps appearing, it's the name of my personal blog.

Inspired by a Gucci dress... I wanted something terribly mod and pop-art.

Once again inspired by H&M. I rather like this because I sketched it without any resources, ie not knowing how a person is supposed to look taking off her heels ;-) Not bad!

really ugly font in the balloon now that I take a closer look. this was when I was thinking of pitching some wearable designs to successful blogshops in the hope of getting some of my designs manufactured. I never got round to doing it, but this look was inspired by someone I saw on Garance Dore's fashion blog. A nude pink top with a slightly flared black skirt and -if you can see it- snakeskin belt. The background was off Google Images.

I love this too- especially the neckline, and the colour, and the font, and the background. Oh everything! It's quite advertisement-y too. I like looking at advertisements in magazines and analysing their layouts, compositions. One of my favourites is Marc Jacobs', because his pictures are always very recognisable and set in a stark white background with plain black words, as opposed to most campaigns where the photos take up the whole page.