How I draw a fashion Croquis

I've spend the past year quite busy, I've started working part time, as well as my graphics freelance work. So, even though I've done a bit of craft and design work, I haven't posted any of it.

I plan to make a large post focusing on what i've done the past year, but in the mean time, I'll show you what I'm working on now.

Drawing some fashion croquis. Croquis are little sketches, from the french Croquer, which is to sketch. In this case I'm using real pictures of models as reference, and tracing them and re-working their dimensions to fit the fashion ten head scale.

Real humans if measured using their own head as the unit of measurement, are around 7-8 heads high. Fashion illustrations are more stretched and figurative, so they've been stretched to scale 10 of their own heads tall. You can see in the above picture how I used the model as reference for her body's stance, but stretched my croquis to ten heads with more dramatic and less detailed lines.

I'm using Illustrator CS5 because I can't bear to spend so much monthly for the new Illustrator CC.

Start by tracing the silhouette and some basic features of the Model

I move the outline then start changing it to the 10 head scale.
I shrink the head, elongate the neck, tuck in the waist,
stretch the legs until its longer. 

You can do this by hand with regular print outs, or magazine pages, and using tracing paper or just a ruler and pencil to work on your own.

Hopefully, I'll finish the other 5 or so I'm working on, and then use them as my figures for when I'm illustrating.

Anyway, hope this can help some of you all.



Ruth