Fashion Illustrations Developed

Having tried my hand at fashion sketches  I wanted to take my Ideas a little further along the route of fashion Illustrations, primarily down a digital aspect. So to start off I found a free image online and imported it into Photoshop and went to work adding in one of my prints which I photographed from my print work. From this point it was very much a lot of careful use of the lasso tool to select around the suit my male figure was wearing, after that inverting the selection and deleting away the excess from my printed images. I did this with 2 different prints which can be seen below.

                      

After completing these 2 styles, which I really liked the way they turned out. I decided I should take it one step further and instead of using 1 pattern. I decided on using 3 different patterns together. One for the jacket, one for the pants and one for the tie. So i set out to work in the same manner as the first two, lasso the sections I wanted to have the pattern then inverting and deleting the excess. Until I had a fine piece I really liked.

Unlike with the first two I feel this one looks a lot more complete for a fashion Illustration. As the different patterns for each section of clothing really helps pull the whole thing together. But as well as that I add subtle gradients to each piece of clothing the give the cut prints there own unique light source. As in the original photo I had the light source was coming from the bottom right so for the jacket i did the same thing, arching the light from the bottom right of the jacket, and then darkening on the top left to help bring back the original lighting in the photo. For the pants I did the same but I also added a 2nd layer in the top half of the pants to give a shadow effect from the jacket being over the top of them. Lastly for the tie I just added a single from top to bottom gradient, the top being the darker as when comparing it to the bottom right original light source it stood out more from jacket so I went with that.

Overall I am really happy with the way this piece turned out, as I really enjoying working in Photoshop. Even more so when I get to incorporate original techniques such as the hand made prints from a handmade print block and get to manipulate them further in a program like Photoshop. This is something I love to do and plan to take the print method I learnt here further in some of my future work.

Monomania - Foam Printing

Foam print block making :|
Making a mess with paint and printing :D

Possibly the best way I could describe this session. I can't help but love anything where I get to be messy and make unique mess into something fun and creative. Following my work on the shape shape I picked one of my final shapes to make out of a piece of foam which funnily enough is from the bottom of a pizza box but enough of that. To cut the foam I used a soldering iron which utterly stunk up the room I was working in so we had to open all the windows. I'm just glad I went first so I didn't have to stand around for ages waiting to cut my shape and having to smell what I can only describe as a melting rubbish, kind of smell.

I think my shape turned out rather well considering I hadn't held a soldering iron since i was about 13 in DT class back in school. I didn't just want to use my shape for the printing block as it would make the print very bland and boring so i added a few drops and squiggles here and there. Which as you'll see below really helped when it came to adding the acrylic paints and printing.

I produced patterns with my tear drop styled foam print block on 4 different types of material, black paper, white bin liner, white fabric and stripped fabric. Using 3 different colours of acrylic paint, white, black and grey and it go messy fast. I wish i took a photo of my hands at the end of it. I still have paint dried on my nails at the time of writing this.
I really enjoyed making these prints as it was a very unique process for me and the way all the work has been linked together. Having to move the block in different directions and overlapping of different colours made some really interesting patterned appear. For example I really love the way the prints look on the stripped fabric as where I cut away at the foam print you can see the fabric coming through the prints as well as where there was less ink on block giving the print a very unique look which will give even more depth once the excess material is cut away. Using a foam block is a very quick and easy way to make a printing block and is something I would like to incorporate into some of my work later down the line as it would come in handy when working on mixed media piece as a little something extra.