Fashion Design Drawing

Fashion Design Drawing - Animate Details 9.jpg

that fashions in wearing the same glove change as often and more violently. The recent revival of wearing gloves in the evening was the result, not of a new kind of glove, but of a new way of wearing them. Always ask the glove buyer what is the particular feature she considers notable in the gloves you are to draw, and (if you are to draw them in use), how they should be worn.

Legs appear and disappear with fashion's changes, but feet, at least in the daytime, are always with us. From the point of view of the unskilful artist feet have at least one advantage over hands. They do not have to be drawn naked, are practically incapable of gesture, and alter only according to the angle from which you view them.

Shoes, when drawn unoccupied, are usually seen horizontally ; that is, the eye is on a level with the sole of the shoe. But when you are drawing a full-length figure you are usually looking down on her feet and up at her head (in varying degree according to your distance from her). The mistake of taking too much the bird's-eye view of her shoe comes from sitting too near, and this must be avoided.

All women's shoes, with the exception of bedroom slippers and Russian boots, are variations of two classic shapes, the court shoe and the walking shoe. The court shoe is a light shoe of the pump variety, without any kind of strapping and with a high heel : it is illustrated several times on pi. 14, in Nos. 8, etc. The walking shoe has a lower, thicker heel and laces up the front. There is an example of this, in a rather fancy form, in the bottom shoe in the page by Rhys

(Pi. 13)-

The particular respects in which the shoes you are to draw vary on these

primary forms must be carefully noted in the shop, and I have referred in

Chapter Two to several points for which you must look out when making the

preliminary sketch. We are concerned here with the finished drawing, and also

with the shoe as it occurs in full-length figures.

Many shops get their shoes drawn at a studio which specialises only in shoe work. The advertisement for Lilley & Skinner (pi. 12) is typical of work done in the best kind of commercial studio, by artists who specialise in one particular thing. Where work of this quality was required the ordinary all-round fashion artist would be inadequate. It represents the acme of high finish, and has the appearance of owing something to the air-brush.

From this example, however, the beginner may learn which are the invariable places where, in greater or less degree, high-lights occur on shoes ; though for any kind of magazine work this degree of finish would be excessive. The drawing of shoes by Rhys (pi. 13) is an example of a treatment that would do credit to any shilling magazine, although perhaps too much space is taken up for any but a strictly fashion magazine. The background was done with an opaque wash, the