Fashion Illustrator books in the library

We have a number of titles in the library that you might find helpful.
Creative fashion design with Illustrator / Kevin Tallon.
Technical drawing for fashion / Basia Szkutnicka.
Fashion designer's handbook for Adobe Illustrator / Marianne Centner and Frances Vereker.

If you browse around in this section of the library you will find other related books.

Illustrator Pen tool exercise

Click here, save and open this file:

Download the Pen tool exercise

Originally from here.

Inspiration

Not fashion related but good to see what is possible in vector form using Illustrator.
Vectips.com a good place to go to regularly.

Seamless repeating Mexican Pattern

Create a seamless repeating Mexican Pattern from DigitalArts Magazine bringing together some of the content from the Illustrator workshops for fashion students.

Constrain your drawing.

A helpful tip to enable you to draw at a specific angle. Think isometric.

Back To Basics

The dreaded pen tool.

The pen tool will easily be your biggest enemy when learning to draw in Illustrator but be your best friend when you have mastered how to use it.

You can of course use the pencil tool to draw in a more intuitive and direct way but doing so creates more work for yourself that needs tidying up later with spare anchor points and stray lines everywhere. Not helpful when you are trying to draw an accurate and precise flat drawing or spec sheet.

Remember that drawing in Adobe Illustrator is like putting pegs in a board and attaching string from one peg to the next. Unlike Adobe Photoshop which is more akin to traditional drawing ink on paper.

In Photoshop if you want to edit a line you may use the eraser and repaint your line in its new place.
In Illustrator if you want to edit a line you just need to more the pegs and the string follows.
Drawing in Illustrator is like placing the start and end points, Illustrator will draw the bits in between.

Comprehensive guide

What's in a drawing?

I have downloaded a flat from the WGSN Resource Library and exploded it so you can see what makes up the flat. What at first can look involved and complicated in fact is simple.