Testing a New Fashion Illustration Task

For the past decade I’ve been going into secondary schools and teaching fashion illustration and every time I learn something new about teaching. Each year I develop new materials and techniques to make learning fashion illustration fun.  This year I decided to create some up-to-date illustration templates to use as a ILLUSTRATION TASK in the classroom. After reviewing some recent designer shows I generated about a dozen new images like those below.  Mostly featuring latest catwalk fashion and they were so well received in the classroom I’m thinking of making them into a colouring book that everyone can access online.

When I work with high school students I take my favourite drawing materials into the classroom so I can give them the experience of these quality graphic materials.  My favourite and most efficient illustration materials are markers and pastel pencils.  And they are so very efficient;  with the marker pens providing the colour back drop and the pastel pencils used to bring out the important design details.  I use Complimentary Colour Theory with the pastel pencils to get the greatest impact in the illustration with a minimal amount of work.  If you have an interest in fashion illustration you can have a look at a few videos I have on youtube that describe this method in detail.  If you’d like to try it at home for yourself I have a Fashion Illustration Worksheet (Download) available as a PDF download.

More recently I was invited to teach the textile students of Santa Sabina College in the delightful environment of their Tallong Campus in rural New South Wales.  There were forty students in the room and three extra teachers to help me get around the room and give a little personal tuition to each student.  It was an amazing morning and everyone achieved loads of fabulous illustration before lunch time!

All students worked with the new fashion illustration task and I was able to get them to use both markers and pencils, and a collage technique.  By comparison, collage is far more economical method of illustration as most of the materials are readily available.  The costs of marker pens and pastel pencils are so often beyond the budgets of many schools.  The example below is the task where students start with collage then add an example using the marker pens and pastel pencils.

The use of collage is full of surprises and very ordinary magazine pages can yield the most interesting ideas for design, print and decoration.  I hope to make a video showcasing this technique soon.  If you subscribe to my youtube channel you’ll be the first to hear when it’s released.  🙂

Are there any textile teachers out there that think this is a good idea?  Let me know if you’re interested in the fashion illustration colouring book.  It’s now up online for everyone to try.