More Vintage Fashion Inspired Sketches

Here are a couple more sketches that were inspired by vintage fashion.

The Jewelry Fairy Tale

Do you remember your childhood? Do you remember those days when everything was brighter, more colorful and full of magic? Do you remember how fairy tales which we used to read when we were little boys and girls fueled our imagination and turned even simple objects into magic things? Girls must remember the times when their mothers’ dresses and jewelry seemed to be so beautiful in their children’s minds that they could have belonged to a queen from a fairy tale. Little girls live in a day-dream imagining themselves in a magic world of princesses and noble gentlemen. Applying their first make-up and trying on their new dresses and some simple jewelry, girls are ready to fly away to a fairy world in their wonderful imagination.

Everyone who had a happy childhood wants to experience again that carefree time printed deeply in his or her memory. Everything which reminds us about our childhood inevitably attracts our attention and fills our heart with a pleasant warmth.

There was a young girl from France named Anais Villemagne who contacted me with a request to create a few custom illustrations for her head jewelry design project. She was writing a thesis on this project and wanted to illustrate the concept. She could not draw, so she asked me to create a few drawings. Anais loved the style of jewelry advertisements made for Van Cleef & Arpels and those created by Guerlain. Therefore, based on her styles preferences, she did not want the future illustrations to be too detailed and burdened with too many colors. What she wanted the most was to focus viewers’ attention to jewelry accessories in characters’ hair.

In fact, Anais Villemagne had developed an interesting marketing strategy to promote head jewelry through evoking women’s childhood memories and giving them the desire to turn their dreams into reality and thus nudging them to purchase hair jewelry advertised by fairy tale princesses. I absolutely love her idea of a Jewelry Universe based on most popular fairy tales featuring female characters the majority of women secretly dreams to look like even when already adult and not that naïve as they used to be in the childhood. I believe that this could be a brilliant marketing idea not only for jewelry but also for apparel, fashion accessories, perfumery and other products designed to make any woman look and feel like a princess. If fashion or jewelry designers are reading this blog now, I can definitely recommend you, guys, Anais Villemagne as a person who can generate wonderful ideas to attract customers to your products (please, do not hesitate to ask me for her contacts if you are interested).

Another interesting fact about this project is that Anais was inspired by the Swan Lake ballet when she was developing her jewelry design project. Therefore she wanted female characters on illustrations to look like ballet dancers.

Illustrations for a Hair Jewelry Design Project

The first illustration features a little girl wearing a paper crown. While dreaming and imagining herself being a princess she opens a music box to see a dancing couple turning around like in a royal ball at a castle. It makes her vivid imagination run wild powered with so many fairy tales read by her mother. Her imagination takes her to a magic world of beautiful princesses and handsome princes and… sparkling jewelry.

Hair jewelry design project: Beauty and the Beast – the Reunion

Hair jewelry design project: Cinderella – the Flight

Guccio Gucci (Fashion Designer)

I decided to create a series of portraits of legendary fashion designers who had founded world’s most famous fashion houses and labels which had being dictating fashion trends for decades.

A portrait of Guccio Gucci is the first in the series. Gucci was the founder of The House of Gucci which is one of today’s most famous fashion labels producing clothing, watches, jewelry, shoes and leather goods. It is almost impossible to find a photo of Guccio Gucci of a decent quality but I did my best to draw a portrait of this Italian fashion designer on the basis of photographs available online.

Guccio Gucci - Italian fashion designer

19th Century Fashion Inspiration

A few months ago I was approached by a representative of Prophetik Showroom (www.prophetik.com) who asked me to create some fashion sketches based on photographs of fashion designs and concepts. He said they needed the drawings as inspiration pieces for the new season. What I saw on their photographs reminded me 19th century fashion with all those chic corsets and magnificent dresses.

Here are the sketches which I drew using Pentel brushes.

Fashion photos provided by Prophetik reminded me 19th century fashion in Europe

19th century dresses look amazing

Retro Fashion Inspiration

I have always been inspired by vintage women’s fashion. Those retro clothes were so much woman-oriented that it seems that almost any piece of vintage clothing was specially designed to make woman look very feminine and elegant. Those were the times of never dying classic fashion which influence never ceases when it comes to female’s elegant look. Drawing vintage fashion is always a special treat for me.

Retro fashion inspires me a lot

Vintage Fashion Inspired Drawings (Luggage Tags)

As you already know I am very much inspired with vintage woman fashion. I really love that peculiar elegance of retro clothing (especially European and American fashion of 1950s) which made a woman look so feminine even when disguising the most attractive parts of the female body. This classic and elegant look of a woman of the middle XX century will always be appreciated by me.

I had recently had another opportunity to create some vintage-looking fashion drawings when I was commissioned to draw 10 illustrations for vintage fashion inspired luggage tags. These custom suitcase labels depict traveling women wearing vintage clothing. What I especially love about these fashion drawings is that they portray common women, not models who deliberately demonstrate their apparel. These women are captured in real-life situations while traveling with their huge suitcases and travel bags. Their heavy bags make those young ladies look even more delicate and fragile. But in spite of traveling haste and difficulties they manage to remain super elegant, cute and pretty.

By the way, a lot of people wonder what drawing tool I use to create nice looking neat and accurate outlines for my fashion illustrations. Well, I love using a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen to outline my fashion figurines.

The vintage fashion inspired luggage tags were created for Split P Studio, LLC. and will be available for purchase soon.

Retro Fashion Inspired Luggage Tags

I used a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen to outline initial pencil sketches

I created retro looking drawings of ladies

Imitating the Style of Vintage Fashion Magazines Illustrations

You might already know that I am a passionate fan of the vintage fashion style (my post about a custom pin-up drawing is a proof of my love for a good old retro fashion). I have recently visited one of the blogs dedicated to the vintage fashion and particularly to retro clothing magazines. I was greatly inspired by pictures and illustrations from old “Vogue” magazines. I especially liked the fashion illustrations from 1950s issues of the magazine. They are really amazing! These vintage illustrations and pictures do not only show the first fashion trends which evolved into today’s popular clothing elements and styles but also reflect a genuine talent and outstanding work of fashion illustrators who had managed to create true artworks without using any fashion drawing software, computers, cameras and other sophisticated devices. I had been so much inspired with those retro fashion illustrations that I could not help but imitate fashion drawings of those vintage Vogue magazines. The above fashion illustrations are drawn with a pen and pencils to preserve old traditions of creating fashion illustrations and to pay a tribute to retro fashion illustrators and their wonderful works.

My imitation of vintage fashion illustrations

Vintage fashion models (1950s style)

African Fashion Illustrations

It’s an interesting fact that when I had started my independent career of an illustrator and artist and began building my fashion illustrations portfolio the first my clients were American magazines dedicated to African fashion and lifestyle.
I created a few illustrations for BHF Magazine promoting African fashion and lifestyle. This magazine helped me to discover the beauty of African women. No doubt, living in Ukraine I see a lot of beautiful women literally everywhere (this is what our country is famous for), but nevertheless it was nice to discover the exotic beauty of African women. The owner of BHF Magazine had shown me a lot of amazing pictures of African models and I was impressed with their outstanding charm and prettiness. I could not help but dedicating this blog post to my African fashion illustrations created for African fashion magazines. There are not a lot of them so far, but I believe I will get other orders for African fashion illustrations from BHF Magazine or similar fashion and lifestyle magazines. Anyway, I enjoyed drawing African models and their clothes because I love how their specific beauty matches African authentic national fashion designs, ornaments and accessories. And I love how editors of African fashion magazines like BHF Magazine and UZURI Magazine point out African spirit and folk individuality through fashion.

Here are my African fashion illustrations:

African fashion illustration for BHF Magazine

Fashion illustration created exclusively for BHF Magazine

Another African fashion illustration for BHF Magazine

Fashion logo created for UZURI Magazine

Personalized Pin-Up Art

Most women want to feel how it is to be a famous fashion model or an actress and have thousands of admirers at least in their imagination. That is why I am sometimes asked to draw personalized glamorous gift illustrations. I am good in portraits drawing and that is why I can create some cool personalized gifts for women with a custom portrait. One of my recent commissions was a custom pin-up poster drawn from a photo.

Pin-up art is truly a symbol of glamor and female beauty admiration. Isn’t it cool to have your portrait drawn in a style which represents the roots of today’s fashion photography and classical female charm?
Here is the pin-up I have drawn with color pencils using a client’s photograph as a reference trying to imitate classical pin-up drawings adding a little of my drawing style. I hope it was a good gift.

Personalized pin-up gift poster from a photo

If you want to know more, please, read more about this commission on my personal blog in the post dedicated to my personalized pin-up drawing assignment.

Drawing Realistic Fashion Illustrations

Here is another fashion illustration I have created. This time this is a serious fashion illustration of a model wearing clothing with a number of small details such as collar, pocket, belt, buttons etc. I prefer realistic, cool-looking fashion illustrations, that is why I do not only thoroughly draw each folder and button on a dress which is, no doubt, the most important element of illustration, but also draw a realistic, although somewhat simplified model. My personal thinking is that model must look like a real woman and have real woman’s forms. Frankly speaking, I do not like those fashion illustrations and sketches depicting exaggerated skinny figures. I understand that those sketches are purposed to focus all attention on clothing design, but I think that seeing the same elaborated design on a model that looks like a female is supposed to look like gives more chances to a fashion designer to represent the design in more advantageous light which is likely to lead to marketing success. However, it’s just my personal opinion which is unlikely to be supported by a lot of people as it seems that abstract, non-realistic fashion illustrations are predominant today.

Here I showed again (as in my previous stage) the drawing stages to demonstrate how I draw fashion sketches and high quality illustrations. Unlike last time, I have drawn this illustration directly on my PC using a Wacom Intuos 4 graphic tablet. I used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator software to create the drawing. Look how I gradually dress the model. Drawing a naked model helps to “put on” a dress on her which will naturally fits the model’s body and impart realistic look to an illustration. All you should do is to erase unnecessary lines after you have drawn the cloths. Unfortunately, not a lot of fashion designers can draw well despite they are very talented in creating amazing fashion designs. I personally would be happy to help fashion designers to embody their ideas and assist in creating attractive fashion illustrations in order to turn technical sketches of fashion designers into decent graphic art.

Realistic fashion illustration