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help with clothing.

mainly, how to draw clothing or fabric on a figure and have it look like clothing or fabric.

what are some good exercises for this? this is one of my main irritants when drawing a full-figure- the clothing looks stiff and awkward.

Mm, I'd say an effective way of looking at the clothed figure in general is by treating it as if it has 'loose skin' instead of something entirely separate from the body it is on.

Trying to mentally separate it from the wearer can make it look stiff. It is a part of the character you are drawing; it moves and bends with the figure just like their skin would. :0

As far as exercises go, perhaps keep the above in mind during a trip to the mall (or other public place thing..college campus, etc.) with your sketchbook. Quickly doodle the people you see as they walk by, paying attention to how their clothing reacts as they move.

Hope this helps !

awesome! i didn't even think of it that way- i always see the clothing as a totally separate thing from the body. so that might be part of it. i'll also try your exercise when i get a day off.

thank you so much!

Eee, YAY I was helpful. C:!

You should post your results somewhere, so I can see them! : D Pleeease?

as far as clothing goes, the best athority is Hogarth's "Dramatic Wrinkles and Drapery", its the best (of very few) book on the subject. the best general advice I can give to supplement UndyingSong's excellent recommendations (nothing beats observation, and thinking of it as skin is a great idea) would be to find the lines of stress in the fabric. most fabric will have an anchor point(s) at the part of the body pulling the item away from the rest of the body (shoulder, beltline, knees) and the folds will eminate away from these points, like if you pick up the corner of a big sheet and pull on it. You can use this to your advantage to give a sense of movement to your figures, since by controlling the direction the folds move and where they converge you can tell the viewer what direction parts of the body are moving in. For example, if someone is running away from the viewer, as they push off their right foot they push forward with their right shoulder, pulling the fabric taught and creating a pattern wrinkles moving outward from that right shoulder to the rest of the shirt. This is only one simplified example, but the point is that there is rhyme and reason behind the patterns that form in any sort of fabric or drapery, and if you understand the physics of the system you can accurately depict the situation you desire. If you think of a more specific question about clothing folds I might be able to give you a better answer, but otherwise the best I can do is suggest the Hogarth book.

hope that helps

I was looking for tutorials on this not long ago. I found this tutorial in a simple google search http://www.polykarbon.com/tutorials/clothes/clothes1.htm which was simple, but helpful. It also makes a reference to Hogarth's book Seth mentioned.. so I'd say that's a pretty good source too!