Drapery Studies

[Flying Ball]

Hello everyone, here are my studies on drapery. My biggest struggle is designing the folds to look good. Any advice or feedback will be greatly appreciated. Thank You.

[darktiste]

I would say just do alot of long line drawing it not necessarly about capturing the quality of a line first it being comfortable drawing a line in way that feel natural.For example rotating the paper to get the most natural gesture and using the wrist or the shoulder to get the gesture necessary to get the closest approximation of a line.

When you draw a cloth you need to get the contour absolutely flawless otherwise your cloth won't behave like it does in the reference.But you should not focus on the contour as much as you focus on the mannequin and then the contour...

In your drawing you made the ground plane and yet you fail to realize how different the hips level is compare to the ground is.

Also note to you if there is background detail absolutely use it to your advantage for example there is plenty of straight line that could be use to build guideline that help you get better proportion

She leaning on the rail she not dancing like you did. That why the leg is so forward is because she as a support to keep her balance.

But maybe i misunderstanding the purpose of what you are doing are you designing or are you studying those are two very different topic.

Since your using a reference i would say you made the mistake of calling it designing because really what your doing is studying. But to design you also use a reference so it not as easy to say as to what exactly you are trying to do.

I would suggest you try more stiff cloth like leather first it easier to draw first then to draw drapery with long flowing line.

What you need right now is to focus on your negative space when you ''copy'' because right now it messing up the proportion which mean you are inventing because something is mess up to begin with.

Anyways it as i said previously easier to critic when you stick to the reference but you can always interpret the reference but in that case it become harder for you to have a reference point and for us to know your intention.

My advise is to do two different type of study and to make it clear as to what you are doing either you exaggerate a pose so it obvious that the reference is just a support or you ''copy'' and make it close as possible as to the original.

[Flying Ball]

I tend to lean more towards exaggerating and inventing when I do this type of drawing. I don't aim to match the reference 100%, so if I don't like one aspect of the pose, I change it, or if there's something complicated, I simplify it. That's how I approach this type of drawing.

[JosephCow]

Nice studies, dude! My one suggestion is looks for more straight lines in the references in addition to curves and flowing lines, as capturing those will give the cloth more sense of structure. Especially where there's vertical lines, because that gives the sense that the cloth is affected by gravity, and it hanging off something. But you're doing good!

[Flying Ball]

Thank you, I will keep that in mind.