Talk Back Thursday

Thank you so much to Lori, Lisa Laree, Webfrau, Faye, Elaina, Mary, Julia and Carla for talking back to my confession last Friday! I confessed that I have never used a croquis, nor, in fact, have I done any design sketching (you know, like they always do at the beginning of a Project Runway challenge).

Among these commenters, the croquis does not appear to be particularly popular. In fact, 3/4 of this group do not use them (with 3 votes - never tried; 2 votes - have tried unsuccessfully and 1 vote - a what?!?). Like me, many people (well, okay, half) called out a lack of drawing skills.

Interestingly enough, the person who uses croquis a lot, Elaina, said that artistic ability is not necessary. For her and Julia, the emphasis is on sketching the garments, not on drawing the human form. Elaina gave links to a couple of examples from her blog, here and here.

Seeing as most people who commented were not really into croquis, I did a little web searching on the subject.

According to Wikipedia, a "croquis" is a quick and sketchy drawing of a live model and "croquis" is actually the French word for "sketch".

Fashion croquis are typically 9 "heads" tall (see picture here) - although there are plenty of alternatives available (such as this one from Threads magazine) with more realistic proportions.

And making your own doesn't seem to be that difficult -I found this tutorial on making a croquis that matches your body proportions perfectly.

It seems like many people have one (or more) human figure sketch(es) and then they lay tracing paper over the croquis and sketch their design ideas on the tracing paper - using the croquis to get the proportions correct. That way, they can have a "clean" sketch of their design (without the human form) and re-use the same croquis over and over again.

I did stumble across a notepad of human forms in a blue ink that doesn't photocopy (or scan) and so you can sketch your design right on the human form, and when you photocopy it, the human form isn't visible anymore. It's called "hokey croquis."

It also seems like you can have one basic, head-on, standing croquis, if you do all of your visualizing, designing and illustrating from that pose. Or (and maybe here is where the artistic ability comes in) you can assemble a collection of different poses with which to show off your design ideas. I did find an interesting tutorial on drawing lots of different poses, by Katherine Gerdes, here.

Thanks again to everyone who commented! It was reassuring to know that I am not the only one who can't draw, and intriguing to think that maybe I don't have to be able to... ;)

Photo credit: Katherine Gerdes