How to Choose a Good Pose for Your Fashion Drawings

Not all poses you see on real-life models translate well on to paper, but it’s helpful to recognize different poses and understand what types of poses work well with different types of clothing.

A fashion model in an evening dress doesn’t strike the same poses as a teen dude in an urban outfit. The fashion model stands tall and straight to show off the gown’s bodice and skirt; the teen dude is likely to assume a slouched pose to demonstrate how the clothing moves with ease over his body.

In fashion illustration, you utilize four different views of poses for most of your artwork:

• The back view (a)

• The front view (b)

• The three-quarter view (c)

• The side view (d)

  

To draw a basic fashion figure, you must first understand what a “good” pose is. When drawing fashion poses, follow these informal rules:

• Make sure your model isn’t leaning on anything. She should be standing on her own two feet.

• Keep your model from falling over on the page. You create balance by keeping the head, shoulders, hips, knees, and feet in a straight line from head to toe.

  

• Angle the shoulders in one direction and the hips in the opposite direction. Doing so gives the impression of movement and attitude — two must-haves in fashion drawing.

  

Add some attitude with a little bending

The way the lines of the shoulders play off the angle of the hips can make your fashion drawing really fierce! The angles you choose for the shoulders, hips, and waist can convey totally different attitudes.

For a more dramatic look, use a steeper angle between the trapezoids that represent the upper and lower body. Accentuating the angles gives your drawing a haughty and hip look. Women really own these extreme poses. Note that guys don’t use shoulder and hip action as much as women do on the runway — guys merely pause at the end of the runway with a slight slant to their shoulders.

To create some extreme attitude for a female fashion figure, try these steps:

1. Start by drawing a vertical balance line. Add shoulder angle and hip angle lines that slant toward each other.

   The sharper the angles, the more extreme the pose.

2. Start your upper trapezoid at the shoulder angle line; end your lower trapezoid at the hip angle line. Add your center front and apex lines as dashed lines.

   The bottom line of the upper trapezoid is parallel to the shoulder line, and the top line of the lower trapezoid is parallel to the hip line.

   The center front line should still run through the center of the trapezoids, so curve the line a bit. The apex line remains parallel to the shoulder line.

3. Sketch in arm and leg holes and add breast arcs. Add a slender neck and oval head to the top of the torso.

   Keeping the neck and head straight up and down can keep the model from looking like she's falling over.