Adobe Illustrator is the software of choice for fashion and textiles design. We run a special Illustrator for Textiles course in which we show you the best techniques for creating production artwork for fashion and accessories.
The first step in creating a mood board or story board is to create a new drawing with your colour set to RGB or CMYK, depending on the print output. It’s a good idea to check with your printing company first.
Next you may want to import a scanned sketch or garment photograph; make sure you tick Template. This will bring in the sketch into a locked, greyed-out layer with a drawing layer on top. This is a good setup for tracing over. You may want to rescale or reposition the sketch though; to do so unlock the layer, rescale and lock again. It’s best to adjust the size before you start drawing, rather than later and possibly have to resize the line weights.
Create a vertical guide down the centre of the garment or accessory. Then draw half of the garment’s outline with the Pen tool. It doesn’t need to be perfect first time, of course. You can just block it out then adjust the anchor points with the Direct Selection tool and the Add, Delete and Convert Anchor Point tools.
When happy with the outline mirror it across with the Reflect tool, then join the top and bottom anchor points of the two halves, thus creating one single shape as the outline. This will make it easier to add a colour or repeat print later. Creating details and prints we will cover in a later blog post.
Whether you’re a complete beginner or self-taught, our courses will help you gain self-confidence in your Illustrator workflow, as well as adding to your professional skill-set. See many examples of our Illustrator clients’ work on our Facebook page.
Other related Illustrator Blog Posts:
Illustrator workspace
Illustrator basics
Illustrator clipping masks
Illustrator live trace
Illustrator brushes