Fashion Drawing, Second Edition: Illustration Techniques for Fashion Designers
The author calls this book a comprehensive textbook, which is all well and good when utilized in a classroom, but it might be a bit iffy, at best, for a pleasurable or instructional read. Even though the book tirelessly explains and dissects fashion drawing and illustration there is one quality that it seems to be assiduously avoiding or not addressing: the artist must possess some innate talent. Drawing is not like assembling a piece of furniture from Ikea with a set of diagrams and instructions.
Having been an art student in the distant past, this reviewer can attest to one thing and that is either you have talent or you don’t. Talent is not taught, it is honed and molded and comes from within. This applies to any creative endeavor as none of them germinate from the reading of a book. A textbook (a book about a particular subject that is used in the study of that subject especially in a school) by its own definition requires an instructor not just a student reading. If one could acquire talent from reading a book we might have an excess of atomic scientists or painters of masterpiece status, if you catch where this is heading.
The ultimate review of this book should originate from a student who is working in conjunction with an instructor of some sort rather than just as source material. Another troubling fact is that within this image laden textbook there are several notable errors in illustrative definitions: one for instance being a pocket description, which shows a quarter top pocket but it is defined as a slash pocket or the bellows pocket, which shows an outside stitched down flat pleat rather than an inverted pleat. Depending on the frame of reference and the depth of knowledge, things like this will either go unnoticed, be seen as unmistakably incorrect, or will be incorrectly assumed at true.
In no way could Fashion Drawing be considered a leisurely read. Call it what it is: reading a textbook. If that’s what you’re into then have at it.