Do you find that the fashion designs that you think of in your head don’t look as appealing when you put them on paper? Don’t beat yourself up. Sometimes, the fault might be with the form and medium that you used.
The fashion world is growing by leaps and bounds. By 2021, America will have a $2.1bn fashion industry[1]. If you are going to get ahead in this dog-eat-dog industry, you need to use the right tools.
Whether you are a newbie learning the ropes or an experienced fashion designer, a good sketchbook can go a long way in bringing your sketches to life. Your designs need to look brilliant so that clients can appreciate them better. And who better than a fashion designer to understand that appearances matter!
In this article, let’s discover the best sketchbooks for fashion designers, which the top professionals use to make their designs come to life!
Contents
Best Sketchbooks for Fashion Designers
#1 Pauper Press Essential Fashion Sketchbook
Pauper Press Essential Fashion Sketchbook is our top choice for drawing fashion designs. This sketchpad features hundreds of figure templates so that you can easily create your style.
Features & Benefits
- Creation: You can create your original designs with this sketchbook. The book describes garments, style, and patterns that give you an idea of getting started. It features hundreds of templates that you can use to create your design.
- Everyday use: It is an excellent product to use for your daily designs. The ribbon bookmarks keep your design in place, and elastic bands keep the journal closed. The rendered figures with poses give a new life to your outfits.
- Useful Content: This sketchbook includes a depiction of basic garments, representation of sample patterns, size measurement tips, and other useful matter to help in creating better designs.
Why should you buy it?
The sketchpad makes your work easy as it features hundreds of figure templates to create your style effortlessly. It includes a depiction of basic garments and a representation of sample patterns to help make better designs.
- Hardcover Book
- Peter Pauper Press (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 192 Pages - 08/23/2013 (Publication Date) - Peter Pauper Press (Publisher)
#2 Tamar Daniel Fashion Sketchpad
This fashion sketchpad is our second choice for fashion designers. It includes 420 figure templates in 20 fashion-forward poses to inspire your designs. This sketchpad is an ideal choice for any beginner.
Features & Benefits
- Reference Templates Included: the fashion sketchbook helps in creating your desired outfit. It lets you take less time in drawing proportional figures as it includes reference templates so that you can easily create your favorite designs.
- Heavy Stocked Pages: The more than 420 figure templates in 20 fashion-forward poses come in heavy-stock pages with perforated edges so that you can easily remove them. The illustrated garment glossary shows various details such as a caftan, sheath, maxi, etc. The reading section further offers more help in creating designs.
Why should you buy it?
If you are an expert, then this sketchpad would be great for you. It features more than 420 figure templates in 20 fashion-forward poses that allow you to create a good design and inspire you to work towards more creativity. It covers basics so that you can focus on more complex designs.
- Templates are printed on heavy-stock pages with perforated edges for easy removal An extensive illustrated garment glossary showing the distinguishing details between a caftan a sheath a maxi and so on. A handy recommended reading section offering professional guidance
- Daniel, Tamar (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 132 Pages - 03/23/2011 (Publication Date) - Chronicle Books (Publisher)
#3 Derrick Fashion Sketchbook
The fashion sketchbook gives you 430 female figure models template pages to draw beautiful designs. It is a perfect choice for fashion designers and students to create their unique styles with ease and comfort.
Features & Benefits
- Templates: The fashion sketchbook features 430 female model template pages that help you create beautiful designs with ease and efficiency. With these figure templates, you don’t need to be good at figure drawing. The croquis figures are great for use as an outline with detailing, on which you can build your designs.
- Easy to Use: You can draw your favorite outfit design; this sketchbook is very easy to handle. You can also use it as a fashion diary. Plan your garments and fabrics and record them in this sketchbook. Keep track of your designs, and use them for inspiring newer creations every day.
Why should you buy it?
This fashion sketchbook is good to use by students or by fashion designers. It features 430 female figure models template pages to draw beautiful designs. You can easily plan your garments and fabrics with the help of this sketchbook.
- Derrick, Lance (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 217 Pages - 03/07/2019 (Publication Date) - Independently published (Publisher)
#4 Aemiliana Magnus PRO Fashion Sketchpad
The fashion sketchpad features female figure poses accessories and designs outline templates that give you the best results. You can create professional-looking designs with this pro fashion sketchpad.
Features & Benefits
- Versatile: the pro fashion sketchpad helps you create different designs as it features female figure poses accessories and designs outline templates that give you the best results. It gives you the best professional results without putting in much effort and time.
- Professional Designs: you can create professional designs with this fashion pad with ease. You can create designs of garments, shoe designs, jewelry designs, accessories, and lingerie. It makes your design workflow more creative and attractive. It includes 590 pages with fashion figure templates that act as a reference in creating beautiful designs. It is good for a student or a professional designer to create their fashion pieces.
Why should you buy it?
If you are a beginner fashion designer, a student, or a professional fashion designer, this sketchpad is a good choice. It features female figure poses accessories and designs outline templates that give you the best results. Moreover, it includes 590 pages with fashion figure templates that act as a reference in creating beautiful designs.
- Magnus, Aemiliana (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 589 Pages - 09/27/2018 (Publication Date) - CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (Publisher)
#5 ArtShip Design Sketchbook
The sketchbook lets you explore your creativity with its pre-drawn figure templates outlined in fashion-forward poses to enhance your creativity. The special paper allows you to use both wet and dry media to bring your designs to life.
Features & Benefits
- Pages: the sheets of this sketchbook are printed with a single Croquis body figure template outline that lets you create beautiful designs. Its small, medium and large croquis let you create multiple designs side by side. This specially textured paper lets you bold colors and techniques.
- Ideal: the sketchbook includes 136 pages printed with only one figure outline that acts as a reference to create your favorite designs. You can also use watercolor, marker, ink, and other wet or dry media to bring your designs to bold fruition. The rich paper promises to transform your designs into a new life.
Why should you buy it?
The designer sketchbook helps in enhancing your creativity with its pre-drawn figure templates outlined in fashion-forward poses. It features specially textured paper that lets you use both wet and dry media to bring your designs to life so that you can create your favorite design with ease.
- Illustration-Grade Paper, specially-textured and heavyweight to allow bold use of color and techniques. Other pads use traditional paper and bleed through and wrinkle easily in response to marker and paint - frustrating your ability to show your creativity. Hardcover for long standing durability. Spiral bound to keep pages flat. Perforated for true-size paper.
- 144 Pages with 432 Internationally Designed Figure Outlines (“Croquis”) in 14 poses. "Croquis" is a term originating in France in 1805 to describe a rough sketch. It is now used in the fashion industry for figure templates used in the design process. Our Croquis are newly designed by our international team with a fresh and modern perspective. Produced with designers from London, NY, LA, Italy, Austria, and Brazil. This design pad represents the best from around the world of fashion.
- Single-Croquis, Full-Illustration Pages! 24 of this book's 136 pages are printed with only one figure outline on each! Other fashion sketchbooks place a minimum of 2 figures on every page in order to advertise the most number of figure outlines at the cheapest possible cost. This premium design pad provides both.
- "Perfect-Printed" Croquis. We tested many croquis offerings and found what we believe is the perfect balance of outline visibility with outline vanishing-ability when illustrated. Many products print too dark, or too light. Our testing and designer-input led us to this flexible balance. Practice-Through-Final Process.The Croquis poses are printed in small, medium, and large sizes. Create multi-pose designs side-by-side, or use the smaller sizes for practice and experimenting freely!
- Please Note, some customers have misunderstood this product: This is a sketchbook of our professionally created croquis (body outlines) exactly as used by fashion designers. Our pre-printed body outlines allow you, kids, students, artists, and designers to focus on creative designing without wasting time properly sketching the human form. This is also not a book of instructions and ideas; our customers have told us they can use Google for that! 🙂
Buyers Guide
If you are a fashion designer, then finding a good fashion sketchbook is good for you. It helps you to create better designs with ease and more creativity. But before that, you have to consider certain factors.
Templates
It is good to choose a fashion sketchbook with templates as it let you create beautiful designs. The figure template books are good as they act as a reference to outline your ideas in creating your favorite fashion pieces to enhance your creativity with your sketchbook.
Type of Paper
Type of paper and its quality matters a lot when you buy a sketchbook. The high-quality textured paper is good to use for various purposes and lets you create your favorite art pieces. The water-resistant, textured flexible cover is good to choose from because it lets you efficiently create beautiful outfits.
Designing and Planning
It would be best if you chose those sketchbooks where you can plan your outfits and record them. You can use the croquis to test your thoughts and to plan your ideas and creativity efficiently. If you get an idea, you will note it down in your sketchbook and later on use that idea.
Frequently Asked Questions
What pencils do fashion designers use?
Fashion designers use specially designed pencils for their designs. They use sharp pencils from some of the following brands: Faber Castell, Tombow Mono, or Utrench. Moreover, it helps you to add colors to your outfits with these pencils.
Can you watercolor in a sketchbook?
If you plan to do professional-level watercolors in a sketchbook, you will have to drop this idea. You can not use a large amount of water and pigment on a regular sketchbook sheet. The paper will simply not be able to hold it. You need a special watercolor sketchbook for this kind of art.
Is a Moleskine Watercolor Sketchbook right for your designs?
What is Croquis?
Croquis is a French word that means to sketch. This term refers to a quick sketch of a fashion designing figure, usually nine heads tall, all in equal proportion (the standard fashion illustration template). You add on a drawing of the clothes that you are creating on this figure. It’s something akin to a mannequin on paper.
What paper do professional designers use?
Most professional designers use high-quality textured sketchbook paper. They mostly do their work with canvas paper. You will find most of their designs are on canvas paper. This paper is always a preferable option to choose for various designing techniques and easily draw difficult sketches. You can use graphite, pencil, oil, acrylic, and other sketches while drawing on canvas paper. It gives you ease and better comfort.
Wrap Up
Fashion designing is a sublime art form that brings together color, design, garment, and fashion sense under a single roof. Each component is equally important to the process. Getting the right tools to assist you in visualizing all this is essential for a good fashion designer.
If we were to make a single recommendation amongst the products that we have put together here, it would be the Essentials Fashion Sketchbook (366 Figure Templates to create your own designs!) Fashion Sketchpad. This sketchbook offers a lot of material that is great for both new and old designers.
Another good option is the The Fashion Sketchpad: 420 Figure Templates for Designing Looks and Building Your Portfolio (Drawing Books, Fashion Books, Fashion Design Books, Fashion Sketchbooks) . It has several templates to inspire your creativity. It also a great value for money product.
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References:
[1] Fashion Designers in the US – Market Size 2002–2026