Drawing the body w/ Clothes and sketching. Question

Was doing some referenced drawing and started mentally asking questions and wondering. So who else better to ask then you peeps?

When drawing a figure that is going to be clothed do you guys do a rough sketch of the character under the clothes beforehand? Anything in particular you guys try and make sure to do?

I was drawing a sasuke and realized that it'd be a good idea to do a sketch or draw lines for limbs and stuff first, so that you can get positioning and proportions better. Specially since Im not too experienced.

Edit: I am doing traditional drawing btw

That's a good question.

I guess if you're trying to draw from a reference, I'd advise starting with the important, strong shapes and weights, and tak all the clothings' details on top of that. I would expect the strong shapes to come from the the model's body, by default. But you could learn so many different methods for emphasizing or ignoring clothes, that I'm sort of ignorant about clothes in realistic drawings.

If you're drawing stylish clothes, then I suggest that you should be willing to change the wearer's anatomy.

Here's one thing I animated with clothes, where the clothes and the entire middle-part of the character hardly even matter. All the important ideas for movement that I had with this guy, I crafted directly into his hands, feet, and head, while ignoring his robe. His robe naturally turned out okay, by following the other details' lead.

https://i.imgur.com/EkXbY.gif

Is there any particular style of clothing, or clothing geometry that you wanted to talk about?

Thanks for the reply.

You've made me realize this is more of a problem when doing referenced drawing. When your drawing your own picture you already have a good idea of how things will be placed and proportions. If you reference a drawing and don't start with important shapes or mild sketch to make sure you are scaling everything right, then you can easily run into problems. When I was drawing I just started drawing one side and basically guessed the length of things. If I did what we are saying to do now I would've had an idea how long to make my lines. I was forced to change things I would've liked to have been the same because of not doing these things beforehand.

The clothes I'm talking about here are just clothes that would require you to show folds and wrinkles. Also clothes that are being moved in a certain direction or stretching because of the pose or twist.

Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say shapes? Making sure we're all on the same page here lol

Oh, okay, I can try.

Creativename wrote:

I'd advise starting with the important, strong shapes and weights, and tak all the clothings' details on top of that.

Like, what's an important shape? It can depend.



In this picture by Ben Fiquet, a bunch of characters are all sitting down. They all look heavy, and especially look like their legs and and butts and backs are holding up their heads. To me, anyways.

So there are these shapes that are crucial, because they're the bones and muscles that are supporting the heads. The heads have a whole lot of emphasis, though, and convey the most easily recognizable information. Like what sort of relationship the characters have with eachother.

So all this body that's being pushed underneath these heads is really meaningful and intelligent, but it's supposed to be an unimportant part of the picture.

The clothes especially have no goal, and could've been drawn a hundred different ways. They're just anything that would work on top of those well-designed bodies, because the faces are supposed to outshine everything else.

EDIT: Or, rather, the clothes do set an atmosphere, sort of, I guess, but they aren't contributing anything mechanically.



Then this owldude is almost the opposite. He's all design and no meaning. His clothes are very rhythmic. His skeleton still exists, but he's in a very tame pose that has been stylized, instead of a complicated pose that is very accurately portrayed. The details of his feet and legs and spine don't even matter. He isn't an orchestra of bones and muscles, but is a blobby sort of pillar instead.

His clothes fulfill a role other than just keeping him dressed. They significantly add volume and change the character's form.

OK thanks. I'll put this into practice.
Im gonna find a pic where the clothes "hide" or really dont allow you to see the thickness of the limbs, and draw a simplified shape of the clothes that cover up limbs the most or are "boldest".

I was doing some more referenced drawing and I think its good to start w/ the head and lines for the shoulders. I

Check This shit out. ...general clothing help. Beast dude.

He's got a section about wrinkles in clothing halfway near the bottom.

Also, I pretty much echo what CN said about drawing important points that stick out of the clothing and have an effect on how it distorts. The shoulders of a loose shirt... the knees on a pair of jeans in a squatting postiion... etc.

Kay. Thanks.
Don't have time to look at just yet.