From the course: Illustrator for Fashion Design: Drawing Flats

Drawing the bodice - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator for Fashion Design: Drawing Flats

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Drawing the bodice

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- [Instructor] Now that we have our start file all set up, we can get to the good stuff. We're going to start drawing a t-shirt. I'm starting from opening Illustrator fresh, so I can go about loading your start file. Instead of clicking on "create new" this time, we're going to click on open. We're going to navigate to the start file. We're going to click open. This file is going to open with our template in place, our rulers on, our guide in place, but you'll notice the work space is not the one we set up. We're going to go up here where it says essentials, drop down, and select fashion space. It's going to bring up the work space that we previously set up. Now we can get to it and actually start drawing a t-shirt. We're going to use all the techniques that we covered in an earlier video. Let's zoom in first of all. One of the benefits of working on a computer is that you can zoom in and see little tiny details. I certainly appreciate that because it means that I don't have to put on my glasses. To start drawing a t-shirt, we're going to start with the pen tool. We're going to use it the same way we did earlier, which is kind of playing connect-the-dots. The first click for a t-shirt is up here at this point where the neck line is meeting the shoulder. It's called high point shoulder. We're going to click there. The second click is low shoulder. The third click is underneath the arm. The fourth click is the hemline. You'll notice I've gone down to the upper-thigh area. If I stop at the waist, that's going to make a crop-top. T-shirts come down to about here. We're going to click down there. Now we need to switch to the anchor point tool, because we have to curve the armhole. I'm just going to click and drag a little bit to get the armhole curve. You've just drawn half your t-shirt. We're going to switch to the black arrow. We can use the V on the keyboard to do that. Select this, and we're going to reflect. Remember the shortcut key for reflect is O. Then we're going to alt click on the center guide that we made. Select vertical and click copy. Now we have the other half of the t-shirt. We're going to go back to the black arrow, which is the V key. Select both sides. Just like we did with the heart, we're going to right click join, right click join. Now we've almost got the bodice of our t-shirt done. We just need to round the neckline and the hemline in a little bit. Back to the anchor point tool. You're going to click right in the middle along this guide that we put. Drag straight down to however low you want your neckline. Could be plunging, but I'm going to go with a standard crew neck. I'm going to drop down the hem just a tiny bit because it looks nicer. Technically, the hem would be flat when we create the t-shirt, but it looks a little bit prettier when you draw it if you curve the bottom. That is how you draw the basic flat, or the basic bodice of the t-shirt. You'll notice that you didn't need to master the pen tool in order to do it 'cause I've got it simplified. As you progress, you'll get better and better at using the pen tool, and be able to draw more sophisticated things. In the next video, we're going to add the back neckline and the sleeves.

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