To finish up this mini-series (and my blog posts for the season), I wanted to sum up a few of the ideas I’ve shared about visual communication, knitwear design and drawing.
In short: Drawing is one skill – and observational drawing is the key one you’ll need – but it has three separate applications.
When designers are anxious about drawing, or unconfident about their drawing skills, they’re usually worried about the drawings that others will see. What will the rest of the world think? But in truth, only one of the three types of drawing style will be seen by others.
In case you hadn’t guessed, it’s technical drawing – hence the book reviews!
Fashion illustration is lovely to have – and if you’re a gifted artist, share it with us! But for those of us who aren’t, photography will do the same job. And, of course, there’s always practice, practice, practice. So for the artists out there, you have two types to share. Or, maybe, two illustration options.
And finally, sketches are your private, safe space for you to make sense of the ideas whirling around in your head. It’s a magical world, and nobody else needs to understand it like you do.
A Venn diagram for you, because it’s been a while 😉
Here’s another way to look at this (this is inspired by the summary in Basia Szkutnicka’s Technical Drawing for Fashion):
- Sketches = your relationship with yourself, engaging with your imagination and exploring your ideas
- Illustration = the relationship with dreams, emotionally evocative, aspirational and inspirational
- Technical = your relationship with people connected to your design in the real world, the middle ground.
For knitting patterns (this also applies to crochet and sewing patterns – I hope this goes without saying at this point!), I’d argue that fashion illustrations with a technical bias are more important. Why? For the sole reason that someone has to make the garment themselves. Fantasy and emotion are less important because the item isn’t yet real for that person. They can’t put it in their basket and pay for it at the checkout.
Beautiful illustrations and photography have their place, but at some point you have to let your knitters know that yes, this is possible for you to make. You have to share the details. And this vital connection means that being a wonderful artist matters less than you think as a clothing designer.
Greater confidence and all-round better visual communication
I say all this to reiterate that there’s more confidence to be gained if all images (drawings, photographs, the lot) are cleaner in style. And, of course, bonus points if the schematic has LOTS of detail. Visual communication for knitwear design (or any subject) is never final, but it can help to have an order of priorities. It’s also much easier to reshoot or get new photographs or redraw an illustration than conduct emergency surgery on a pattern.
To this end, your drawings need to be well-observed, which takes me back to the first post in this mini-series. Drawing what you see will always be enough. And, as John Berger once said, “It’s not what you see, but how you see it.”
One might also say that it’s not what you draw, but how you draw it.
Visual Communication: Pencil control and the greyscale | Knitwear Design Initiation taster course
Knitwear Design Initiation | Visual Communication taster course
A 1-hour introductory drawing course or refresher for those who haven’t used their art materials for a long time.
It’s accessible to anyone who wants to make a start on or improve their drawing skills, but the techniques covered prepare you for the nuance of illustrating soft textures of knits.
This class on pencil control and the greyscale was designed especially for drawing out your latent sensitivity and artistry. The marks you make on the paper will range from the wispiest grey to the earthiest charcoal. This vocabulary will also improve your observational skills because you’ll have the means to draw what you see.
The Visual Communication taster is the first step away from the frustration of not being able to draw from life, or the disappointment of your drawings not looking the way you want them to. In just over an hour, you’ll never look at pencil and paper the same way again!
Finally, thank you for reading, and a big thank you to Katie and Connie for their ongoing support via Ko-Fi! If you’d like to support my blog regularly or contribute to the tip jar, click the pink button on the bottom left. And if you found this post helpful or inspiring, please share it with others who might need more self-belief and confidence in their drawing skills.