Friday Breakdown
How to find your own style in fashion sketching: a guide for fashion illustrators
Reading time: 3 minutes
✦ What is a personal style in fashion sketching?
- Many beginner fashion illustrators wonder how to find their own drawing style
A common misconception is to think that style means- a special drawing technique
- unusual faces, eyes, or proportions,
- or some kind of visual “signature” you need to invent
❌ But that’s actually a mistake. Style is not something you deliberately make up (in most cases that only makes the work feel forced)
✔️ Style is your unique and consistent visual language
✦ What is an artist’s style actually made of?
- Style reveals itself through recurring elements, such as
- what you like to simplify
- what kinds of shapes you naturally prefer
- what you emphasize in a drawing
- the rhythm and weight of your lines
- the color palette you tend to choose
- the level of detail in your sketches
✦ The key idea
- Style is not just decoration. It is a reflection of the way you think as an artist and fashion designer
✦ Why do so many fashion illustrators struggle to find their style?
- Because many artists try to
❌ copy a visual effect
❌ become “recognizable” too early
❌ search for a style before building a solid foundation
By the way, my course is focused right on that foundation — the kind you can later use to build your own personal style 💪
✦ What does style actually start with?
- ❌ Not with the question “What should my style be?”
✔️ It starts with the question “What do I truly enjoy visually in a drawing?”
For example:- More clean or more painterly?
- Minimal or decorative?
- Graphic or soft?
- Calm or expressive?
- High-contrast or delicate?
- Pecise or loose?
- Refined or raw?
- Stylized or natural?
- Clean silhouettes or complex shapes?
- Soft transitions or defined edges?
4 exercises that actually help you find your drawing style
- 1. The “3 interpretations of one look” exercise
Take the same reference and draw it 3 different ways:- more minimal
- more graphic
- more loose and free
- 2. The “limitation” exercise
Create a few drawings with strict limitations. For example:- only 1 brush
- only 4–5 colors
- no small details
- only sharp shadow edges
- 3. The “analyzing your own work” exercise
Take 10 of your favorite drawings and ask yourself:- What do I simplify automatically?
- What do I naturally like to emphasize?
- What kind of accents do I tend to use?
- What colors do I keep coming back to?
- Are my drawings more contrasty or more soft?
- How much detail do I usually put into folds?
👉 This exercise quickly reveals your natural tendencies. You may even discover that you already have your own unique style — you just haven’t realized it yet 😃
- 4. The “taste board” exercise
Create a separate Pinterest board with artworks that genuinely catch your eye. And don’t just ask yourself “What looks beautiful?”
Look deeper- What do these works have in common?
- What kind of rhythm do they have?
- How much air and space is there?
- How detailed are they?
- How are colors being used?
Here is my Pinterest page — you can save my works from there
Let’s recap the key ideas
- What does NOT help you find your style
❌ changing everything randomly every time
❌ copying one artist completely
❌ trying to be “original” too early
❌ looking for a style without understanding form and fundamentals
What actually helps
✔ a strong foundation
✔ analyzing your own preferences
✔ repetition
✔ time
A simple formula
Style = foundation + repetition + sincerity + taste
We do not find our style when we try to be special or different. We find it when we start to better understand what truly resonates with us
- That’s it! All previous guides are available on my Patreon ❤️
- I’ve also created 71 lessons to help you learn fashion illustration step by step — quickly, clearly, and with my personal guidance
- You can also find a lot of interesting content on my Pinterest, Telegram, and Instagram ❤️
Get started today!