How to Draw Transparent Clothes Digital – Paint Clothing In Digital Art

It's time we've got to put some clothes on. So I don't know if you guys remember this, but I had planned to do this video a while ago. But you know what Ifigured, what better time to do it than Classical Art Month, right? So today we're going to take a look at painting, that beautiful, expensive silk fabric that you see in the paintings from way back when. But more specifically today, I want to take a look at the Neoclassical Era. honestly, one of the first things I noticed when I look at art is how materials have been rendered. And when you look at the work of people like Angelica Kaufman and Jean Ang, I think I'm saying that right.

You see this beautiful sheen to the fabric and all these folds and creases. So today I want to take a look a little deeper at these little details. I did do a video about how to paint a basic fabric and folds and how to add texture. So if you've never painted fabric before, I highly recommend checking this video up here. But for those of you who want to experiment with stylistic choice a little bit today, we're going to have some fun with all the little details. As always, if you're enjoying Classical Art Month. It really helps this video reach a lot more people there.

And if you've been doing that all through this month already, just please know that I appreciate you so much. But without much further ado, let's take a look at Classical Art Month, episode 3. So, because painting fabric is often really confusing and is more of an intuitive skill than an exact science, we're actually going to do a study today. This is one of five panels of Apollo and the Muses, a set by Charles Maneier painted around the year 1800. And here we see a lot of fun, interesting details. For the purpose of this video, we're going to stick to the orange fabric just because it's easy to start with. Alrighty, let's try and paint this baby.

Clothes Folds – A Study of Clothes

If you've tried to study clothing before, you'll know that there's a million different types of folds and a million different names for each type. In our study, though, we only have three types, maybe a fourth. So you have your pipe folds, which are these bits that fold in a straight line, creating little pipes. You have spiral folds down here, where these pipes allconverge to wrap around herhin. You also have some spirals going up that leg where the fabric is wrapping around the thigh. We have some diaper folds here where the fabric wraps around her waist.

Underpainting Tutorial – Underpainting

It's not a spiral here, because the clothe is actually suspended from two high points. So instead of spiraling downwards, it's going to form like U-shaped in between set two points. And finally we have a couple ofzig folds on the other thigh, though you could argue these are just the smaller bits leading into the spiral. I find that it's always helpful to first sketch these folds in, because it prevents me getting lazy in rendering flat fabric if you're feeling ambitious. There's also some drop folds coming off her shoulder, but that will be double the length of this video. So we'll leave that alone. Let's now go in and create our underpainting.

The Contrast Between Dark and Light

You'll see that the folds actually have different levels of contrast. I said contrast, not shadows, because in the darker areas, while you do have dark shadows, you also have dark highlights and midtones, which then causes low contrast. It is the contrast between dark and light that tells you about the depth of each fold. So up here, in the folds coming down from her shoulder, you have very high contrast, meaning the folds are really deep to a point where the high points arecatching a lot of light, but the folds are so deep they are super dark and shadowy. Down here on her legs, however, the contrast is quite low, meaning the folds are quite shallow. Both the highlights and shadows are catching similar amounts of light, so thecreases aren't super deep. The amount of contrast also depends on the type of fabric.

Fabric Paintings – The Value Contrast

My favorite example is this painting by Jean-Anne. Do you see the difference in her satin dress versus what looks like a cotton or wool wrap of some sort? That's because the satin has very bright lights and very dark shadows, while the cotton or wool doesn't have highlights that bright. In our study you do have some sheen, but the highlights aren't as crazy bright as the silk in that painting, making me think that this character is wearing raw silk. In either case, the value contrast determines the depth of each fold, not just how dark the shadows go.

This is something I briefly touched on in the first fabric video, but it is especially prevalent in classical or Neoclassical art because, like I said last week, that era was about painting the impression of what the artist saw, not just the physical scene. Where possible merge shapes, especially in the highlights in her legs, for example, you'll see a lot of edges are lost as these folds come into the light. This is what gives you the illusion of the folds kind of just appearing from a flat expanse of fabric.

And, like in hair, having these areas of lost edges gives you that sense of unity across the surface, rather than it just looking like a patchwork of shapes. Plus, the best paintings out there are always those that invite the viewer's mind to fill in the blanks. It causes the painting to be a more interactive experience than just a static image. Another detail I noticed is that the brightest sheen, the lightest highlight, usually goes across the folds, not just along them. Similar to last week, when we painted hands, we saw how the shine goes across the folds of the skin.

You'll see the shine is strongest at the flat areas of fabric, where it is able to go across the shallowest bits of each fold, almost perpendicular to them. Again, this gives you a nice smooth, supple effect, creating a sense of gloss across the entire fabric, just by adding it to a couple of strategic areas. Now, this one is interesting because it's not technically the egg effect, but that's what we're going to call it.

Structure Shadows for a Form

But basically, these are the overall structure shadows for the form that the fabric is wrapping around. So in this case, since the fabric is a falling down her shoulder and b wrapping around her torso and both legs, and since the light is coming from the upper left corner, we're going to see some ebra shadows on the bottom right of each form, as well as some directional shadows on the right. So all the fabric on her torso that is beingobstructed by her arm and shoulder will have some really strong shadows.

The fabric underneath that edge will have occlusion shadows, as will the lower half of the fabric between her knees. You'll see shadows around both legs where the form wraps around the legs, and these will be the more gradual shadows as opposed to the harsh little ones around the folds. I'm also making sure that these particular shadow areas are saturated, because the fabric is shiny and reflective, and you will see some bounce light in the shadowy areas.

Classical Art Month

And I'm just going to go in and refine things: smoothing the bright areas, cleaning out some edges. and here is our final study for today. Dude, I feel leveled up, don't you? Oh, there is so much to learn from the old masters and I'm so happy we did this series. So what do you think? Will you be painting fabric like this? Has it changed your life forever? Do you already paint fabric like this?

Let me know in the comments below. If you've enjoyed this video and learned something today, then please remember to like and subscribe. It is always appreciated and you can always grab even more exclusive tutorials. Every single week on my Patreon I put up a new art and show every week. I've done for over a year now. Wow, but those are usually the more real-time paint-allong with-me type of tutorials that go into details about drawing and rendering. And for this month specifically, we're taking a look at workflow and efficiency and how to just paint quicker without losing quality. So if that's the kind of stuff that interests you, then please do remember to check out my pterran.

I'll leave a link in the video description below. Come say hi on Discord, tell me what video you'd like to see on this channel, and if you do like my art specifically, I put all of it up on my Instagram, so it's at Swishcreate, and you can check it out whenever you feel like. My bow does it for this video. So I thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. Check out some more classical art month up here and I'll see you guys on the next one. Bye.