How to Shade Clothes Digital Art – Types Of Clothing Fold

If you want to draw clothing, there are seven different types of folds. You need to know. Let's start with fold. You'll see this fold most often sleeves and pants, specifically when they bend or when gravity is buckling the fabric. Thezig fold takes its name from thezig pattern that goes through these folds, and if you can draw azig like that, you're on your way. The next thing you'll need to draw is triangles.

Except think more warped or deformed triangles. So check this out. You don't even need reference for this. I'll start with a zombie. Just try and keep thezig varied instead of uniform.

How to Draw a Zombie in Pants

Alright, now for the triangles. In a series of paired-elongated triangles. One triangle has a point that faces up, connected to a triangle that has a point facing down. Go ahead and shade these in, but make the upper triangle darker. And remember these are deformed triangles, not neat and tidy ones. Putting a contour around these triangles will define the thickness of the cloth. I'll use the contour on the right as the final contour, but I need a straighter contour on the left to show the back of the sleeves, which does not have buckled fabric. On this side, I can use my thickness lines as a guide for a shadow shape, then to add shading to the rest of it. The major thing you want to do is soften all edges of your triangles. Get rid of any dark outline too.

This will make the folds look like they're rolling rather than cut out. Here I'm finding some foreshortened triangles on the other side of the arm. These can be tricky, but they add a lot. And the only thing I did is in the little tracks between triangles, that is, the thickness part of the fabric. I found tiny little plane changes and I shaded half-tones where the plane faced down, indicated there by the red dots. Think of half tone as a darker variation of the light. They add a lot of dimension. Okay, let's try this from reference now. First, I'll block in a couple of tubes for the arm. Then I'll draw a zombie inspired by the photo.

Because the elbow is quite bent, thiszig pattern will be more compressed in the middle. Now I'll get my triangles in around myzig pattern, taking notes from the photo that these triangles are quite wide because that fabric is particularly compressed in this pose. It's important to note that I'm not copying the photo shape for shape. Instead, I'm using the photo for information. Here's that thickness contour, which is kind of like a ballooned profile of the triangles. And where the fabric is not compressed, like on the left side here, these lines will trend more straight, though you might find some undulations there too. Now, for shading other than the triangles themselves, there isn't much of a shadow side here, so that just leaves those small plane changes between the triangles. Notice that I'm using very subtle changes of value in this case, placing a lighter tone where the plane faces up. One last tip, in areas that are further away from the crux of the bend, like here and here, you may still find triangles to shade in, but they won't have much depth. So, be careful with your value.

Pants commonly havezig folds too. Except with pants, they're mostly bundled up at the bottom where gravity is compressing the fabric. So this time I started with an outline which is bundled up at the bottom and designed my stuff around that. And here come the triangles. Notice that they get a little more compressed and even razor at the bottom. That's due to gravity and weight. When you do these studies, don't try and copy your photo reference shape for shape.

How to Draw a Pipe Fold

It's much more useful to develop a process that captures the structure of the folds, because that's what ultimately allows you to draw them from imagination. Alright, the pipe fold, also known as the stretch fold. You see this in clothing when the fabric is well stretched between two points. Unlike thezig fold, the stretch or pipe fold will trend toward a more linear path. I like the term pipe fold because pipe conjures the form of a cylinder, which is basically what these folds are, a series of cylindrical forms running through the fabric. A basic cylinder is easy to light. It has a light side and a shadow side with a soft edge in the middle. You can arrange several of these cycles on top of anunderlying form, and in pretty short order, make it look like the fabric is stretching, and a little simple cylindrical shading adds tons of dimension to these folds.

For realism, try to keep the width of these cylindrical forms varied. Now see those red. These are tension points and they dictate the start and end of the folds. A tension point usually represents the fabric either touching the skin or being held taut by a seam, and it'll stretch between those two points. Pipe folds are extremely common to find on clothing. Here, I'll block out a rough silhouette first and mark out some tensions again, thinking skin contact or seam connection. Then just build out your cylindrical forms, keeping in mind the roundness of thesecylinders. Add a bit of simple cylinder shading and that's the pipe fold.

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What Are Compression Folds?

Alright, let's talk about compression folds. A compression fold is like a pipe fold in the sense that it's cylindrical, except these folds are caused by fabric compressing rather than stretching. Because compression folds are not under tension, they're free to bend and waver a bit more. These compression folds are pretty thin. A compression fold's width depends on the qualities of the fabric. One helpful tip onpotting these often come in conjunction with stretch folds. A stretch in one place can involve a complementary bend in another place in the hook of that bend is where you're likely to find resulting compression folds. Think of it like the principle of squash and stretch one side, you've got to squash the other. Right, moving on to half, lock folds, not going, this one's tough.

It occurs,thankfully, in just one particular instance, a significant bend of a joint. usually it's an elbow or a knee. Let's look at this closer. On the inside of the bend, the fabric folds in on itself, and as it does – let's watch this again – the fold assumes a shape which doesn't really change. It just gets morepronounced as the bend increases. It's like the fabric gets locked into a shape. The other half of the joint, the underside of the arm. In this case, the fabric there is free to stretch.

The Half Lock Fold

It's not locked. Thus we derive the term half lock. Okay, that's just how I think about it, and I'm not sure that's what it actually means. Anyway, the half lock fold is best understood in profile. There's this characteristic bit of overhanging fabric which dives into a deep recess, touching theunderlying form, then reemerging and abruptlymorphing intozigzig folds. I consider the half lock fold to be a cousin of thezig fold. This red line blocks in that overhanging fabric and then turns into azig- pattern.

From here it's making sure that the half lock fold has the biggest mountains and valleys. Look out for this neighboring deep fold, which often comes with a half lock when drawing half lock folds. If nothing else, make sure you get that fabric overhang and the deep recess. That'll be enough to communicate it. I love how Juanjo Guarnito simplifies the half- lock fold in this little drawing. He's whittled the whole sleeves down to just a few folds, but he hits all the bases. He's got the pronounced half lock stuff here, thezig fold area and the pipe fold area underneath.

Really great. I was playing with my daughter the other day, and I couldn't help but notice this great half lock fold in the pants. So naturally you stop playing with the child to take a photo for a later study. On this one. The fabric overhang happens on the bottom of the fold, and that is fairly common. Notice how that's the first thing I go for when drawing a half- lock fold. Then from there you can pivot to the incidental folds that might be happening around it.

The Drop Fold

Alright, let's quickly look at the drop fold. I say quickly, because a drop fold is basically a pipe fold, the main difference being a drop fold has only one tension point from which the fabric drops. Of course, with drapes like this, you're looking at multiple drop folds. Let's bring this photo again. This is probably the most common drop fold you'll see on a figure, the knee is a tension point holding the fabric and then gravity. does the rest of the work drop the fabric down and remember to maintain that cylindrical form? Here's a drop fold in three-quarter lash front view. We've got that tension point at the knee and let's track that cylinder form, expanding as it moves downward.

In a quick study here, I'll block in that tapered cylinder with lines and then, when I move to tone, I'll just be careful that the transition is subtle enough to reflect the decreasing nature of that fold. Skirts are another very common drop- scenario. There's a whole seam of tensions around the waist which radiate cylindrical forms dropping to the ground. Now, because drop folds only emanate from a single tension point, the most concentrated cylindrical forms will be up near the waist. By the time you get to the bottom of the skirt, those cylindrical forms will have tapered out, got much wider, and in some cases even faded away. Alright, next up the diaper fold, I'm holding a towel fairly taut, so each hand is a tension point. Move those tensions in a bit and that's a diaper fold.

How to Draw Diaper Folds

It makes these razor-cascadingellipses. It seems simple, but it's probably worth practicing just that pattern. The next step is to wrap your head around the planes, here it is quite a complex form. I'm drawing some lines that go over the form to show just how much 3Dulation there is. Now to pivot to a three-quarter perspective, the basic geometry of a diaper fold looks like this: I'll put this drawing in the corner here for reference as we now draw an actual diaper fold. To start, I'm drawing the same thing, I just drew only less blocky. The red dashed line goes over the form there, and that's our first segment. Now we just add another similar segment, but because it's cloth it's going to vary a little bit, but theunderlying structure is the same.

So here's an update to our red dashed line. Then we add a third segment which will take us to the bottom of the cloth. But you can see the overall form of this layer is the same as well. And for good measure, notice the drop folds on the dangling part. Here you don't see diaper folds too much on the figure, although here's one example. I always find the challenging part about drawing diaper folds is making the rhythm look continuous, you know, stacking those similarly structured layers, as we just saw, but while making the folds within each layer varied. And that's where the photo reference is really helping me. Here I'm just marking shapes as I see them trying not to repeat myself really.

Spiral Folds

And there you have the diaper fold. Okay, one more, the spiral fold. Spiral folds are likezig folds, in the sense that it's a compressed piece of tubular fabric like a sleeves, for example, except spiral folds. Take on a spiral pattern. To do a quick study of this one, first I'll block out theunderlying form, and here's the end of the sleeves wrapping around the arm. Now here come the spiral folds themselves. I'm thinking a point, kind of just out of view, that the spirals are emanating from a handy graphic trick to keep track of these is to arrange them with triangles in the negative space. When it comes to adding some shading to spiral folds, pay special attention to how thick or substantial those folds are. Quite often they're going to be on the thinner side, kind of the opposite ofzig folds, which have that thickness layer to them.

Drawing Spiral Folds

So what that means for shading is not going too heavy with your dark shadows. In fact, in this study most of those darker shades are still in the light. They're half-tones. If you're having trouble drawing spiral folds, here's a basic exercise: Start with a cylinder and then begin drawing these tubular forms that wrap up and around it. Now we can erase the cylinder underneath and just splash in some value on the bottom of these forms to give them a bit more volume. You could even add a shadow tone to the cylinder itself, obviously wrapping it over these tube forms to even further describe their volume. Springboarding off that study.

Spiral Folds on a rolled-Up Sleeve

Here's a great example of spiral folds on a rolled-up sleeves, a very common place for spiral folds to form. Spiral folds, by the way, do often show up on tight clothing. When the clothing is bagier, you tend to see morezig folds. So, just like in the basic study there, I'm making sure these spirals weave their way up the arm. The spacing between each fold is not equal, and when it comes to shading, I'm making sure to pick a few hero folds to be more substantial than the others, thus casting a more prominent shadow. And there's the spiral fold.