Cloth: In Class Notes

Some notes from Friday's class regarding Cloth. I will post hair notes at a later time.
It's always a little frustrating for me, drawing stuff in class, for some reason it never looks the way I can do it when I'm not speaking in front of people. However (enough of this belly achin') here are some quick examples of how cloth sits on a figure. Again, always know what the figure looks like or what the action is under the costume. It's best to 'dress' the character rather than let the costume 'dress' you.
Start with a figure. The one above is a little over-detailed but will do if you stand the off-register presentation (I don't remember why he looks like Harry Potter either).
Simple drapery, like a toga would just flow over the figure into a cascade of pipe folds and hanging folds. Always keep it simple, drawing in every single wrinkle or fold if unnecessary and makes the drawing too visually complex. Not to mention if it's more contemporary costume, it will look like it's been slept in.
Pleats become hanging folds like this skirt shown above. Get over it, there wasn't enough time in class to draw a female. Which is the same reason why I usually draw stripes on polar bears in the animal drawing class...I mean there is only just a sort amount of time to get all of this information out there. Note, however how the skirt falls or drops off from the hips as gravity takes over. It doesn't cling but flows freely.
The material does "cling" when it's thinner or tighter as in the long sleeves above. Starting to get to many folds here so you must train your eye to put in just enough details to make it believable. Also it's safe to say, folds radiate from the joints - armpits and sockets, elbows, the crotch, and knees. You will see most of the material's compression from contact happen at these places. Folds don't just sit on large masses of surface area or planes, folds found here are generally always due to the joints like ripples in water. In slacks and most pants, you will see compression in the form of folds at the crotch and under the knee down to where the material meets the top of the foot. Folds along the seems act as pull folds but are still related to direction the material is made to preform moving away from the joints.
Tee shirts as shown above tend to hang a little more loosely depending on the cut but folds are not random. Blue jeans tend to be a little tighter with more pronounced folds in the crotch but the KISS method applies here as well.Running out of time in class lead me to draw three different styles of 'period' costume at once. But you can see each has their own associations to the joints. The huge shoulders are cause by bunched clothed sewn into pleats then bound at the top of the bicepts and again at the elbow. long sleeves cascade off the forearm but react to the position of the wrist. The cloth around chest to pulled by the cord making smaller folds radiate from the seam under the arm in the armpit. Pleats across the chest cause large pip folds in the material the flows downward in the gown-ish thing that meets the feet. I'll post more on this as time permits. And, yes, the feet on this last drawing are in the wrong place - you can see the compression of the foot just off to the right of each foot...darn off-register mumble mumble, belly ache belly ache. Anyway, have fun drawing.