Sketches in Triplicate

I wasn’t much of a sketcher (is that a word? Or just a shoe) up until recently. I’ve always had more luck in 3 dimensional art (sewing, sculpting, etc.) than I was with 2 dimensional art (drawing and painting).

Then I got a Wacom Bamboo Tablet for my computer. I LOVE THIS THING. If I’d known how easy it was to draw on the computer, I would have started doing this years ago!

Perfectly sharp lines and no erase marks! (Maybe that’s why I was never a big fan of drawing. I make too many mistakes and have to start over. Not anymore!)

I sketch in Photoshop, even though it would probably make more sense to sketch in an illustrating program like Inkscape. But I’ve used Photoshop for so much longer, I’m way faster.

You can see one of my old sketches in my Why Handmade Is “So Expensive” article. It has a certain coloring book charm, I suppose, but here’s a computer sketch I did a few months ago:

Upgrade time!

I did a few more sketches this week (and I also sewed all three dresses, so you’ll get to see the real life versions soon!).

This is a revamped design of a dress I made a few years ago. I get a lot of requests to remake the dress, but I’ve never been able to find more of the fabric. So this will be in a new fabric and available in custom sizing. The fabric is silver glitter houndstooth on black, with black satin at the side panels of the bodice:

When I originally bought this rainbow animal print fabric, I was planning on making a version of my Streetwalkin’ Cheetah dress with it. But then I decided I wanted to make something new.

I originally drew the trim in hot pink instead of black, and one of the reasons sketching on the computer is so awesome is that I can change things like that in a matter of seconds. It makes comparing different fabrics, colors, etc. MUCH easier than drawing a separate sketch on paper every time I want to see something different. I liked the black WAY better than the pink.