Killer Things: How to draw fringe on a dress

In this step by step tutorial you will learn how to draw fringe on a dress for your fashion sketches. Many aspiring designers are afraid of drawing fringe designs because it doesn’t look refined and realistic. Well….say hello to your glamorous new collections because after this tutorial you will have the super powers to create amazing one of a kind fringe clothes! Let’s get started!

Step 1: Have a good base

Start your illustration with a nice model pose and mark how long the dress will be. In case you’re not feeling like drawing the model right now just pick and print one of the free fashion templates in the croquis menu.
Think of this step as if you were creating the lining of the design- do you have sleeves, what’s the shape of the neckline?

Step 2: Sew it!

Now mark with a dashed line touching very slightly with your pencil the places where the fringe will be attached to the dress. In the example here I’ve decided to have fringe on the sleeves and 5 layers of fringe on the body of the dress.

Tip: Try not to go crazy with too many layers of fringe at least this first time. This is a beautiful but time-consuming technique and you can get easily frustrated unless you love to draw picky small details in your fashion sketches.

Step 3: Find gravity

This is the most important step. See how the model pose is not straight and one of her arms is bent? This will cause the fringe to fall differently. To make it look believable you want to draw a perfectly vertical lines starting from the guidelines in the previous step. This is your gravity cheat sheet. Draw 1-2 lines with about the same length for each fringe row.

Step 4: Set the length

Next we set how long the fringe row will be. Draw the outlines of each stripe of fringe. Follow the gravity! Make sure the layers are overlapping slightly each other as they usually do in reality.

Step 5: First row elements

Draw the first layer of fringe elements. You need to follow the gravity and fit into the previous step guidelines. Pay attention to the sleeves area.

Tip: In order not to get lost in many same looking lines just make the fringe elements thinner than the distance between them.

Step 6: Close them

Close the fringe elements with short horizontal lines. If you followed the above tip you won’t get confused where is the spacing and where are the fringe parts.

Step 7: Add depth

This is tricky. Many of you might think that by far it is looking good enough but the truth is that without adding depth to the fringe rows they will look flat and stiff. Fill in most of the distance you’ve left between the elements with new shorter elements. Don’t try to achieve perfection – even if some of them end up too think of too thick it’s okay!

Step 8: Repeat

Draw the second row of fringe the same way. Make sure you follow the gravity and length guidelines.

Step 9: All inked

Complete the dress with all the layers you’ve designed. Ink your drawing and erase all the unnecessary pencil lines that will only confuse you for the coloring that follows.

Step 10: Color base

Fill in with color the part of the dress that doesn’t have fringe on it. Use a darker shade of the same color to cover the fringe area. This is for the fringe elements in-depth. Use a media different from color pencils.

Step 11: Close up

Now to set apart the elements that are closer to us use a light, bright color and cover only the front layer of each row.

Tip: Even if you worked with markers, tempera or watercolors so far I recommend to switch to color pencils in this step to build up the color. Pencils over pencils might look off.

Step 12: Details

For additional realism darken the place where two fringe rows are overlapping and add flying elements here and there showing some movement. Now we’re ready!

I hope you find this fringe drawing tutorial helpful and it has inspired you to create gorgeous new collections, tons of beautiful fashion sketches and innovative ways to use fringe in fashion.