PREFACE This book is a blend of my career and my hobby. Business and pleasure merged into writing and drawing for a living. Add to this the bonus of being a teacher who helps students whose goals are the same as mine. For me, sketching is a passion, an art form, and a paycheck. If you are reading this book, you know that the skills in your mind are far ahead of your hand. You know that you are ready to create more for yourself but you need to know how to do it faster, better, and easier. You are ready to take your talent further. The information in this book will give you the confidence and the expertise to explore your own imagination, your creative sources.

I want you to be inspired to follow your fashion direction, in any media, in a single sketch or for a whole portfolio. This book is about your drawing style, not mine. By the end of Chapter 11 you will have a stronger definition of what you want to draw and how you are going to do it. This book is about the business of rendering for fashion. Its purpose is to turn a difficult job into an easy one once you know the basics. Time-saving rendering techniques are translated into the art of doing a sketch quickly as well as beautifully. The structure of this book was designed to give you a crash course in coloring. It's a bit like mixing kindergarten freedom with college-level controls.

The first chapter gives you a brief rundown on the media choices in this book. It's all about options; you won't get locked into any one direction here. The next two chapters on figures, flesh tones, and fashion faces establish some preliminary sketching and rendering techniques. Chapter 4 builds on those skills and translates them into solid, flat-color fabric rendering. It also introduces shading with or without a light source. The following chapters move on into other fabric choices, from spring to fall, from easy to more complex materials. After you've assimilated the methodology, Chapter 10 shows you how other artists have put their skills to work. This chapter gives you a business focus for learning rendering techniques and shows how to turn them into your own style.

Chapter 11 delves into rendering for croquis. Croquis, also called roughs or thumbnails, are the true test of quick or partial rendering. They are the "briefs" versus a total "finish." Croquis are jotted down, rolling quickly onto the page, done in large or small numbers in a group. In a clip of 20 figures or 40 pieces, they speed up the rendering process because they represent ideas in a moment of inspiration. This book is meant to be a source of reference as well as a manual for practice and development. Keep it along with all of your own work from these pages as a guide or as a reminder of how hard you worked to reach your goals.