Easy tips and tricks for drawing clothing folds: for anime, clothes on a girl, realistic fabric texture, and for shade.

Cuz clothing is weird, right?

I know when I first started drawing fabric felt very random and nonsensical. I’d just draw lots of random lines to give the idea of folds – and hope no one noticed that I was guessing.

But there is a secret to drawing clothing, and it’s devilishly simple.

The secret to clothing is you have to understand the nature of clothing. That’s right! To defeat your enemy you must UNDERSTAND your enemy!

And because I want to make your life easier, this week I’ll be focusing on a series of micro-tutorials to help you figure out fabric.

With that out of the way, today’s micro-tutorial is…

Force

These are 4 typical ways that clothing tends to react to force. Force is when the fabric is pushed or pulled around by outside “forces”.

1) Neutral

Nothing is pushing or pulling the fabric around. This one is easy. Please don’t struggle with drawing a square 😅

2) Stretch

This is when something is PULLING the fabric. From the point that’s being pulled (like by a hand) bands of tension will radiate out from the point being pulled to wherever the clothing is attached or resisting (like a shoulder or belt).

3) Compression

This is when something is PUSHING the fabric. As the edges of the clothing get closer to each other you get a kind of zig zag/back n forth pattern.

It can get a little more complex than that. I’ll likely talk about compression more in further down in the tutorial.

4) Twist

This is when the clothing is ROTATING, usually reacting to the upper edge of the fabric being spun. The lower edge of the fabric will lag behind the upper edge of the fabric – the folds of the fabric will radiate in gentle curves from the top edge to the lower edge (opposite the direction of the twist).

AND there ya go! That’s the basics of pushing and pulling fabric. Now let’s look at Gravity!

Compression

Let’s continue trying to illuminate the perplexing world of ⭐️ clothing ⭐️

Here are a tip on compression to help your brain understand how to make sense of drawing the folds in fabric as it buckles and pools at the bottom of a sleeve or pantleg.

I find it helps to imagine invisible lines on clothing that react to whatever force is acting on them – this helps me follow the logic of fabric.

1. Imagine a big evenly spaced curvy line across the fabric
2. Compress your fabric into the general shape in the direction of the force.
3. Imagine where the lines would end up after the fabric’s compression.
4. The areas in-between the lines are now where lines and shade go.

Remember how I said compression was a little more complex than just S shapes? Well here’s a little more on it.

Compressed clothing also form XYZ shapes as the lines of the S shape makes contact with itself – just a big ol’ alphabet of nonsense. XYZ shapes especially show up on clothing sleeves and pant legs.

Boom. There ya go. Some basics on drawing clothing folds.

More Resources on Drawing Clothing Folds

By the way, if you want to dive deeper watch my clothing workshops YouTube or play with some clothing wearing poses.