Book excerpt: Learn to paint clothes and models with expert guidance from an A-list fashion illustrator, whose clients include Dior, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton. In this complete course, professional fashion illustrator Francesco Lo Iacono shows you how to master creating delicate, beautiful fashion illustrations in the wonderful medium of watercolor. The book begins with the best tools and materials and moves on to simple watercolor techniques. Francesco then teaches you about lighting and shading, color, how to create palettes, how to mix colors, and how to achieve a range of skin tones. Once you’ve covered these fundamentals, Francesco explores the key elements of illustrating fashion, with guidance on how to approach both male and female faces, a wide variety of hair types and styles, different male and female poses, and how to draw and paint garments, reflecting tailoring, drapery, volume, texture and patterns. Twenty step-by-step projects then take these building blocks and show you how to use them to create beautiful fashion watercolors, starting with easier subjects and building in complexity as your confidence grows. You’ll begin by painting handbags and shoes without models before starting to introduce figures. The range of subjects included covers all angles, from full figures front on and in profile to close-up make-up and beauty illustrations. You’ll also learn how to create dynamic compositions for editorial fashion illustration. Finally, Francesco covers the best ways to digitize and retouch your work, how to incorporate other media alongside your watercolors, how to work live at fashion events and how to take everything you’ve learned to develop your own personal style of fashion illustration.