Here are a few suggestions for building a fashion illustration library with three books: Colors for Modern Fashion by Riegelman, Fashion Illustration Techniques by Lafuente and Fashion Illustration Today by Drake. All three have merits and could be inspirational as well as instructional when it's time to illustrate a fashion, costume or work with advertising illustrations.
At 6.5 pounds, Colors for Modern Fashion by Nancy Riegelman is a hefty volume filled with information on how to draw fashion illustrations using colored markers. The illustrations show a wide range of examples, and could help those new to illustrations get a better idea of how to problem solve figures and fabric.
This is a soft bound publication with 560 pages, published by 9 Heads Media, 1st self published edition (April 29, 2006), ISBN-09702463-2-3, Dimensions: 9.1 x 1.5 x 13.1 inches, The following illustrations are typical for this book:
The second book is Fashion Illustration Techniques by Lafuente.
This book show how to illustrate Fashion using colored Media: watercolor, pastels, crayons, markers, pencils and collage. It takes a more 'fine art' position when producing illustrations and contains a wider variety of techniques and styles using European Fashion Illustration Techniques.
It is a moderate sized text at 191 pages, published by Evergreen, 2008 (ISBN-13: 978-3836504072, Size: 8 3/4" X 10", Weight: 2 pounds).
The third book is Fashion Illustration Today by Drake.
The third illustration book was published in 1994 and is filled with the images of popular techniques from that final era of fashion illustration. There is alot that an illustrator today can take away from this book which features dramatic, colorful illustrations from 27 well known illustrators of the 90's. Pages include both mixed media color illustrations and drawings. This book has an art based point of view, showing artists with widely different styles.
It is available as a 176 page paperback, published by Thames & Hudson in 1994 (ISBN-10: 0500277737, 9 1/2" X 11 1/2", 1 1/2lbs).
The next time you find yourself cruising the shelves of a used book store, keep an eye out for these publications, you'll want to take a closer look.
(These titles may be available in my shop)