iPad Pro reinvents the old-school fashion sketch
Before DSLRs and smartphones, fashion editors and buyers used to sketch their favorite runway looks with pencils and paper during fashion shows.
Every now and then you can still catch old-school industry members quickly tracing graceful lines in their Moleskin notebooks.
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Ironically, tech is making strides to bring that lost art back.
This season Apple lent iPad Pros and Apple Pencils to a handful of illustrators to use during the fall 2016 shows.
At the forefront of fashion and digital sketching since 2013, artist Janelle Sing put Apple's tools to the test during Proenza Schouler's fall 2016 collection show Wednesday night in New York City. Mashable got the exclusive first look.
"The drawing experience is unmatched," Sing said of the iPad Pro. "With such a large screen, I can draw right to the edges of the device. The response of the stylus is really fast and natural, it feels like the ink just bleeds out from the tip. The display is so advanced and allows me to zoom in really far so that I can get extremely detailed in places."
(If you're concerned Sing has a slight bias, since Apple provided the device, read Mashable's iPad Pro review, which includes a hands-on with Pencil and sketching capabilities.)
Sing admits she's a traditionalist at heart and loves the tactile feeling of actual paint and paper. But she believes there's room for both methods to coexist.
"When images are going to be viewed on a screen, it makes sense that they begin on a screen, too."
"I don’t see iPad Pro as a replacement for those tools," Sing said. "It’s simply another tool that helps me make better work, faster. When images are going to be viewed on a screen, it makes sense that they begin on a screen, too. It cuts out all the scanning, editing, and color matching that normally would take many hours."
While Sing believes the iPad Pro is ultimately more efficient, she's still limited by what she can produce during the actual show.
"I do loose sketches during a show, just enough information to complete about five or six good drawings afterwards," Sing said. "Runway shows move very quickly, so usually I have enough time to jot an idea down — whether it’s a pose, a hat or a mood that I want to capture. But I never finish them at the shows because I’m too busy watching. Then I race home and try to finish them while the information is still fresh."
As for her favorite apps, Sing said Paper by FiftyThree is her go-to tool for accurate colors, line weight transition and beautiful, natural strokes.
She's also been experimenting with the Procreate app which offers a wide variety of textural brushes and allows artists to work in layers — a method that's helpful to those who typically draw in Photoshop.
Chances are the tablet and apps won't be enough to persuade Grace Coddington to forgo her conventional methods. However it seems they could be instrumental in passing fashion sketching on to the next generation, keeping the valuable tradition alive.
Noelle Sciacca is a Fashion Reporter at Mashable. Noelle writes on the intersection of fashion and the media. A graduate of Liberty University with a degree in Business Marketing, Noelle previously worked for SELF Magazine and Lucky Magazine. At Mashable, her aim is to make the most innovative, entertaining, and empowering fashion content on the web.
