Atelier Académics with Stacy Stewart Smith — Couture CAD: Improving Hand-Rendered Fashion Illustrations with Photoshop
Atelier Académics with Stacy Stewart Smith — Couture CAD: Improving Hand-Rendered Fashion Illustrations with Photoshop
Description
A hand-rendered fashion illustration carries something no digital file can manufacture — the evidence of a trained hand. In this recorded seminar, Stacy Stewart Smith teaches you how to honor that quality while elevating it: scanning, preparing, and refining a hand-drawn croquis in Adobe Photoshop to achieve a couture-level presentation without erasing the humanity of the original drawing.
What You Will Learn
- Setting up the Photoshop workspace for fashion illustration — panels, layers, and non-destructive workflow
- Skin painting with the Brush Tool: opacity layering, color sampling, and complexion refinement
- Using the Spot Healing Brush to remove graphite lines, creases, and paint splashes
- Building dimension through highlights, shadows, tints, and tones
- Refining facial features — eyes, brows, lips — with small brushes and precise color work
- Reshaping the croquis silhouette using the Pen Tool and anchor point editing
- Background removal via alpha channel masking for a clean, professional presentation
- Hair enhancement using the Smudge, Dodge, and Burn tools for realistic texture and depth
Session Details
- Duration: 1 hour 26 minutes
- Skill Level: Intermediate to Advanced
- Software: Adobe Photoshop
- Companion Text: CAD for Fashion Design and Merchandising by Stacy Stewart Smith (Fairchild Books, Bloomsbury Publishing) — Tutorials 5.2 and 5.3
- Series: Atelier Académics — Couture CAD, Session X
How Access Works
Upon purchase you will receive a downloadable PDF containing your seminar transcript, Webex recording link, and access instructions. Copy the link from the PDF into your browser to begin streaming. Access is granted for 30 days from the date of purchase. Passwords are rotated monthly — please view your recording promptly.
All recordings are original works protected by copyright. This session is part of Atelier Académics Series II: Couture CAD with Stacy Stewart Smith.
Care
Stacy Stewart Smith offers made-to-order garments, fine art, and digital publications — each requiring different care. Please refer to the product description for care and handling instructions specific to your purchase. For garments: dry clean or spot clean unless otherwise noted; do not machine wash. For fine art: keep away from direct sunlight and humidity; handle with clean, dry hands or cotton gloves. For digital products and publications: no physical care required; download and archive your files upon receipt.
Design
Every Stacy Stewart Smith piece begins as a drawing and ends as a decision — a deliberate choice of textile, construction method, and proportion made by a single designer with five decades of practice. The same eye that composes a painting composes a coat: line, weight, negative space, and the relationship between form and the body that inhabits it. Garments are produced in New York City, one at a time, to the measurements and preferences of the individual client. No two pieces are identical. No production run exists. This is not manufacturing — it is making.
The atelier sources textiles for their hand, weight, and longevity. Sustainability here is not a campaign. It is the natural consequence of making only what is wanted, from materials chosen to last, by a craftsman who will not put his name on anything less.