Brandon Graham - Menswear Designer & Illustrator
Talk a little about yourself
I’m a menswear designer and illustrator from Brooklyn, New York and I’ve had the pleasure of designing for Levi’s, John Varvatos, Nike, and Fila.
Back in high school, I was originally interested in comic book illustration. Then I found myself paying attention to how I was drawing the clothes and that’s what began my fascination with the business and honing my skill as a fashion illustrator.
What tools do you use and why?
I always use a mechanical pencil to get a thin line. I like Zebra M-301 mechanical pencil (with 5 Hi-Polymer Super HB lead) and Business Copy and Print Paper (20 lb, 92 Bright by Xerox) to do my figure drawings. Nothing fancy.
A secret that people new to fashion illustration might not know, I learned from a guy who was freelancing as a shoe designer at John Varvatos.
He used Tracing paper (25lb/40gsm by Utrecht) to achieve a clean and confident line. This made him a much more efficient designer, too. It took a lot of frustration out of illustration when I began doing the same. When I was starting out, I used to painstakingly plan every line in my illustration because I hated sketchy lines, but as I got older and started working for other companies, I realized I had to get faster.
And it’s simple to use. Firstly I draw a rough sketch on white paper. When I’m done I put the tracing paper on top and trace over the rough sketch. This is how I’m able to achieve a confident line that flows and looks effortless. I can retrace a figure in minutes or test things out visually with not a lot of effort, all because the ‘foundation’ or the rough sketch is already done. After that, off to the Epson Stylus CX6600 Scanner to do high res 300 dpi scans that are saved in TIFF format. The lovely part is that the scanner only picks up the lines and ignores the transparent background.
Do you use any art supplies? For what kind of purposes?
I really like line art. But I realized that it does not work for accessories because the drawing is flat and details get lost too easily. So I began using Copic 100 Sketch Marker to get various line qualities, a thin flat-head Artisan Flat Sz 2 Paintbrush by Winsor & Newton to achieve even more line qualities and Winsor & Newton Ink to fill large areas.
The Copic Marker on the pointy side (not the side that looks like it was chopped off at a 30 degree angle) acts like a paintbrush. All this gave more depth and made the accessory illustration much more interesting.
These past couple years I’ve frequently tapped my friends I’ve met in the deviantart.com community to help me color my pieces. Because of the time involved in creating and working on side projects, I prefer to do the line art and have my colorist friends who actually specialize in comic book coloring to add color. Right now I’m reading John Rauch ’s blog who I met on deviantart. I ‘call him out’ where and what colors should be used for each part of a figure. He knows exactly what color I want because I’ll give him Pantone numbers to follow. Overall, I’m able to complete more pieces at a higher level by collaborating with others.
In which online fashion communities are you involved and what are the advantages of being part of it?
I follow and participate in FashionIndustryNetwork.com, a great place to share your work, meet people in the biz, and start a discussion and frequent. By participating and getting your name out there you’ll find you can pick up some freelance work too. I just finished working with a new denim company out of Atlanta that I met on the site.
Also I follow Stylesight.com to stay up-to-date on this increasingly complex industry of fashion, to see trend boards with great illustrations and pics of recent runway shows.
What websites do you use to promote your brand and why?
I always make sure to have at least 10 channels or ways to promote my work that I try to maintain on a regular basis. Right now you’ll find at least 2 of the many channels updated on a daily basis. It might be Facebook and Twitter one day; YouTube and Chictopia the next.
I daily to promote my work using 4 main websites.
One of my personal websites I use to promote my work is PinkyShears.com, which is more about the design process and what happens behind the scenes of fashion. Using interviews with people at all facets of the industry, I show what happens beginning at the sketch stage through how a garment is approved for production. Those who come to the site to read interviews or learn a quick how-to can also find out my portfolio.
Coroflot.com is useful in helping to create a quality and easy to navigate online portfolio - and it’s FREE. It saves me time in creating and maintaining my own personal site.
I mentioned FashionIndustryNetwork.com before.
Also I promote my work through WouldYouRockThis.com (my latest project). I use it not only to promotes my work, but also to promotes other fashion illustrators. WYRT is a place for people to upload, share, and get feedback on their fashion illustrations and designs.
What would be some tools you would love to use but you’re currently not using?
My father was a furniture designer and artist of many different disciplines including calligraphy. I remember playing around with the Sheaffer calligraphy set that belonged to my parents as a kid, and being told to put them down because they were afraid I would ruin the tips.
That memory came back to me recently and made me wonder if I could borrow some calligraphy pens, mainly some of the Parker pens with the different tips, I think are probably sitting somewhere in the home I grew up in in Western Maryland. I’m curious whether that pens will create an interesting look. I’m sure it will.
Is there anything else that you use to get your work done?
I frequently use basic Photoshop CS2 techniques to clean up my line art before coloring and to make minor adjustments to the figure.
This is all done on my Mac Powerbook G4. I hope to be upgrading soon to the MacBook Pro with the newest Adobe Illustrator CS5. Not really concerned about having the newest Photoshop because the CS2 version does what I need for now.
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