How to draw like Megan Hess

It’s really easy to draw like Megan Hess, one of the most successful fashion illustrators out there. Here I’ll give you some tips you can use on your drawings.

First of all, you need Adobe illustrator software and Adobe Photoshop, you might be fooled into thinking she does her illustrations by hand but as we will see on this post, that’s not true, she copy-paste the same faces and features again and again on her illustrations.

FACE

As you can see in the following images the face is exactly the same, same eyes, nose and mouth, first you will see the photo of the model she used (Jane Shrimpton). In the same way, you just need to choose the photo of a person you like, then add that pic on your first layer on illustrator, then on a layer on top you use a tool call auto-tracing and you don’t even need to draw it, the computer does all the work!.

HANDS

Another thing that she repeats are the hands. See the left hands below. You just need a few elements and then move them around.

BUILDINGS

One method she uses is to trace the building from a photo as in the first example. And once you have the drawing of a building you can do slight variations as in the second example below.

Variations of the same buildings and different cropping.

TEXTURES

You can also import a photo and leave visible some texture of the photo as in the images below.

Or you can paste the same texture on different objects as in the examples below.

You can also do modifications to the same image to transform it into a new one, as she did with the image below in which she only changed the filling of the hair and changed the skirt for trousers. You can do that very easily by putting each element on a different layer and just turning off the one you don’t need and adding a different one. Don’t be fooled by the image below, it’s a print and the notebook and pen are just decorations.

EXCHANGE HEADS

You can also keep the same body and just change heads as Megan did in the example below.

MIRROR

Or you can mirror the hair

Another example of body rotation and slight changes.

CONCLUSION

There are many more examples but I’ll let you find them yourself. You should also check the work of Megan’s sister Kerrie Hess, who does paint by hand, their work is incredibly similar, to the point that is difficult to know who copied whom. Not only that, but both instagram feeds are scarily similar portraying a very artificial and superficial lifestyle, I wish Megan could post more photos of her normal life but I guess it must be hard to live in a world where everybody is talking about your external appearance. The main topic of her illustrations is shopping, she encourages a consumerist society, where you have to be disposing and buying more and more stuff. She uses elements like famous brands and objects that represent status, which appeal to the rich and famous. Her illustrations, even though not hand made, they do have some creativity in the combination of elements. Keep practicing your illustration skills with these tips but be careful with the topics you choose and what you are communicating to the world.