1996 LEATHER JACKET photo shoot, pt.1 (Patreon)

So, yeah. 

Back circa '96, I was growing increasingly weary of my lame and repetitive attempts at drawing clothing from imagination, especially leather jackets. (This after the leather-prominent outfit worn by "Bad Yuri" in 1995's miniseries The Dirty Pair: Fatal But Not Serious, by the way.) So, when I noticed that a friend of mine had recently bought a really interesting-looking leather jacket, I broke out the ol' (film) camera and did a quick photo shoot, so I could try drawing leather from actual photoreference.

The 24 pictures I took that morning had a surprisingly profound effect on my work thereafter, as every single photo wound up being used as reference for artwork in the years to come. As you can see, my drawing of Roxy/ Freefall from Gen13 was based quite directly on the pic; I believe the sketch wound up being used in a tutorial I did for Wizard magazine in 1997.

In a way, this was my first serious attempt at life drawing since I got outta the Kubert School. The experience was hugely influential, as I subsequently have drawn about a bajillion leather jackets spawned by this one photo shoot. This is why, regardless of one's art style, I strongly recommend that artists practice clothed-figure life drawing on a regular basis. Real-world clothes and fabrics will almost always be much more interesting than the shorthand version that you might produce from imagination—which, more often than not (in my case, at least), is in turn cribbed from another artist's interpretation of clothing.

Interestingly enough, the jacket itself is quite unusual, as it was made of very lightweight, flexible leather that could drape and fold in ways that a heavier, motorcycle-style jacket never could.