Fashion Scout: Day 2

On day 2 I arrived with more confidence than the previous day, having felt I'd made some successful images. I only missed one show on Saturday, and it was the biggest day of the week, with Merit Award, Ones to Watch AND Pam Hogg, all in one day. It was a long, exhausting, yet fulfilling one, and the favourite day by far. Unfortunately, I didn't get much backstage drawing done, which in hindsight is my favourite part! But the shows were incredible, and thankfully I only missed one.

Ones To Watch: YEASHIN

Dans La Vie

Zeynep Tosun

Merit Award: Yifang Wan

Pam Hogg

Favourite for me was YEASHIN, and I will most definitely be watching her for the next few seasons. The whole of Freemason's Hall was roaring, especially for the Pam Hogg show. As anticipated, it shocked everybody, as she sent completely naked models down the catwalk. I'm not sure how much I enjoyed it, but it was, nevertheless, a performance. It certainly left me in shock for the next 12 hours.

Fashion Scout: Day 1

Yesterday marked the end of Fashion Scout, and for the whole of London Fashion Week. I have to say, I have never worked so hard, drawing pretty much 10-8pm every day for five days, and it has been so much fun. I really really loved every second of it, drawing beautiful clothes on beautiful models, and really just trying my best to put across as much of my week as possible. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to do it again in future seasons to come. 

Over the next few days, I'll do an overview of each day at Fashion Scout, my favourites, how I drew them, and just generally what I thought about them. I will try and put on as many drawings from the day as possible, but I have selected the best ones of the day. Note that on each day I averaged about 15 to 20 drawings (!!!), and given the circumstances, some were pretty shit. On the other hand, some were pretty good and towards the end of the week, there's a definite improvement in my life drawings. The majority of my drawings were drawn at the scene and not from photos, so you can imagine that my days were pretty intensive. Back-to-back shows, and also drawing backstage too!

Okay so.... Day 1:

You can imagine that I was nervous as hell, the first time I'd ever done anything so big before. The first time anything of mine would be published! It was sort of a miracle that I'd even got the job in the first place. I arrived with the jitters, easily THE worst example of blagging and confidence every witnessed. Thankfully, the team were so welcoming to me, particularly Max, one of the photographers, and the two Josh's, one a blogger, and the other also an illustrator, made me feel more relaxed by the end of the day. I drew at the shows for Apu Jan, Timur Kim, Liz Black, Krystof Strozyna and Nova Chiu. Belle Sauvage was there too, and I was so gutted that I missed it! Favourite show of the day was Nova Chiu by far, the colours and textures... I just loved them. The shoes in particular was my fave, and I love the black and striped velvet dress (drawn below). However, my favourite drawing of the day was from Timur Kim backstage, who we shared a room with. Our HQ is based at the back of one of the upstairs dressing rooms, so at times it got pretty cramped! The girls for Timur Kim had really sweet hair backstage, and I'm glad I captured it pre-show before the clips got taken out into rolling waves of hair.

Nova Chiu, Backstage

Nova Chiu, show

Liz Black, preview

Yulia Kondranina, Exhibition

Timur Kim, Backstage

Fashion Scout.

So the exciting news... I've been drawing at Fashion Scout for this season's Fashion Week! On this blog, I'll do a summary at the end of week, but if you're interested, check out the Fashion Scout Blog to see reviews and summaries of the shows, as well as some awesome photography. I'm part of the Fashion Scout blog team as one of the illustrators illustrating the shows and backstage. A scary feat, but  its been incredible so far! Follow me on Twitter for updates! 

Kingston University: Print Project, Power of 3

For this semester, our rotation of Print, Photo and Collage projects are based around the theme 'Power of 3', which we can interpret in any way we like.

I chose to use religion as my starting point, where the number 3 crops up in many different religions. One of the things I found very interesting is a procedure in Islamic faith called Wudu, where you would wash your hands, arms, face and feet 3 times each, in preparation for formal prayer. I also love the pattern found in Islamic architecture and textiles, which I used as inspiration to start this project.

I decided to use lino-cut this time for my process. I've never used it before, and I was really keen to try it out. It's so incredibly versatile, and I have already bought two other sheets to continue within my own work! I also mixed it with monoprint, layering different colours and splashing white spirit onto the plate to get a texture that might say water or purity. Then I cut out three different stencil designs to print through!

This time, presentation was also very important, and so I decided to lay my final prints on the floor in the direction of Mecca (approximately... my compass on my phone was a little suspicious...). The critique went well, although I am going to change the pattern, because displayed like this, they look too much like tyre tracks! Overall, extremely happy with the outcome of this project, am really looking forward to the next ones!

Kingston University: Drawing Day 15, Location Drawing, Fashion and Textiles Museum

I was initially going to go to the Sewing Machine Museum, but in finding out it was only open on Saturdays, I decided to go to the Fashion and Textiles Museum last minute. It was a really great decision, and I'm really happy with the drawings that came out of it. I have a lot of plans for drawing about fashion, which I will be keeping you posted about soon, I promise!

Kingston University: The Extraordinary Book Club.

We were given a list of books to bring in for an unknown purpose. We were welcomed to the Extraordinary Book Club, and challenged to make an extraordinary book. We were teamed up in pairs, and I was lucky enough to be paired with Linnea! We discussed the nature of our books, and decided to make our books come alive with papercuts and shadows. 

We were really pleased with how they turned out, and we want to continue through the book and hopefully animate it! We shall keep you posted.

Kingston University: Drawing Crowds

We had a short two day project with Ben Newman as a visiting tutor. We were challenged to build a location and put a crowd within it. I found this project really difficult, as it requires such planning that I personally find so difficult to visualise in a small version... it's such an important thing to conquer though! I think that's why the animatic project didn't work out perfectly, having that distinction between a rough and a final thing, and how many times do you plan in between?? Don't underestimate it, it's very hard, and crucial! So in the struggle, I'd started the second day with very little, and so my piece was whipped out in about 3 hours! Mine is the second down, with roller skaters in the supermarket.

Kingston University: Drawing Day 14, Kensington Gardens and Science Museum

Our second location drawing took us through Kensington Gardens and then through to the Science Museum. I think I put myself through a bit of a hard time, and I didn't get the drawings I wanted out of it... Sometimes too much pressure on yourself is just too much! Drawing crazy kids running around is pretty difficult, but one must persist! Hopefully I can get some practice in somewhere for drawing moving people.

Kingston University: Drawing Day 13, Grant's Museum of Zoology

Our first stop for this term's location drawing was Grant's Museum of Zoology, which is a part of UCL. Although everything inside is alot like the Huntarian Museum, the way everything is placed in this museum is totally different, and I feel like it makes for a much more interesting place.

I got some new colour pencils for Christmas, so I decided to see what I could do with them! I'm not sure how happy I am with this set of drawings, I feel like I only like the last one. But I'm challenging myself to create something at a higher level, and from my assessment, I lacked context... So I'm trying, I promise! 

Foxcroft and Ginger: Cafe Crowds.

In an attempt to improve my drawings of people in 'real life', I popped into a cafe on Berwick Street for a good few hours. A lot of them started to get suspicious, but I don't think I caused any offence, I hope!