Get In Line

One of my favorite moments backstage is when the models all line up before their exits. They're all so serious for their two minute turns on the runway, and on the other side of the procenium it all seems so glamorous. But behind it it's all just another day at the office for the boys... even when you're all wearing floor length gowns in a menswear show.

It was THIS big

A friend was asking for a ring box for his wedding, and I thought of another friend who made that sort of thing, so he sent over photos. I wasn't convinced by the shots because of the scale, but when I saw that the box itself in reality was really palm size, it made all the difference. So I made a sketch tonight to show my friend the relative size of it.

Last Minute Styling

You've seen it in documentaries, but designers really do it: right before the models go out, they check each and every model and fix and adjust and smooth away every last detail they can before they walk in front of the audience and photographers. Considering how these shots will define your collection for the next 6 mos and more, those last seconds count.

edit: how very odd that I thought I uploaded the image last night yet this morning there was nothing there. Ah well, rectified.

Hurry Up And Wait

One thing that's very apparent backstage at a show is how frenetic everyone gets, yet there's a lot of waiting around. Everyone wants everyone there to get started, but because they can only deal with so much at a time, a lot of guys wait around before their turn. So there's a lot of milling around and waiting, and having a smoke.

Setting The Tones

I seem to be having trouble sticking to one technique. I've gone from wet watercolor-style renderings for faces to smooth blended painting that seems more mixed media. I seem to be jumping from one style to the other. I need to make sure these paintings have a unified look... so I work and rework and try to get it looking juuust so. But when I used a fibrous brush to get a bleeding watercolor technique, my Mac crashed and I lost all the changes. So I started over. I'm not 100% satisfied with where the face is now, but I do like the shirt, so that's what I'll post here.

Color Splashes

Okay, I'm feeling a bit better about this sketch, although it's certainly not done. I'm not exactly inspired today, for reasons I don't know but some days you do and some days you don't. I spent a lot of time going back and forth on things like the curve of his mouth, the weight of the linework on the 'pencils' and putting in just the right amount of 'underworked' because it was getting overworked, methinks.

Man, it's a lotta work making things look (somewhat) effortless!!

Had Some Work Done

I swear, I worked on this face a bit much. There's something about my technique and the resolution required that just makes it harder to paint digitally. I had the damndest time trying to get a good likeness. As it is, the drawing looks like the model, but if I stare too long I'll find something wrong with it and rework it until I can't tell if it's better or not. Agh, the process.

Facial

Continuing my fashion illustration series, continuing with another model portrait. Well, part of a sketch, but i like getting a likeness (and spend an inordinate amount of time on them).

Giving Face

I'm trying to be good and finish up this entire series this week, so I started rendering more illustrations in hopes of putting together my final layout soon. The thing about me is, when I do something I know I can finish, it becomes easy, and then I start to have fun with it. And I was drawing a face I normally wouldn't even think of drawing, but now I'm finding that trying to render features I'm normally not enamored with is totally engrossing...!

Planning

Like Timeline on Facebook, Blogger finally implemented a user interface change that I had tried out earlier this year. I had removed because after initially testing it out because it wouldn't save the blog post based on the time it was created but only when it was published. It was useful in that I could start an image and tweak it later if I wanted. Granted, that was more work than that day, but it would make for a better post sometimes (okay, often). I was wondering if this new implementation would save it that way again, so I didn't publish until today, Saturday.

This is from my backstage series, of my friend, designer Antonio, planning his presentation lineup.

edit: yup, just saw. It shows up as Saturday. This is for Friday, when I was too tipsy from red wine to draw after tv dinner night with my friends!  :)

Pencilling Time In

Okay, if you told me a month ago I'd be so busy I'd actually not want to do other creative work, I'd tell you that that would be a nice problem to have. And it is. I just want more time to devote to my personal projects. So I basically got done with two pending deadlines and tonight I can put in some time penciling in more deliberate linework in some previous roughs. Just a bit more detail, taking care not to put too much detail, so that it can at least look somewhat spontaneous.

Substi-shoes

I've been swamped with work these past couple of days, and it won't let up for the rest of the week either. I'm a bit frustrated I cant work on my personal illustration projects, but the money jobs are actually fun, if not as lucrative. Still, I'm doing an illustration job, which is always a plus nowadays as I try to build a more active portfolio of illustrations. But because things are in the thumbnail stage, I can't actually show the work, so here is an altered version as a substitute. Okay, well I cropped it tight and added those bows, which aren't so much my design but based on something by Carven, although I dunno if Guillaume Henry'd have done them in as very 80s pumps which I originally had to draw (don't ask, all will be revealed in due time if I get the okay from the client).

Arms Reach

I don't think I can post the full drawings of my client's commission here on my blog, especially since these are merely thumbnails and aren't necessarily done deals. But methinks I can post parts, especially if I compose them into something new. Et voila!

Iconic Silhoutte

I'm working on an silhouette commission but I'm still in the thumbnail stages. But I got so tired I fell asleep while drawing! So you just get the rough (although I must confess, despite being bored to sleep by it last night, I rather like it)

Old School

Had a hard time today at the Meetup that I regularly attend. I wasn't feeling inspired (actually was a bit rushed getting there), and right from the start I couldn't get a drawing/illustration I remotely liked. I was working up until the time I left for the workshop, and I might have had the project I was doing on my mind (as I had to return to it). But I couldn't get into it today. Ah well, guess we all have those days. I did just experiment a lot with approaches, so there's that, but didn't come away with anything I loved. This is probably the piece I least hate, haha!

Dressing For The Runway

One imagines that being backstage allows you to leer at the models as they dress up, and some definitely do, but in men's fashion right now the models are less about sex (at least in the more fashionable shows) as they are quirky looking man-boys. The backstage dressing process is all about the clothing and getting it to look right...

Dry! Dry!

Part of my Behind The Scenes series, this is a sketch of stylists backstage at the Siki Im show, applying clay to the model's napes and using a hairdryer (or in the case of the woman up front, two) to dry it to a crackled finish like a dried desert. It provided a great, weathered accent to the clothing.

I'm not sure if this sketch is too done. I may need to loosen it up more...

Justin and his friend Heron

Justin and his friend Heron sometimes underestimate how tall they both are.

Darker (and Lovelier)

Fernando, like his also-a-model brother Armando, has the most beautiful indigo-black skin. I wasn't planning on doing a full render today, but once I got started, well, I went with it.

Backstagers

Working on a few BTS vignettes. This is a section of one of them, in its rough stage.

Designer Portrait Next

Third of the sketches of the designers I'm working on. Funny how I'm just working automatically on this one. There's so much freedom in working from a photograph. All you have to do is look at whats in front of you, and the rest is automatic. Well, it is for me when I'm on. When I have no desire, heaven help me!

Tevas!

The footwear at one of the shows I went to was exclusively Tevas. with socks! I'm always one for irony, and hunted down athletic sandals last year to wear with socks, but I finally settled on buying tabi socks (Japanese style with individual toes for wearing with things and similarly separated sandals) instead, whcih I wore with my Margielas that had a toe loop.

09.08.12/Designer Portrait

Whoops! Spent a bit too much time at the show today, plus chatting with a friend online afterward, so I missed posting on time. Will have to make up for it later today.

edit: So I've got two drawings for today, and this first is a portrait of the designer from one of the three shows I 'audited'.

Darker

This is Fernando, who shares the same surname as Armando Cabral. I think he might be his brother. Anyhow, he was at the show I shot with the other day, and this is the initial sketch for the next in my series.

On The Rails

I was backstage at the Siki Im show and and was taking photos for a project I'm working on, and I decided to take out my sketchpad and sketch the designer himself as he was taking a cigarette break.

Bangs

I went to observe a makeup test for an upcoming fashion show of a friend, and shot one of the initial hairstyles on the young model Conr. He had such great bone structure, and even looked like a former favorite model of mine (albeit a male version).

Naturally, 2

I almost didn't draw tonight, but I forget how easy it can be to just base a sketch on a photo, and it becomes almost automatic. This was something I started back at the end of July, but it's an easy enough sorbet between all the pieces I'm working on.. no special techniques at all, just a pencil drawing...

Robbie and his friend Heron

Robbie and his friend Heron's song-and-interpretative-dance performance went very well... except maybe for the interpretative dance part.

Shoot

Another scene sketch for my series. This is the initial rough.

Shape 9

I'm hoping I don't have to do a Shape 10 entry, as the changes are really subtle now - slight coloring changes to refine the lighting around his hairline (and where the reflected light ends), refined linework, but I don't think anyone can really tell the diff save for me. But I think this is done