Had another opportunity to drink and draw with a fellow fashion blogger – this time the petite and poised Paola of The PvdH Journal and her adorable puppy Dedal. Paola is an avid artist and enthusiast designer who loves the creative process, meeting her inspired me to revisit some ideas for making things that I’ve not yet pursued. Her blog is wonderful – showing her ideation and sketches, sharing her inspirations and her finished designs incorporated into outfits.

ARTIST´S PORTRAIT from Andrea Martín on Vimeo.

I recently had the opportunity to work with a young videographer, Andrea Martín, on a client project, and after we had completed that work, she did me the great favour of creating a mini-documentary with me as the subject.

Besides immortalizing a spot on my chin, I talk about what I do, share some thoughts on art, and reveal some dreams I have for the future, as Andrea captured some choice shots of how I illustrate.

Thanks so much Andrea!

Here is lovely Glaswegian born Gail Mcinnes of Magnet Creative, arriving at the Scottish Fashion Awards in Glasgow where she received a well-deserved nomination for communicator of the year. She invited me to come along, and this is a brief scrapbook of what I saw.

First off was a champagne reception where I busted out my watercolour kit… I scribbled this version of International Designer of the Year winner Henry Holland and he liked it well enough to blog it – on vogue.co.uk!

Scottish people are so delightful – they have a wicked sense of humour and a friendly approachability. It was easy to make friends and have fun.

More guests including Gail in her gorgeous Lucian Matis dress.

I had a media pass, so I didn’t get to see the awards ceremony… however I did get to see the late evening sun glittering off of the Clyde.

During the awards, the media were corralled to the red carpet area to shoot the winners just after they received their awards.

I found a nice sunny spot on the floor from which to observe the action.

I did my best to sketch the winners as they came along – the Best New Designer (above left and below) and the Best Textile Designer (above right) both happily holding their trophies.

My little studio.

The late evening sun up in Glasgow was quite beautiful, and I managed to capture the best of it in this one shot of a Scottish socialite or star, I’m afraid I don’t know anything about her.

I did manage to get a good drawing of her too. And a somewhat awkward drawing of the fashion icon of the year, a young television star, above right.

At the end of the show, a photo op with all of the judges.

And me, wearing the dress Anita picked for me.

A couple shots from toe to head of me and Gail. It was wonderful to spend some quality time with Gail at such a significant moment. Thank you Gail xoxo

Last night I did a life drawing session, for the first time on a standing easel, at the Lewisham Art House. Far outside my habits, standing and drawing. Mentally and physically, it was expanding. The model was beautiful, a dancer with exquisite poise. The second part of the session was a longer pose, 90 minutes. Some artists can spend weeks on a single pose. My attention span lasts about 30 minutes. It was good to attempt practices that I find difficult.

Meeting kindred spirits in blogland is the best. I discovered Mode Parade through The Grumpy Owl, and only recently noticed we were both now located in London. Barima and I share a few affinities including flaunting our vast vocabularies and a fascination with the characters and fashions of the past.  Lately I’ve been bringing my paintbox with me everywhere, so today over tea in Soho we painted each other’s portraits.

My version of Barima. He pointed out that I didn’t quite get the shoulders right, a bit too square. He is right, of course.

Below, Barima’s version of me. At first vanity declared it didn’t like the emphasis on the dark circles under my eyes, but the more I look at this, the more I enjoy it. Thanks Barima.

I rarely attempt to render landscapes (or cityscapes), and this may be a good example why. Still – it’s always good practice to go outside of my comfort zone. I painted this as a picture postcard to send to my Nana and Grandpa to give them a sense of where I live. This is the view of The City skyline (not at all to scale) from the park I live by.

Oh yeah, and this is my field studio setup.

Paris! If you were wondering where I was, I was in Paris for fashion week – okay, I went to a handful of shows. Straight up, I went to Paris to be in Paris.

The first show I saw after stepping off the Eurostar was Manish Arora (above right). It was one of the best fashion shows I have ever seen, even though I couldn’t see much of it. The clothes were vivid and imaginative, the beauty was striking (from my vantage point I mostly saw heads and shoulders of the models). The show featured a magician who made a girl appear and disappear on the runway, something which was obscured by smoke and crowds for me, but the excitement was palpable even so.

Getting into the Manish Arora show was a lesson in and of itself. Unlike London, Parisians do not queue – they cluster.  I don’t like a cluster, so I tend to stand to the side, and in this case I positioned myself against a wall. However, my position was such that the cluster swallowed me and I ended up being jostled or shoved around, something I find very uncomfortable. Just as I was starting to feel a sense of absurd panic, I turned around to find myself face to face with Suzy Menkes who was carving through the crowd. “I don’t belong here,” I thought (or may have said aloud) and I squeezed my way out of the cluster. Just a few feet away, outside the cluster, there was a virtually empty parking lot where I stood at a cool distance trying to assess how this worked. I watched the cluster part for famous fashion editors and important fashion people, and people with seat assignments, and then in due course the security guards called those with standing tickets, and I found at that point, I could walk right in too. The cluster was just people without invitations who were hoping to get in, like some kind of parasitic (Paris-itic?) infection at the door of every show.

Lesson learned – stand at a cool distance and my turn will come.

The second show I saw was Barbara Bui (above left). She showed a series of neutrals – sandy beiges, whites and blacks, that played on texture blocking, arranged in horizontal layers. It was a simple, confident idea, executed very well. What was also very striking about this show was the statement non-diversity of the casting. Not only were all of the models white-skinned, they were also almost all blonde, and it was clear in the final procession that they were all within an inch or two of the same height. The lack of diversity was clearly not only unapologetic, it was very deliberate.

The Barbara Bui show was inside the tent at Place Concorde, and it is the nicest fashion show tent I’ve ever been in – in particular, the seating was at a steep grade so every row and the standing room all got a terrific view of the show.

Sonia Rykiel had brilliance and spectacle – it is clear that Paris really knows how to put on a fashion show. With a chain link fence down the middle of the runway and a soundtrack that sounded like a story, the scene was set for (once again, nearly identical) models who sat amongst the front row, sashayed down the runway hand in hand, met and chatted by the fence, and most endearingly, smiled. All while wearing fabulously vibrant colours, lush furs, deeply saturated plaids. This show really gave me the boost I needed to start mixing my pinks and reds, a combination that is so incredibly lively – in fact I did that the very next day.

Waiting to get into Sonia Rykiel was an exciting event in and of itself – many celebrities and famous fashion folks came through the crowd surrounded by much flash and fanfare, though the only one I recognized was Kanye West. It was incredible to see him come through the crowd, and everyone was smiling and lifting their cameras. He literally lit up an already very bright scene. That is real celebrity!

The first show I had a seat for was Amaya Arzuaga, so I attempted to sketch with watercolours live – which isn’t an easy proposition – above shows what I managed to get. This show was incredible for the exploration of dimension, volume, and line – using stiff felted fabrics in saturated colours. The construction ideas were new and interesting to my technical curiousity – the best was the way Arzuaga used the fabric on edge to create honeycomb embellishment echoing bone structures. It was a nearly flawless show, marred only by a finale dress which was too long for the model to walk in.

As I said, I spent a lot of time just sketching from imagination in cafes, and two of the better results are above. In addition to my new paintbox, I acquired a few brush-pens (introduced to me by Steffi in Berlin) – brushes that have water in the handle. You can squeeze the handle to dispense water as you need it, which makes watercolours so much more mobile – no need to carry around a container of water with you. Watercolours do take a bit of practice to use, and I’m still exploring the difference between an unintentional mess and an intentional mess.

My final two shows were Estrella Archs and Valentin Yudashkin, and once again I was seated and attempted to paint live, with the rough results above. They both had some lovely pieces, they were both shows that would have seemed quite outstanding in any other city. I think Paris had raised my expectations very high by this point. Archs show was all camel and fluorescent pink, and raw edges that seemed either not raw enough or just unfinished. My favourite piece had a tangle of spaghetti straps accenting a bare back. Yudashkin’s show was a series of very rich girls in rich-girl dress-up clothes, short short skirts, fishtail trains, lots of lace and exaggerated fedoras, finishing with a great furry black hat and an orange and black coat. It was much muchness, and not to my taste.

I think the best part of Paris, besides the fashion which was spectacular, was the spaces in between shows. Watching the street life and fashion crowds was sublime. The weather was perfect – I didn’t see a single cloud the entire time I was there. In between fashion shows, I spent my time walking the streets and my euros on cafe au lait in cafes. With my new watercolour box, I spent a lot of time just doodling fashions I saw or imagined.

The spaciousness of time and mind was just as clear as the skies, as open as my schedule. Nothing is as satisfying as nothing. Exactly what I wanted, exactly what I needed. Merci, Paris.

Thanks to a friend I met at Prick Your Finger, I got a heads up about an after-hours event at the Design Museum. The fashion illustration exhibit there is in its last weeks and a few activities have been scheduled around that. This evening was lovely – there was a live sketching event. The instructor encouraged us to use our left hands (above) and both hands at once (below) as we drew some lovely (if somewhat sleepy) models.

After the sketching session, I was lucky to join a guided tour of the exhibit by curator Colin McDowell, who incidentally, is one of my favourite fashion authors, someone who takes the long view of fashion, and with a great sense of insight and humour. I was too shy to introduce myself to him at that moment, so I went downstairs and participated in a little typography workshop, painting letterforms with gouache.

From that vantage point I noticed Mr. McDowell picking up a glass of wine at the bar and sitting down alone, and I knew it was up to me to say hi. Feeling somewhat nervous, I calligraphi-ed “HI” on a piece of card and introduced myself. Instantly I felt like I had met a tribal leader or fairy godfather or something – McDowell is a lovely man, fascinating and funny and interested in fashion from a very similar angle to my own, with a truly visceral connection to the past that is incredibly rare. Being a writer, he disarmed me by asking lots of questions. I showed him my loose sketches from earlier in the evening and he told me he thought they had potential – coming from a well-known collector of fashion illustration, to say this was a great validation is a huge understatement. Now one of my sketches is part of his collection. Wow.

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