New/Old Illustrations - And a Commentary

 You know how when you get something from the thrift store and you show you friend and you're like "hai this is the new skirt that I just got, I mean it's old but it's new, it's an old skirt but it's new to me but it's like actually old." Well these drawings are like that, I made them last month for the Terracotta Warriors Inspired Fashion Design Competition (phew, long name). So they are old to me and new to you.

These didn't get picked but I thought they were cute enough to share. But looking back at them, they do seem kind of flat and lackluster. I can see how they wouldn't be too appealing to the judges. I actually quite like the green outfit in the middle, the little bomber jacket with patent leather sleeves and the stiffly pleated olive skirt. That's another thing, I think these illustrations could really benefit from some arrows and written commentary. The boards which I actually sent in did include fabric swatches but I think it needs more than that from a presentation standpoint. At my old job at Li & Fung as the assistant designer, I was mainly in charge of visual communications and I spent a lot of time making presentation boards for buyers and we never would have sent these out: first of all the image needs a background (a muted complementary tone with some texture preferably), the figures would have had a shadow and the clothes need texture. Even if the clothes were boring we would have wowed them with the general presentation, and that's what I'm lacking here. I think I got a little lazy and fancied my drawings could speak for themselves. But you learn.

This week I've been snail-making that DETOUR 2012 piece (but really mostly drinking Baileys and watching Bones). Here's what I've been working on? Frankly I'm a little majorly embarrassed to show you. It's so hideous you're going to hate me and think I'm a total hack, but it's just the armature and it's all going to be covered, but still. Well, let's just hope Dan Savage was right when he said "It Gets Better".

I've created a monster/
So hideous I didn't even Instagram it/
Imagine my horror.