Live Runway Sketches at the 2013 Redress Ecochic Design Awards

Writing this post right now feels so appropriate since it was this very competition, the 2012 Ecochic Design Awards for which I was a semi-finalist and gave my career and my self esteem the much needed boost to start freelancing.

And this year I've promised myself to take deliberate steps toward improving my illustration career, setting goals, pitching more editors, making cold calls - basically being more proactive instead of reactive. The awards last year was also one of the first posts on this blog, I feel like I've come full circle.

This was my first time live-sketching a fashion show and there is nothing more FUN! I can't believe I haven't tried this earlier, it's like life drawing class but with better music and more adrenaline. It's also an unbelievably good way to burn through paper, I bought this huge cheap watercolour pad while on vacation in Beijing, the texture is a combination of toilet paper and recycled cardboard box so this was a great way to finish up some of that. Runway sketching is also really difficult, those models move fast! While drawing I kept thinking about other illustrators who do this so well, like fashion illustrator Danielle Meder, Kenneth Paul Block and Richard Haines. Hong Kong doesn't have too too many fashion shows, but the next chance I get I'm on it.

1. An outfit from this year's winner Germany's Karen Jessen. 2. Mainland China's finalist Xinyan Dai's denim dress. 3. UK finalist Clémentine Sander's coral inspired textural design. 

Click through to see some streetstyle sketches of guests and judges from the show.

Witchcraft + Bondage + Flowers = My Entry for HKYDC 2013

All week I was scrambling to finish my entry for the Hong Kong Young Fashion Designer Contest. It was strrresssssful, at one point I didn't think I was going to finish; why do I have to procrastinate every single time? I never learn. But I'm all done now and I went into the HKTDC office in Wanchai today to hand in my package. I'm not going to hold my breath, from the little peek I got in their office everyone's looks amazing! I know you're supposed to be all think-positive these days (it's the postmodern thing to do) but I seriously doubt I'm gonna get picked. But anyways, the theme that I chose was Tasseomancy (the fortune telling thing, not the band although that's SO GOOD too, I saw them too long ago at the Poor Pilgrims festival and it was a hazy night of magic. Toronto I miss YOU). I was also inspired by leather bondage gear and by the Artist Lulie Wallace. I liked how the inspiration and theme boards turned out, and if you see a disconnect between those and the final designs it's because I am an idiot and did the designs first and the inspiration board after, WHO DOES THAT? Don't do that. Unless you hate yourself and want to make everything difficult.

 

Do you guys ever enter competitions? Got any tips or tricks to increase your chances of getting picked? Share them with us! Or do you belong in the Bruce Mau camp who think competitions are bad for the soul?

A note if you're interested: MakeAGIF.com was the only site I found where you could make really big gifs and it lets you select all of your images at once, I highly recommend it. Speaking of gifs, here is my favourite gif with a kid hugging it out with his piñata, little dude is right: violence is never the answer. 

Lastly, if you guys enjoy reading the blog, PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! 
Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!

Girl Stays Home All Month, Makes Baby.

 I've been hanging out at home all month listening to Fever Ray, watching Bones and putting together my paper mache project for Detour 2012. It's been slow going and I never go out, choosing instead to call up my friends and sob about how I never meet anyone cute to make out with; this is my life. It started out rough, had a breakdown after the armature I made with cardboard, masking tape and scrunched up paper ended up looking horrific, snapped out of it (thanks mom!) in time to realize I only had 2 weeks left until I had to deliver the baby to the organizers. Since, I've been crafting hard, paintbrushes blazing, leaving trails of paper mache lumps and the living room too scary for visitors.
 

After making the armature, I made some paper mache clay, this place has a good professional recipe, but what even is joint compound? So I just used toilet paper and the worst smelling white glue, using the back of a spoon I spread it over the taped foundation. Then I very poorly and impatiently sanded the dried structure smooth less lumpity-dumpity.

Next, I painted her body and hair. Put together the cake with painted paper, plastic plates and scrap plastic. The candles are a favourite, made with rolled up cardboard (I had fun posing with them pretending they were real cigarettes), then I painted them and added embroidery floss for the wick. The icing is piped paper clay from the Jusco $12 plaza. 

Making her outfit: I actually really liked this part, I stayed up all night sewing the little embroidered patch to go on her uniform. I used a back stitch for the border and a satin stitch for the airplane, this place is awesome for embroidery stitch tutorials.

 

There's still more paper to be mached, stay tuned to see how it goes!

  

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.

How to get your work into Detour 2012

What's in this moderately heavy box?

 I've been entering contests and competitions like a madwoman this year, living on my desert island slipping messages into bottles and right now it's starting to feel like a few of them have been washing back each filled with a little bit of love and I'm so so grateful. Last week I got a call from Ambassadors of Design letting me know that my proposal had been nominated!

My installation along with the other nine winning pieces will be displayed at DETOUR 2012 this November. In case you didn't know DETOUR is Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design's 17 days flagship event and it's pretty totally sweet, held at the Former Police Married Quarters last year, it was one of first things my friend Wing Sum and I did together, the art was cool but really at that time I was more excited about finally having found someone in HK to go to designy things with.

Yesterday, I went to the Ambassadors' office and lugged a huge cardboard box home from Wanchai wearing totally inappropriate clothing - namely a Pierre Cardin top that I got at HK's creme de la sleaze thrift store Mee & Gee (secret: my favourite one is the one on Fa Yuen St, Mong Kok. But, please don't go there and buy all the cheap nice fringey things because that is not nice and I need them for my body).

Below is my proposal, the theme of the competition was Growing Up with Hong Kong:

My nominated design! You go Glen Coco!

"A Celebration" is inspired by imagery associated with growing up in Hong Kong, created in the style of traditional Lunar New Year posters, the child is riding triumphantly atop of the crocodile, clad in her school uniform and clenching test papers. The airplane badge on her dress symbolizes the pre-1997 immigration rush, which affected most children whether directly or by seeing their friends and family move away. The child is surrounded by treats from her childhood: birthday cake from the local bakeries, egg waffles and tea eggs from street vendors."

A photo from my elementary school days that I used for inspiration.
I love how the 'treats' were hard-boiled eggs and apples.
Also, is it irony if you put an Instagram filter on an old picture.

DETOUR 2011. Photo: Ambassadors of Design

This little guy was inside the box "Decorate me. Rawr."

The installation will be made mostly of paper and paper mâché along with some embroidery and found objects. I was thinking of doing the figure like those Chinese funeral paper dolls, but I'm not so sure about the connotations with that since it's supposed to be about celebration. Anyways, stay tuned this month, I'm going to be blogging about the process.

Green is Chic at the 2012 Ecochic Design Awards

Sabrina and her covetable earrings.

Nibbles from the afterparty at Assaggio.

I went to the Ecochic Design Awards last night, it's a sustainable fashion competition organized by Redress and I was lucky enough to be able to participate this year as one of the semi-finalists. Although my part finished in April I still got to attend the final judging/fashion show as a general fashion lover and supporter of fellow independent designers. And the show did not disappoint, each designer had such unique style and personality which was really evident in their designs but it was Wister Tsang's avant-garde denim focused collection that won the judges' favour. So congratulations to Wister and to all the other 2012 finalists!

I was going to sit by myself (the horror! No, just kidding, I'm a strong independent Black Asian woman who don't need no man.) but through the magic of twitter I nabbed a seat next to my friend the stylist/social media maven Jasmine Webster and she introduced me to the gorgeous photographer Sabrina Sikoura. 

And for some much needed illustration practice I decided to draw some memorable moments from the night. And below are some more photos from the event, enjoy! 

Wearing all the flowers.
ps. this the shirt I made for the competition!.

Wister Tsang's winning collection.

The Redress founders, Christina Dean and Cherie Wong.
Cherie is wearing a zero-waste dress!