Fashionary Illustration Workshop + Metrobooks Exhibition Photo Diary

Guess what! Thanks to the wonderful folks at Fashionary, you can now go check out one of my illustrations on display at Metrobooks in Times Square. They organized an exhibition for the book store's grand opening at Times Square in Causeway Bay featuring 9 other talented illustrators from around the world.

I thought this would be a really good chance for me to make a whole Fashionary blog post as I also got to lead a really amazing fashion illustration workshop with them this past March. It was in the gorgeous newly renovated Page One bookstore in TST. I was really nervous but I spent a few weeks prepping with the awesome team at Fashionary.

This is always my strategy. I always think about this quote by John C Jay, Wieden+Kennedy’s Executive Creative Director, if I have a new project I'm really nervous about: "Work harder than anyone else and you will always benefit from the effort.". I just make sure I do lots of prepping and practicing and set aside time to do so and then I can confidently walk into that project and really feel excited about doing it. This strategy has always served me really well (ok, minus that one time I tried to design a complete wedding suite on Adobe Illustrator, CTRL + ALT + DELETE! I still don't really know how AI works.).

After a short demo, everyone settled down with their own set of watercolours and Fashionary template paper and I lead us with step by step directions on how to create the illustrations, first using pencil to sketch, Copic markers for the skin and then finally watecolour for the clothing.  

We then practiced the face on a separate piece of paper before committing to drawing it on our final illustration, it takes the pressure off and you know what they say, practice makes perfect progress.

Vikki Yau was the other illustrator from the day, she lead the Copic Marker workshop in the afternoon and she's also the editor of Fashionary Hand.

My wonderful students and I! I hope everyone had as much fun at creating their own fashion illustrations as I did teaching the workshop.

And shout out to one of the attendees Alyn for her sweet review and blogpost about the workshop! Thank you so much!

CLICK for photos of the Metrobooks Fashion Illustration Exhibition.

Sketches / #Girlboss in NYC

I finally blogged! It's been forever, I've been hanging out all summer long in the greatest city in the world, New York City! And it really is the greatest city, there are a million great events to go to everyday, drawing events, comic jams, outdoor movies, yoga in Central Park. And yesterday was Sophia Amoruso's paperback book launch for #GIRLBOSS at Barnes & Noble in Union Square.

I remember first discovering the Nasty Gal website in university when one of my cool girl classmates told me about it, I loved it and always checked back to see what was new. They have such a strong look. You could just tell all the women at the event were huge fans too, everyone had that Nasty Gal 'look', there was lots of black, in mesh, lace and lacey mesh, 'marsala' (which Sophia said was huge for this season), floppy hats, dark lips and platform shoes. So while we waited for the event to start, there was a lot of marshaling to be done seeing as there were 500+ eager gals there, I made some sketches to pass the time.

Sophia had lots of awesome wisdom tid-bits during the talk, some of my faves were:

"Money looks better in your bank than on your feet." Cha-Ching! So true.

On creating your dream job.
"Professionalize what you love doing, that's what I did with vintage clothing."

From a Q+A from an aspiring stylist.
"Take quality photos of all your looks, get a Squarespace. Archive everything."

Well you know I love female role models (Hi Hillary!) and the entrepreneur spirit, so of course I can't wait to finally read the book. Plus! The book has amazing badassy illustrations by Jo Radcliffe.

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Paintings / Pink Lady

Pink Lady, 2015.
Gouache and pencil on paper.
55 cm x 39 cm.

One of the super awesome things I've been enjoying about New York is the endless live figure drawings sessions that are happening all the time in the city. Last night we had one at the School of Visual Arts and I'm so happy I went (Sorry homework!).

It was my first time doing a really long pose, when they announced the next pose was going to be two hours I initially thought "What am I going to do for two hours???" but I ran upstairs to my desk and grabbed my gouache palette and I was so happy with this piece which I finished during the two hour session.

Check out the WIP shot on my Instagram.

Illustrations / Rowing Blazers

HELLO from NEW YORK CITY!
A place so nice they named it twice. I've been busy busy since I got here about two weeks ago, I'm doing the illustration summer residency course here at the School of Visual Arts, drawing non-stop and exploring this gigantic city. I've got a huge backlog of stuff I want to share with you guys, so much exciting stuff has been happening to me but unfortunately you can only be cool online or offline - not both, you greedy bastard!

My eyeballs are burning while I'm writing - I need to go to bed. Do you guys even care that I write anything? Anyways, here are some pretty pictures and the illustrations from a cool event I got to go to last week it was the launch party of the book Rowing Blazers, it was hosted in the gorgeous and historic National Arts Club and they had two models for the drawing club that usually meets there to draw from - and so I crashed the party! 

 CLICK THROUGH for photos from the event and a peek of the work from the drawing club.

Illustration / Hillary Clinton for President!

So excited to hear MAH GURL Hillary Clinton is running for president in 2016! So excited in fact I had to stay up past my bedtime to make this illustration to celebrate, I've been dreaming of a female president since I was a little girl. Maybe next year this little girl's dream will finally come true.

Streetstyle and Snapshots From Art Basel 2015

 A cool attendee dressed down in pink sequins with cuffed jeans and spiky sneakers.

Ok! Art Basel is probably the funnest month here in Hong Kong, there are a gazillion events everywhere in the city and hot graffiti artists for you to swipe and meet on Tinder, not to mention the show itself. Here are the streetstyle illustrations and photos spotted from my day there.  

I drew a boy! Even though my Twitter bio says I don't know how to draw boys. The stylish visitor was wearing a Topman peacock tee-shirt against a giant swirling Sterling Ruby canvas at Gagosian - and you know I can't resist a good pattern or two.

Tracey Emin at Lehmann Maupin.

Click through for some [IMG HEAVY] coverage from the show this year.

Workshop / Fashionary

Oh my gosh! I'll be teaching my very first fashion illustration workshop this month! I've been busy prepping for it with the awesome guys over at Fashionary, it's one day only and it's gonna be awesome and friendly and so much fun so you should come join us. Read on below to find out how.

The workshop goes on for 2 sessions. From 28th March, 2:00-2:45pm by Kitty N. Wong (Hey, that's me!), 4:00-4:45pm by Vikki Yau, at Pageone Harbour City. Fashionary Illustration Workshop is now available for register at Pageone Harbour City store for FREE with HK$300 purchase (at least one Fashionary product must be included) at Page One Harbour City store.

Each participant will receive a Fashionary giftset with the template paper, pencil and eraser and all the drawings materials will be provided, so get your butt down to Page One to register and just bring your beautiful self on March 28 ready to get drawing!

I'll be showing all my lovely students how to draw this fantastic MSGM multi-coloured fur coat from their FW 2015 collection, the workshop will be really hands-on so you'll all learn how to render fur and draw a beautiful feminine face using gouache watercolour and pencil.

A video posted by fashionary (@fashionary) on Mar 4, 2015 at 7:08am PST

There are still a spots left in both of the sessions so GET YOUR BUTT down to the Page One store in Harbour City TST and register! Hope to see you all there! xx

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Painting / Botanist

The Unhappy Botanist, 2015.
Gouache, acrylic, pencil and paper collage.
39cm x 54cm

I always paint ladies but I'm really into the idea of painting some feminine fellas these days. I like how this portrait turned out a little bit androgynous. I was also inspired by this photo and from the anthurium flowers I took home after attending 'poon choi', a traditional Chinese New Year eating feast, at my friend's home village. Those flowers with their phallic baby corn stems always reminds me of Japanese minimalism in the 80's - my mom had all those flower arranging books in our basement.

And now let us zoom up and in enjoy his chic and high as a kite expression for a second (that fitting description thanks to DK!).

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Recent Work / Chow Sang Sang - Part I

A few months ago I got to work on a super exciting project for Chow Sang Sang, a huge jewelry company here in Hong Kong. They asked me to illustrate the invitation for their 80th Anniversary Event.

The marketing manager for the company had seen my work through a mutual contact's social media and reached out to me. Yay, finally my hours of aimless internetting are paying off - MOMMMMMM!

The idea was to showcase their new line by using an illustrated model and photos of the real jewelry. This would also give the client more flexibility if they wanted to change up the pieces to be featured. 

Here are the initial pencil roughs for the project, I really liked the last sketch with the gemstone background, but the client ended up going with Sketch A with a more mature vibe that's more in line with their market and with a more versatile single colour background.

And good thing as the event ended up having to be reorganized - as the original event was centered around a yellow diamond that was being flown in especially for the event but due to traffic restrictions from Occupy Central (solidarity!) the date and theme had to be changed. So pretty white pearls it was instead.

Close up of the hand-drawn logo I did for the event illustration. I love hand drawing logos and lettering for illustrations that I make, it's a small detail that really unifies the image - plus picking fonts is literally the bane of my existence.

This was such an amazing project to work on, thanks so much to Chow Sang Sang and their amazing team for their support! And I hope their guest really enjoyed opening up this lovely piece of mail with my illustrated girl in it.

Stay tuned for Part II of my collaboration with Chow Sang Sang! That blog post is coming up next week.

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Sketches / Prada Baby

Prada Baby, 2015.

First day back at the desk, an one afternoon sketch to help me get back into the swing of things. Inspired by the Sasha Pivovarova for Prada ad. I'm just such a fan of drawing shoes and little animals.

Off to make dinner now, sooo hungry!

2014 in Review

2014 in review.

1. Marilyn
2. Tod's / For Bagaholic Boy.
3. The Beermaid / For Hong Kong Tatler.
4. Vincent Van Girl
5. Fashion Week / For Lane Crawford.
6. Robert Mapplethorpe / Sketched on my London trip at the Tate Modern.
7. R.S.V.P. / For Hong Kong Tatler.
8. Go Places / Make Things
9. Nicole / For NIC416.com. Logo design for a friend's upcoming new website.
10. 5 Days in Tokyo / Shop the sticker + postcard set on Etsy.
11. Live sketches for Everybody Labo / The Hong Kong based skincare brand asked me to personalize the product labels for their media guests at their re-launch event with some live portraits. Check out some photos of the day here, and the bottles here and here.
12. Pradasphere / Shop the prints on Etsy.

Ahhhhhhh. Hi! My name is Kitty and I'm a 27 year old who can't understand the concept of time.
In my head in no way can it be 2015, that feels way too far into the future I remember exactly how January 2014 felt and it for sure doesn't feel like 365 days ago. "Where did this year go?" doesn't even begin to describe my sense of time diaspora.

So, for some concrete proof that I didn't spend all year looking at Instagrams of dogs in bed it's fun to look back on all the work I made this year. Did I get better? I definitely painted less and started to rely more on the quick ballpoint pen sketches which I then coloured digitally. I guess that's what style is, just something you end up doing out of habit. You do it more and more and become more confident at it and it's a positive feedback loop. 

Maybe it's because I did more traveling this year (yay!) but I remember each month so clearly, which is a nice feeling because usually when I look back on the year it's all one giant blur. Having something special to look forward to and remember every few months really gives a nice sense of division to the year.

The only thing I really regret is not having made one single Intro to Fashion History comic all year, it's a project I kept meaning to do but it's so easy to put off personal projects, especially if they take a bit of planning and researching. I'm definitely going to have to change that in 2015.

How was your 2014? Did it zoom by for you as well? Are you also a refugee of 2014 floating across the oceans of time waiting for the right to land in the land of opportunity of 2015? I wanna hear all about it!