Kittys Drawings

Hi All!

The Drawing Salon this week was all about legs and learning how to use paint markers – or whatever they’re called – those Copic pens.  I bought 5 off eBay which arrived just in time. A grey, a skin tone, a colourless blender and two more contrasting shades, a pink and a green.

Legs are really fun to draw because you can make them so shapely. We practiced first on some bleed-proof paper.

Then onto the main drawing – A fairly tricky pose, especially with the sneaky addition of those hands. And the way the leg twists is an awkward one to capture.

I really got into it though, and I’m loving using natural media again. The pens are interesting – they behaved very differently on the two papers. The blender will take a bit of learning too. I also used Derwent watercolour pencils, which when mixed with the pens can give a lot of flexibility with colour mixing and textures. Lots to explore there!
Some detail…

Annnnd thats all for now. On the weekend I will be heading to the Love Vintage fair – most likely on Sunday so if you see me – say Hi! Other plans are a secret for now but I may have some cool pics for you next week. And if I get a chance, I will photograph the latest dress I finished. The coat is being worked on – I’ve underlined it now with my silk organza. When I start putting some seams together, I might even be able to show you.

Anyways, time to go!
Ciao!

Hello All!!
This week’s work is finished and also I have my homework from the faces class. This is the profile view and Angie’s tips helped again, breaking the face down into easy proportions and points of reference.

This week we did hands – another tricky subject, one where practice counts above all! And “fashion” hands are not normal hands – noooo – they have to be stretched and thinned, stretched and thinned, until they’re pretty much alien looking. Because the longer you look at hands, the weirder they become. It’s true – its like the visual equivalent of saying a word so many times it stops sounding like a word at all.

Some practice ones to warm up – and a close up of the just the hands (super hard!).

Then a full figure…

I liked this exercise – how cool is the model’s pose? No one stands like THAT in real life!

Anyways, onto other things…
This week has been busy – I’ve not had a chance to sew since the weekend and probably won’t get a chance to again til Friday evening. I am seriously considering taking a week off work to just do HEAPS of sewing and drawing. A “working” holiday of sorts.
Till soon…

Hi Everyone

Oh look – another post so soon! Yep – I went to my fashion illustration class yesterday night and I’m here to show you the results.

This week we did faces. The tasks we were set were the face in profile, three quarter and front on view. The profile drawing is homework – I better get cracking!

Angie taught us the easy way of lining up the features of the face and tips on what is aesthetically pleasing and what isn’t.

I liked drawing on the coloured paper and using white pencil to add highlights.

Other news: Thanks for all your responses on my last post! I will work on the belt tutorial this weekend and get that up for you then. The lovely Cation Designs requested some pics of the sleeve construction so I will add those to the post too. I haven’t forgotten your Blogging With Cats award either and I am gathering evidence of the fuzz-bum’s’ ways of “assisting” my projects. If only I could capture Boofy chewing on the hanging threads of my coat muslin. Yes – you read that right.

We also took a trip to Ballarat on the weekend (about 1.5 hours by train outside of Melbourne for my international visitors). Much treasure was found! I bought a 60′s girdle for a mere $15….4 pairs of amazing vintage seamed stockings, brand new in their box for $4 a pair, and 4 pieces of fabric for $20! The Mr found some decorative pieces to go on our future dining table – some old glass jars, a set of nesting dolls (weird looking they are) and an old fire extinguisher! Hehe…THAT won’t be going on the table but it looks nice by our antique meat safe.
The interior of our house is coming along nicely. We’re slowly working our way upstairs.  Dad is making us an amazing 2.7m solid Jarrah dining table that will comfortably seat 10. We plan on getting some Eames replica chairs to go with (can’t afford the real ones unfortunately) and then moving all the sofas and TV upstairs. That will then become the living room….Not sure what we’ll do about my current desk which is upstairs – and then it’s onto the bedroom on the third floor. And somewhere amongst all that I’ll have to sort out a proper sewing space….

Oh and back to Ballarat (that was a tangent sorry!) – while we were leaving our accommodation on Sunday, a couple pulled up their car next to us on the footpath and the lady jumped out….I thought she might want directions or something (We’d seen the pair at one of the antique stores the day before)…But instead she hands me a leaflet explaining that they were meant to be going to High Tea at the Craigs Royal that afternoon, but their flight back to Sydney was to leave soon and they weren’t going to make it so would we like to take the booking instead?? WOW – How nice of them!! How could I refuse? Hehehe. I ought to pay it forward for someone else I think. And the High Tea was great – the perfect end to the trip. After that we picked up our goodies and caught the train back home. I did a bit of Googling too and discovered who the couple were….A bit stalkerish?? I will be calling them to thank them very soon.

Anyways, enough rambling, I better get to bed.
See you all on the weekend!

Hi!

Yep – for the first time THIS YEAR I have some drawings for you……

My first Drawing Salon class was last night and it was awesome I’m clearly a bit rusty but Angie taught us some cool techniques, the best one being how to ensure you don’t run out of room for your drawing on the page. Draw the feet in after you’ve positioned the head and torso – Der!!! It makes so much sense.

The proportions are so much easier to work out after that.

These two figures are a result of learning to draw a pose with weight evenly distributed and then without. Balance is crucial otherwise the figure looks like it will tip over.

I’ve still got a lot to learn about cleaning my lines up and not overworking it. Legs can be tricky too! Get them wrong and it’s so so bad – but if you get it right, it can make your illustration. Keep working ’til you have the skill to express form like Gianfranco Ferrè…Ha!!

Next week we’re learning faces!

On sewing news – still editing pics…I’ve been busy! Blog post for the amazing green polka dot dress coming soon.
Also – how cold is Melbourne right now? Brrr!! It’s been raining for the past two days and barely made it above 12C – my kinda weather!!

Till soon…

Hey!

Guess what!

I have a new job!!!!

YAY!

I start at the beginning of September – similar kind of work – still in food packaging…..but now I’ll be out east instead of north….and lots more opportunities in the new place (I hope!). It’s going to be a super fast paced role, servicing a very high profile client in their head office.

So that is what was special about the grey sheath dress in my last post – it was what I wore to my first interview with my new employers.

That’s all I got for you today. I finished a dress – but I’m not taking photos cos today is a bludge day and I can’t be bothered getting dressed up and doing my hair etc when I don’t plan on going out. Heh. I’ve also been drawing…a few crappy sketches. I’m really out of practice with sketching.  Here is one just so I don’t have a words only post.

Till soon guys! I’m off to go figure out THIS pattern – make it smaller, and squish the skirt onto the small amount of fabric I have. I’m going to see if I can use parts of another pattern where its a gored skirt not a full circle. Should still have enough swish and hopefully be more economical on fabric.

Hi All!

It’s been a while since I did some sketches! So it was rather strange to find myself in a sketching mood one afternoon at work (!!)….The ConceptArt CHOW topic for last week was a snowmancer or some-such. I didn’t really have many designs on actually entering but it did get me thinking about bears. Polar bears.

Animals I am more comfortable sketching. I find I can draw their movement so much better.

The one on the bottom right’s head – errgh…its a bit misshapen.

Other news….I’ve got quite a few modeling gigs happening thanks to Nicole over at Circa Vintage. Next week I will be participating in the showcase of some of the Darnell collection for an event called Dreaming of Chanel which will be taking place at the fabulous Cranlana in Toorak.

Then in May we will have the Melbourne Vintage Fair held at the Showgrounds and I’ll be strutting my stuff there too. Yay!!

Today I got my hair cut again – a ever so slightly different style than my usual and I’m also back to the bright red. I must get the Mr to take some photos of my latest sewing projects while it’s still looking awesome straight from the salon. I’m a bit behind on showing you my achievements! And I’ve got so many new ideas and things I want to make I’m not sure what to start first. Actually, I change my mind every day. If only I could have ALL the hours of the working day at my disposal.

Well, must get back to the sewing machine. And then the Wacom tablet ….(there’s drawings in the works too).

Oh and don’t forget my GIVEAWAY – you have one more week to enter!!

Seeyas!

Hi All

Slackie blogger is back. Been a bit of a hectic week here at home and also we’ve been SHAPED. How can that be when we’ve got a 70/70GB download limit??? Well I’m sure downloading 50 or so gigs of files won’t help *ahem*…so I’m posting in those rare few hours of awake-ness before 12pm on a weekend ehehe.

This week’s life drawing we were focusing on the head and how we shouldn’t treat it any differently to how we draw the rest of the body. It can be hard trying to draw a face quickly while disassociating yourself from the fact it’s a face and trying to get all the features accurate. We were told not to aim for a likeness, just DRAW.
And draw I did

So here’s the results…A bit blah but I like the last one. Usual mix of quick warm ups, contours and then the longer poses at the end.

And this time Boof wanted to check out what was going on. This photo is better of the drawing too – less blurry! I SUCK at photography ehehe.