I sat in the car in a car park of a supermarket and tried to capture the people as they went for their weekend shop. They were in a hurry so I had very little time to get enough information. As it was fashion I used coloured pencils which slowed the process of recording.
Maybe it will be easier in a library or shopping centre where it's warmer and they will take their coats off....
This time I used a fountain pen and made notes about the colour of the clothing. I like these drawings better, they're both clearer and more interesting however they're still mainly of people in coats ( in the library on the left and a department store on the right)
Video here of fashion illustrator Sue Dray drawing - I was looking online for inspiration.
I drew my parents at home.
Then decided that I couldn't keep just making new drawings and I had to work with the information that I had gathered. I went back to my sketchbook.
I started making simple drawings, almost diagrams, of the people who were most interesting from my original sketches. Then, inspired by the fashion illustrations I had seen online, I doodled some different poses and costumes.
More ideas. I moved on to cutting shapes from a clothes catalogue and adding figures. The lady in the red shawl was inspired by one of my sketchbook figures, The lady in black was playing with the potential of cut out clothes.
More experiments. First using the original models and messing with their clothes, then adding to a cutout. The idea maybe has potential but is taking me away from my original research.
Moving even further away I tried laying real clothes on a paper background which caused much interest amongst my pets.
I drew a head on my clothes assemblage using oil pastel
Then with ink and a brush. Found it difficult to make the set up look interesting or aspirational so I drew and cut out a head.
Better when the face was drawn in ink.
and the whole set up was hung from a door.
In my original drawings the figure that stood out was a large lady in a grey dress. She dressed simply but looked amazing because of the way she held herself and the confidence that she exuded.
The original sketch, on the left didn't do her justice and I had several attempts to capture her in my sketchbook working from my original impressions. Following on from the other studies I drew her again.
I cut two squares of grey from a magazine, stuck them in my sketchbook and drew over them. It hasn't worked as well as I'd hoped, maybe the squares were too small or the idea was too contrived. I repeated it without the collage but aiming for a pose more suited to a fashion illustration without changing her body shape.
This is a pictorial representation of her attitude. She didn't physically hold this pose but I think that this was in her brain.
Once I got started I think that I had too much fun with this exercise. It was interesting to focus on clothes, when I usually draw people I get too involved in their faces. I also felt safer drawing clothes because I felt that the people wearing them wouldn't be cross if they didn't like what they saw. The work that I have made is still very descriptive, fashion illustration is more fantastical and leaves a lot more to the imagination than I have. I go life drawing as often as I can but it would be so much nicer to draw clothed models for a change.
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