Sometimes you need to start over fresh. There's no shame in it. Why waste effort picking away at something you could just re-do in half the time? Other times, though, you'll need to bite the bullet and push through. Knowing which one of these to commit to is part of being a productive artist. I've talked about it before and I'll repeat until I'm blue in the face. It's a gamechanger. Now that that's out of the way...let me start this by saying I wanted to drop this piece like a cheap vase. Even worse? This was one of my favorite sketches in my sketch batch. Talk about artistic whiplash. It didn't help I was winging the color scheme and many of the supporting details (a habit I've developed since color theory is one of my strongest skills). I had a vague idea I wanted blue and gold, that I wanted everything fancy and dream-like...and that was about it. For once, my guesswork backfired and made me fudge around more than normal. This doesn't happen often -- I've winged crazier pieces than this -- but it cost me several hours that could've been saved if I fleshed out the draft stages better. This was a good reminder of how badly a piece can backfire if you don't have the basics down. I thought of throwing my hands up in the air and outright moving on to another sketch, but something about this one told me to keep going. 'Make it work' is a phrase made famous from Project Runway and one I've adopted. It's a saying that tells you to work with your mistakes and find a way out of the hedgemaze you've built for yourself. I might just have to do a post on all my personal quotes one of these days. (If you're curious about other pieces I've done, check out my recent post on the progress of 'Yasar'.)
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Tl;dr: fashion is life. Long version: sometimes it's hard to believe I went from a gangly kid who religiously wore the same grey hoodie, old sneakers and side-braid to a woman who experiments with nearly every look. It's like a Pokemon evolution, only a lot slower. When I really think about it, though? It makes perfect sense. I had my time to be awkward (and sometimes outright disdainful) of how I look. I had the space to explore what I liked, what I didn't like and what I didn't quite feel ready to try out. It's the same logic around any unpleasant or disappointing experience: as Ava DuVernay likes to say, "It's not happening to you, it's happening for you." That hurdle of mine is well over and done with. Life is just too short to not celebrate your appearance. In the future I might just do a fashion retrospect, with each drawing representing where I was at major turning points (young child, teenager, young adult). For now... I compose my looks not unlike how I compose my paintings. I take into account the theme, such as cute casual or 80's nostalgia. I make sure colors and patterns are balanced. Got a lot of warm? Contrast it with something cool. Got a patterned top or leggings? Pair it with something simpler. It's hard to even come up with a name for my style, because I love to dabble in everything. Magical chic? Contemporary nostalgia? Flowery fatale? These are starting to sound like music genres. I'm not complaining. the term boho can go to hell, though. even though many of my looks would technically fall under that category in fashion SEO, I hate that term with a fiery passion Why did it take me this long to embrace the utter power of the tunic dress? Seriously, come to my TED Talk. Let me tell you about how easy it is to mix and match these wonderful things, with the big fat bonus of skipping a step (shirt + pants). I had a tunic dress or two back in high school, but had no idea how to wear them. I'd actually tuck the damn things into my jeans so I wouldn't look 'weird'. There goes the point!!!
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AuthorHere I post WIPs, sketches, speedpaints, thumbnails and anything else thrown into the veritable stew of artistic process. Archives
January 2021
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AboutCommercial illustrator and designer currently available for short-term and long-term freelance work.
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