Live-Sketching at NYFW with Samsung Galaxy

This past New York Fashion Week I had the opportunity to try something new, sketching on a tablet. A Samsung Galaxy Note Pro tablet to be exact. As a sponsor of NYFW, Samsung had a space in the main lobby and I was hired to live-sketch fashion illustrations of fashion week attendees who passed through the Samsung lounge.

Live-sketching NYFW attendees is great, since even with this crazy winter "polar-vortex" people still tend to dress to impress for shows and aren't donning the typical head-to-toe black typically found at most New York events. I was able to really experiment with tablet fashion illustration, rendering a variety of furs, leathers, knits, prints and even sheers all in an array of colors and styles.

To be honest I was really nervous to try sketching on a tablet. I'd never done it before and wasn't sure if I'd be able to figure it out and achieve the look I wanted with only a stylist pen, tablet screen and no actual art tools. To my surprise though it was very user friendly and I got the hang of it pretty quickly. (I also had Samsung experts there to answer any questions, which was helpful.) The "S pen" has such a fine point and the screen is so touch-sensitive that the level of detail and precision you can achieve is pretty incredible, much like an actual pen or pencil. The Note Pro is very lightweight and has a large paper-sized 12.2-inch screen. Lastly, it was especially great for live-sketching since I could email jpegs of the illustrations directly to the people I was sketching, like Bella shown here (above) from Elle Magazine. I enjoyed drawing on the Galaxy Note Pro so much that I'm now considering purchasing one for more digital drawing.

(Top photo by Gloria Chik and fashion illustrations by Brooke Hagel.)