Dove Love Your Hair Sketching Event

Dove is a brand I've proudly used for as long as I can remember so I was excited when they asked me to live-sketch their Love Your Hair event this week. This event was kicking off their campaign to empower women to love their hair so I decided for very first time at a live-sketching event to wear my natural curls! This may not seam like a big deal but I was genuinely nervous about it and its turns out I'm not the only one who has been conditioned to feel this way about their hair. At the event there was a discussion panel of influencers and every single woman spoke about the pressure to straighten, smooth, cut or tame her hair to be "professional" or socially acceptable. After listening to the discussion, which immediately put me at ease with my choice to go naturally curly, the panels lone male influencer celebrity hairstylist Mark Townsend came right up to me to say he was eyeing my gorgeous curls throughout the whole talk and had to know how I achieved them! I know Dove is all about making a woman feel good in their own skin but this was crazy, I was on cloud nine.

Since the event was about loving your hair the team at Dove asked me for sketch concepts that truly focused on hair. I presented a few ideas and the one we agreed upon was to color and finish the hair in the illustration only. I still drew full fashion illustrations of each guests look for the day but only in pencil, then rendered the hair and only the hair in color. Another unique element to this event and these custom illustrations was that I also included the New York skyline as a background to reflect the event which was in the penthouse suite atop Nomo Soho with sweeping views of the city. To make the illustrations consistent, and in the interest of saving time, as I have to move very quickly when live-sketching parties, I printed and cut-out the skyline and made myself a stencil (shown above with the actual city skyline behind it.) Once I finished each fashion illustration I placed the stencil over it and added a contour of the skyline. The sketches came out great and both the guests and the Dove team were thrilled with them. Everyone loved not only their hair, but their hair sketches as well!  

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