Portfolio Mood Board

Since I've been on a little mood board/inspiration kick this week I thought I'd share a mood board from my product design portfolio with you. For nearly four years I was the Designer of a Brand Development Department. One of my job responsibilities was to create seasonal trend boards for brand managers, editors, retailers, and licensees.

Ballet Dreams is a board I made to inspire a teen bedding collection. In person the board measured about 2' x 3' and was three dimensional, but it's hard to tell in the photo. Maybe this board will motivate you to pull some looks together and find fabrics, colors, and images that inspire you.

All the fabrics used on the boards were purchased at Mood Fabrics. Unfortunately I made this a while ago and do not have much credit information for the images, I am sorry. Top left: Michael Kors bathing suit, Top right: Balenciaga, Bottom right: Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker ad.

Courthouse Catherine

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of serving jury duty. I had to wake up super early, head down to Centre Street in lower Manhattan, then spend a day being questioned by lawyers and a second day sitting around waiting to be released. (<-Yay, no more jury duty for 6 years!) Although serving jury duty is not thrilling, it was exciting to walk into this Supreme Court landmark and feel like I was walking into a movie or the set of Law and Order.

Every time I pasted through these giant pillars I thought about the shading on my Catherine illustration. Is that strange? Probably, but then again, the classic columns of the courthouse and design of her gown do have the same Grecian inspiration source.

Lovely List: Design Ideas

Design inspiration can come from anywhere and anything. A blank piece of white paper and a pencil can be very daunting, sometimes it really helps to have a specific theme or inspiration source. I've assembled a list for you of possible design ideas to work from. (I actually LOVE making lists. There's so much satisfaction in checking something off a list!) Some of these were assignments of mine from college (FIT) and others I just came up and think could be fun.

• A collection inspired by costume history. Dig deep, how about a contemporary Egyptian inspired collection?
• Design a wardrobe for your favorite character from a book, film, television show, etc.
• Design a concert wardrobe for your favorite singer.
• Pick 2 opposing looks or ideas and meld them together, for example: Urban Quaker, Athletic Granny, Socialite Nun, or Biker Ballerina.
• Your favorite childhood outfit. I know you know the one! Why not use it as inspiration?
• Pick a country or a favorite vacation spot and google image your way to an inspired collection. Why not research Bali, Morocco, Israel or Switzerland and see what inspiration you may find.
• Chose a designer and a theme and design a collection as though you've just been hired as their head designer. One of my favorite projects from college is a collection I designed for "Bob Mackie inspired by Kabuki Couture".
• Create a mood board. Either base it around a theme, with one of the ideas listed above, or create a collection of images or swatches with a similar color scheme, or of papers and textures, like the one I have photographed here or in my previous post.

Design away, and see where the inspiration takes you!

Mood Board

I’m currently taking an online class given by Holly Becker author of Décor 8 and Leslie of Creative Mint. This week’s homework assignment was to create a personal mood board. I’m pretty happy with it, so I thought I’d share it here with you. The photo above is the whole board and below are some close ups I wanted to highlight.

As you’ve probably noticed if your one of my regular readers, I’m currently loving black, white and pink, so those are the colors I decided to work with when developing my board. I thought it was important to have layers of textures so I included: foil printed wallpaper, textured handmade papers, studded black leather, pink tulle, patent leather alligator paper, stingray textured paper, pompom trims, silver metal rimmed tags, and spiral sketchbooks. I really love the juxtaposition of textures like the biker studs and ballerina pink tulle mixed with fashion illustrations and super glam silhouettes!

I also love this black and white photo! In real life I’m a curly girl, the default photo I have on this blog is just the result of a great blow out, my hair doesn't really look like that on a daily basis! So I’ve always gravitated towards images and art with curls, especially when they’re this bold.

Being an artist, and that a big part of this blog is about my artwork I chose to include some of my illustrations. Most are from my etsy shop, but there’s also this sketch I did of my friends little sister that I’ve always really liked and her casual cool vibe just seemed to fit.

In addition to imagery that I liked I also chose key words that resonate with me, and what I want for this blog and for my life really; fashionable and chic, create and inspire, and fabulous doodles.

Secret Weapons {Part 2}

I received such great feedback last time, so I thought I should open my bag of tricks and share more of my favorite art supplies for tackling fashion illustration. First up; colored pencils. I know there's no big shocker here, but since people have asked I thought I should share with you the brand I prefer, Prismacolor.

In my previous secret weapons post I told you about the importance of cool gray 90%. Other colors I have on heavy rotation are white,blush pink, peach, dark brown, cream, and cinnamon. I try to be delicate with these pencils and store and carry them separate from your markers. A little "tip": if they get banged around a lot then the inner lead breaks and its practically impossible to get a good point on them. I keep my most frequently used colors in my new penguin pencil holder from Duck Drake Studio. After assembling my holiday gift guide I had to have it! It's ceramic with a white matte background and shiny glazed penguin and inside.

Prismacolors are on the soft side, which I like when drawing but the down side is that they need to be constantly sharpened. This brings me to the next vital weapon in my arsinal; the electronic pencil sharpener. After going through a few of them over the years I've settled on this Panasonic battery opperated one. It gives a nice long point and has a good amount of power, especially for being battery operated.

Micron pens are essential for intricate details. They come in a few colors and many sizes but the one I have to replenish the most is the 005 in black. This is a superfine tip, only 0.2mm line width of waterproof pigment ink. I often use this pen to render lace, as you can see here on Audrey II and for line drawings, like my lined ladies.
And last but not least, eyeshadow. Yes, eyeshadow. I have a few different uses for it, but mainly I use it for poufy/curly hair (as on Blair here), fluffy feathers (like the ones here on Marie), and to render fur, which I softy add faint pencil lines to. Unfortunatly I don't have any illustrations handy with fur, but I promise I use it and it works brilliantly. The best shadows to use are the cheapest ones your drugstore has, like Wet'n'wild or N.Y.C. They come in a million shades, can be as cheap as a dollar, and come with the mini spounge tipped applicator wand which is the ideal tool I use to color directly to the paper. I recently did a big cleaning of my apt and threw mine out figuring I'll just buy new the next time I need it. That's why the shadows pictured here are a little fancier that the drugstore ones, but I promise the junkier ones work better. Hope this helps everyone, happy drawing.

Book Time {Part 2}

"Fashion Illustration By Fashion Designers" by Laird Borrelli has been gracing my coffee table since receiving it as a birthday present back in August. I thought it was time to share some of its fun designer sketches with you. This book is a wonderful collection of full color fashion illustrations by sixty of todays top designers. (And as if that wasn't reason enough to love it, the white on white polka dot cover is a lovely compliment to my apartment decor.)

(Bruno Frisoni for Roger Viver "London Event"

Marker pen and colored pencil on paper, April 2006)

"Fashion illustration is a medium in which creative expression can be given free rein and designers can explore ideas before the realities of budgets, fabrics or physics intervene. Designers' sketches reveal inspirations, offering insight into a key, usually invisible, part of the creative process." (Borrelli, cover flap)

(Alexander Terekhov, Ink and watercolor on paper, 2003)

(Gianfranco Ferre, Ink on paper, Haute Couture 1987)