Artsy stuff
Mar. 11th, 2014 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mekyriaI like to draw and did a lot of drawing when I was in high school. I even graduated with arthistory/drawing as an offciail course and considered going to artschool. I chose to do psychology instead. I kept on doodling in the margins of my notebooks and I got to use some creative juices on my costuming website (RIP 2001-2013).
I have always seen myself as more of an illustrative artist: strong lines, I love ink and watercolor. Something about the perceived strongness in ink black lines combined with the fluid quality of watercolor and festive feel of bright colors intrigues me. For my first costuming book in 2007 I made black and white line drawings, with the intention of coloring them some day.
I gave myself a deadline: I want to put the new costuming book up for sale in April, meaning that a lot of work needs to be done. I revisited the text (lots of changes), added new chapters (in practice wear and troupe costuming for example). And I am making new artwork! The weird thing is that I have improved slightly in the past years, despite not practicing much. I am getting better in sketching the female form and am more comfortable with positioning the body at angles. This freedom in modeling makes it easier to create the many sketches that I need for this book. I am still not very good at faces and hands, but practice makes perfect :-)
I wanted to share one of the first images for the new book. This one will replace the previous drawing of 'Turkish style costuming' which showed the older type of Turkish costume. Images from the book from 2007:
This is the most recent image that I've done, more to come in the next couple of weeks:
I'm adding drawings of dancers of color, girls and older women, pregnant dancers, different sizes and male dancers. However, for display purposes a standard mannequin is easier. I also have a couple of drawings that are more like artwork then illustrative but I wonder if people who use this book need to see this diversity or are better off with standard drawings. What type of images would you like to see in a costuming book, besides the traditional how-to tutorial images of patterns and explanation of how to construct items?
I have always seen myself as more of an illustrative artist: strong lines, I love ink and watercolor. Something about the perceived strongness in ink black lines combined with the fluid quality of watercolor and festive feel of bright colors intrigues me. For my first costuming book in 2007 I made black and white line drawings, with the intention of coloring them some day.
I gave myself a deadline: I want to put the new costuming book up for sale in April, meaning that a lot of work needs to be done. I revisited the text (lots of changes), added new chapters (in practice wear and troupe costuming for example). And I am making new artwork! The weird thing is that I have improved slightly in the past years, despite not practicing much. I am getting better in sketching the female form and am more comfortable with positioning the body at angles. This freedom in modeling makes it easier to create the many sketches that I need for this book. I am still not very good at faces and hands, but practice makes perfect :-)
I wanted to share one of the first images for the new book. This one will replace the previous drawing of 'Turkish style costuming' which showed the older type of Turkish costume. Images from the book from 2007:
This is the most recent image that I've done, more to come in the next couple of weeks:
I'm adding drawings of dancers of color, girls and older women, pregnant dancers, different sizes and male dancers. However, for display purposes a standard mannequin is easier. I also have a couple of drawings that are more like artwork then illustrative but I wonder if people who use this book need to see this diversity or are better off with standard drawings. What type of images would you like to see in a costuming book, besides the traditional how-to tutorial images of patterns and explanation of how to construct items?
