Tavi Time!

I am hooked on Style Rookie, the blog of quirky thirteen year old student-by-day, fashion extraordinaire-by-night Tavi Gevinson. She's hilarious, smart, worships the same designer's I do, and obviously has a future as a stylist....editor...designer...really just about anything. Tavi debuted a leopard dress from Rodarte's Target collection and posted another from their Spring 07 RTW line and I had to sketch them!

Rock solid advice

These illustrations by Jessica Gonacha drew me in (ha) but her posts are so inspiring! Check her out over on PecanNoot !

Back in business!

Hi there! I'm back....just busier than ever, which is good of course, but I've been slacking on this front! A few things I've been working on lately. These are all done in Prismacolor markers with ink and some Pentel pen and prisma color pencils.



Sketch night at Society of Illustrators



Dior leopard dress from Fall '09



Based on blogger Jane Aldridge from Sea of Shoes but I've changed it up a little :)

Bye, see you much sooner next time!

California Love

We're leaving in 2 days for a much need vacation, flying into LA and driving up the lovely PCH1 to San Fransisco. (This also explains the lack of posting- planning takes lots of browsing every website in every city, nook and cranny being visited!) I am SO excited for the following.....

Eating at, and viewing the current art installation at above Royal T cafe, unfortunately missing this Hello Kitty 35th bday exhibit by 3 days!!!!

It makes me and hello kitty cry....

my photo of Tom Sachs sculpture in NY

pic via Lance Bangs, from We Love You So

Seeing Where the Wild Things Are!!!!!! I am an enormous Maurice Sendak fan, not to mention Jonze, and got to see both speak at the MoMA about the film and see the debut of Jonze and Lance Bangs documentary, Tell them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak which premiered on HBO tonight- and I HIGHLY recommend!!! I cried and we all gave him a standing ovation.

that's right...just a casual chat with Sendak and Jonze...

Visting printing goody shop little otsu in San Fransisco and getting this Apak panda card!

Seeing this Irving Penn exhibition at the Getty museum

picture via The Getty

Going to the brand new giant Japanese mall, New People and visiting the Baby the Stars Shine Bright boutique...love the gothic lolita look and hope the mall will be filled with cute stationery/food/accessories!

AAAA!!! I had to amend this post because I'm most super SUPER excited about finally seeing Katy, of Daughter Earth fame, after wayyy too long!! yay!

quilt via Daughter Earth's Etsy site

See you soon!

A Good Harvest!

This past weekend I was lucky enough to wander on just the right street in Korea town - in the middle of Korean harvest day parade no less!- and stumbled upon the most amazing shop, um, called "The Hello Kitty Shop" BUT WAIT!! This is not a Hello Kitty post - Why I'm obsessed with this store is for the beautifully illustrated Korean stationery lines they carry. I discovered whimsical fairy tale illustrator, Kim Minji, who has series of both Alice in Wonderland and The Little Prince and paints in washy watercolors.

all pictures via Kim Minji

Then!!! All the fashion illustration stationery I could ever dream of! The stickers with young red riding hood-looking girls saying silly phrases (quite reminiscent of Yoshitomo Nara's work) are by a company Pony Brown, and you can see more of their line here at Cotton Candy Island-soooo cute!

These 2 large sheets- titled "m.ray's boyish look style" and "Trend Report from Tanya" say "written and illustrated by okun", but I can't find anything on this illustrator- any suggestions are welcome!

The last find- a set of 2 little notebooks with the cutest outfits front and back! Same story with the illustrator here- in the corner it says "illust by RUA" but no luck in searches.

They also had great tote bags- similar to the Coach ones I blogged about...maybe next time....

Go figure!

On the Society of Illustrators main page I always see a sidebar advertising their Jazz and Sketch night, and while it sounded intriguing, those things can be kind of intimidating and I didn't go out of my way to see what it was all about. Finally, probably out of frustration of wanting better subjects than my cats, I decided to check it out, why not? And absolutely loved it. The drawing venue feels like a cozy parlour, a totally relaxed and relaxing atmosphere -a live band plays, you can drink wine, and it's completely non judgemental. The Society has it every Tues and Thurs; I will definitely be going back- you should stop by!


picture via Society of Illustrators



my sketches from last night using ink

I'm the dummy...

I made this today inspired by the graphic simpleness of the clean type and colors of the "Make do and Mend" and "Keep Calm" posters ...mine has a calendar on it as well, left out here, as a countdown to my dummy deadline because it WILL get finished!!!!!

Sea Jane take over the fashion world

Recently I started reading a little blog (ha!) called Sea of Shoes and Jane, the 17 year old blogger, is by far the coolest high schooler, um, ever. Suddenly she's everywhere- from Vogue to a collaboration with Urban Outfitters. Why am I obsessed? First she's from Texas :) Second, she loves Tokyo and takes amazing photos so I can drool until I can finally go for myself one day, and thirdly for the absolutely gorgeous clothing pornography that flows from her site daily! Jane has my dream closet and I love how she puts things together. The pics of her walking down a random gravel-ly road in Texas in a black cocoon top and 5" Marni's made me laugh out loud because, really, people must stare at her with gaping mouths, this girl sticks out so much there! Two of my favorite fashion illustrator's have drawn her....maybe I should try next....


Igor + Andre

Paperfashion

Coney Island baby

Hi! Hope you had a wonderful weekend. I went to the Coney Island Aquarium for the first time and loved it! We walked along the boardwalk eating chocolate and vanilla twist softserve and people watching. Sirenfest was going on and Built to Spill played while fireworks went off. It was the best summer day - especially considering it was the first weekend here that actually felt like summer!

Beard Papa

the only lil guy who stayed still long enough to not come out blurry!

Wonder wheel and boardwalk

Shark!

these have to be the coolest sea creatures

Free People Contest

Free People recently had a Fashion Illustration contest that I entered and the results were really awesome. Here's the winning entry and a few other great illustrations-I think almost everyone went with the purple dress- check them all out on Flickr.

Kathryn Rodgers- the winner, check out her blog, Paper Fashion - she's even illustrated Susie Bubble, who I am a HUGE fan of!

Kristine Fernandez

Sonni Aun

Elizabeth Savanella

Lucy Chiu

Kat Catanakis

Miozotis Moloon

Inky play

A few weeks ago our class was asking illustrator Brian Floca what materials he used and he talked about Japanese nibs. I've always been curious and when another student tried them out for her final project with nice results I was encouraged. I love the thick and thin flow-y lines you get, but it's definitely harder to use than a pen and sporadically the metal scratches, ink erupts and creates sprinkles on the page. Lovely.