This Week, I have been very busy after creating some work for my sketch book, for the unit “Melting Pot” I have been looking at Africa and there woven beaded work, that has come to Europe through various trades from travellers. During lectures, we have been creating sketches from our imagery and research. I personally hated them at first, the rough lines, the imperfect proportions. I wanted to spend longer then five minutes on each drawing. After creating an entire page of sketches, I started to let go and relax and thats when I found I could design so many different styles. I actually started to enjoy the quick rough sketches that portray a basic idea that could be later developed. It started to love the quirky little designs, I experimented with using pens, pencils and liners to draw my sketches. I also want to try watercolours and paints to create quick designs.

We then moved onto technical drawings. Completely different to rough sketches. Now your not allowed to be imperfect or rough. Now you have to be perfect with perfect proportions. I felt like I was going round in circles, one moment it doesn’t need to be perfect and the next it does. Oh, Fashion Design, how I love you! I enjoyed technical drawing, we had to create a technical drawing for the jacket or item of clothing we were wearing. As I love to go for comfort, I had a Nightmare Before Christmas Fleece with embroidered imagery on it. I had to draw all the stitches onto my  Technical Drawing including the embroidery! But I finally realised how much work actually went into the clothes I wore, yes I know that they are designed and sewn together, but you don’t realise how much design and stitching go into the garment until you break it down. I think I will improve on my Technical drawings over time as I practise it more, as sometimes I did have the proportions perfect.

Finally I went onto Fashion Illustration. By far my favourite area of design. Although I haven’t drawn my own croquet since GCSE, I had fallen out of practise, but after experimenting with the 9 head technique and my own style of drawing which was highly inspired by anime and manga, a Japanese stylised graphic. Which I was obsessed with during secondary school, I would spend every evening drawing new anime characters. I then wanted my illustrations to show me as a person, so I thought about what bought me into fashion designing. I’ll be honest it was a doll when I was a kid. A Bratz Doll to be precise. I loved there eyes, that reminded me so much of anime eyes, there odd body shapes, long legs, big heads and feet. These were the biggest fashion doll on the market, (Battling with barbie and mattel who released there own fashion doll soon after called my scene). They were beautiful and had so many unique styles, they taught me that I can be confident in what I wear, because every ones different. Each doll, had its own personality and style unlike the barbie doll. I grew up, with the love for being unique in my own style and being confident in myself as well as loving cartoons, Anime, games and Bratz dolls. I wanted to incorporate that into my fashion illustration and came up with these designs for a croquis.