Meagan's Guide to West Village NYC

Best Coffee at Jack's (138 W 10th St)

Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend

Tomo Goes to Paris

Me in Paris below...

More specifically, the Palais Royal!!

I met my beautiful friend Tomo when she began modeling for FIT's fashion illustration block last semester. With a mutual love of art and fashion, and our birthday's being three days apart, it's no wonder we clicked instantly. She has always been so supportive of my artwork. Her suggestion that I start a blog led to Travel Write Draw's inception. This summer, while discussing our travel plans, she mentioned her longing to see Paris for the first time. This homework assignment for Bil Donovan's class proved to be the perfect opportunity to send her there.

Once again we were asked to take class drawings of Tomo and integrate them into a graphic background. The focus of the illustrations were her striped shirt. For me, stripes are synonymous with Paris. I decided to reference my pictures of Paris from a trip a few summers ago. I was immediately struck by Daniel Buren's striped columns in the Palais Royal's courtyard. What better way to counter her horizontal stripes with their graphic verticals?! Since I can't afford to buy her plane ticket, this piece of art will have to do. I adore reminiscing about the city of love. Enjoy!!

A Day with Me at FIT

Cherry Blossoms

YAY it's finally here!! I promised the completed poster design for Joe Denaro's class in the Harajuku Girl post et voila!! We just submitted them this morning and our classroom is exploding with Tokyo fashion, print, and color. The final is 18 x 24 in gouache and colored pencil. I must mention that many of my references were found on http://tokyofashion.com/ which turned out to be an amazing resource. I'm such a lover of street style fashion forecasting.

I thought it would be fun to include images of a time when I was photographed. It was for Insert Magazine, a "Toronto Chinese urban lifestyle magazine" http://www.insertmag.ca/ and I just so happened to be stopped on my walk home from work at Lida Baday. I'm forever flattered and love that there is such an appreciation of different styles from all over the world. Have a great weekend everyone and enjoy!!

Jagged Little Pill

Our latest assignment for Bil Donovan required us to conceptualize an illustration for an article titled Mood-Altering Scarves. The text was pulled from New York Times Fashion Magazine. Julien David, a designer who apprenticed with the likes of Narciso Rodriguez, was about to debut his scarf collection for fall. The theme this season was artificial growth and all about gigantism. We had to showcase his pill scarf in an 'au courant' sort of way while managing to grab the viewers attention. Furthermore, we were limited to a monochromatic color scheme reflecting the fall season.

I've included in this post the final illustration painted in gouache, the rough rendered in colored pencil, and an image of my workspace during the creation of this project. Thought my readers might be interested to see where the creative process takes place. Never imagined I could get so much work done in such a small space :) I just submitted the project this morning and was absolutely blown away by my classmates work. I go to school with some of the most talented young illustrators around!! Too bad the scarf pills are fake, I could use a cold remedy. Hope you're all well and enjoy!!

Here is the link to the actual article from this summer:

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/now-prescribing-mood-altering-scarves/

Femme Fatale

Halloween is fast approaching and all of New York is abuzz with pop-up costume shops on every corner. It might be fair to say that New Yorkers love Halloween as much as they love Thanksgiving or Christmas. That suits me just fine because it also happens to be my favorite holiday. The gory window displays, bags of little chocolate bars, opportunity to play dress-up, what's not to love about Halloween? I chose to post my dynamic drawing project you see above as a tribute to the darkest, most moodiest time of year. Something about the expressions on the girls faces reminds me of film noir femme fatales.

I've included four photographs of the 20 x 30 illustration board to indicate the process I underwent to complete it. We started with an overlay of newsprint with the figures drawn loosely on it. They were then transferred to the board with led. After which we had to construct the figures with sharpie markers, by using our magazine references, and finding only circles, squares, and triangles in their shadows. It took 3 boxes of sharpie markers to complete this project. I don't think I stopped seeing geometric shapes in everything I looked at for days after it was completed. This was the first major project I did at FIT. Nice to see how far I've come. Enjoy!!

Harajuku Girls...

you got the wicked style. I like the way that you are, I am your biggest fan. - Gwen Stefani

For the last three weeks, my fashion illustration block has been preparing a poster design for an upcoming Japanese fashion show. Since the show will be featuring both the traditional Yukata kimono fashion, alongside the contemporary subculture Harajuku style, so too must our posters. Our incredible professor, Joe Denaro, has been coaxing our models every Friday into wearing the most outrageous ensembles (wigs, tutus, you name it) in order to inspire our class with ideas.

Coincidentally, the Museum at FIT happens to be showcasing an exhibit titled Japanese Fashion Now. We were brought there for further creative reference. I thought this post would be a fun opportunity to showcase the process of a typical assignment in our program. So much work goes on behind the scenes of each final piece you see here. If you happen to live in New York, or are visiting the city, the Japanese Fashion Now show is a must see. Stay tuned for the final poster and enjoy!!

Museum at FIT

27th and 7th

Manhattan, NY

http://fitnyc.edu/3662.asp