Gesture Drawing

Mondays are all about gestures. Sometimes I don't even know if what I'm doing is gesture drawing until the teacher comes around and gives me her nod of approval. Or folds her arms and winces.

Model Discontent

Back from class early today because I didn't like the model. I hope it didn't show on my face, but I almost groaned when I saw him today because I remembered him as the reason I never went back to Friday night figure drawing sessions at SFAI. And what was even funnier was that he did the exact same poses today, too! I could've brought my old drawings and been like, Look! Same! But I didn't have to because he ended up recycling some poses during the 1.5 hours I was there today. He does what I call the Hero poses. Or more like "Graceful" Hero. With lots of ponytail flicking and a shiny body that has seen many hours in a tanning salon. And a purple ring around his...thing. Anyways, then I was talking with some girls at one point, and he actually told us "ladies" to please leave if we weren't going to draw! Way to usurp the power when the teacher's out enjoying his cup of coffee. Whatever, I didn't feel as bad about leaving early then and now I have time for a nice nap before dinner.

And I need my nap because I didn't go to bed last night until 5 in the morning, working on this:


The exercise was to do a figure in motion, preferably an athlete, and using color. Luckily, I had April's "fitness" issue of Vogue still lying around and this is Shawn Johnson from an awesome group photo of some of the women's Olympics gymnastics team. The beauty of the photo really is in the four of them jumping around in the same frame, but one figure to focus on was enough for me for now. Huh...interesting to realize that I've never done a drawing with more than one figure in it... Something to think about. Anyways, I think I love Nupastels. And look at those muscles! On that note, I think it's time for my nap hee hee.

Getting back into the swing of things.

So my machine got fixed and I think all it was was that the machine was dirty and dusty inside...aaaaaand I was threading it wrong. And that's why I was having problems. I didn't think I was THAT off though—I just wasn't maintaining tension, but apparently it was at a very crucial point or something. Anyways, problem solved, I learned something, and I got some stuff done over the weekend.

First, cutting on the bias. I need a rotary cutter. I hate cutting fabric, especially slippery stuff. On the bias. Ugh, you do not know how annoyed I was after hours and hours of trying to get the pattern on a perfectly true bias. I was really excited at first because since my silk is polka dotted, on the bias, the dots line up in a grid, giving me lots of vertical and horizontal reference points. I wanted it perfect, so I assumed that if I pinned the center front of the pattern to one column of dots, symmetrical points on either side of the center line would automatically line up on the same row. Except they didn't. Or more like WOULDn't. After a lot of whining, I made the educated guess that while I was pinning the center line, I'd probably stretched the fabric unevenly, so... ANYways, I ended up pinning every 2x2inch grid corner to every 7th dot. And pinned exactly on that corner, exactly on that dot. As you can see here:


And then these are the sewn front and back:


I'm not going to go into the details (no one cares!) but the darts sewn and the lace is all arranged and appliqued. My front neckline is going to be different from the pattern because she said I could do whatever I wanted design-wise, as long as it involved more work and not less. See how mine has that slight V in the front? Well the original pattern is flat across, which I hate. I always feel like I'm being strangled by necklines like that, even if they're nowhere near my neck. So...that's it for now. So far so good.

Russian Goodies

Last weekend, a British lady I met mentioned that some of her favorite teas could be found in Russian grocery stores. Inspired by her and krisatomic's lovely photos of gourmet Moscow, I went tea hunting in the Avenues this afternoon. While I wasn't able to find any in cute tins today, I did find many pretty paper boxes of them and at super cheap prices, and got the two Akbar brand ones you see in the picture. The colors and pictures felt oddly familiar and comforting, though these styles are definitely from a time way before I was born. And I thought it was interesting that on all three packages the graphics are horizontal on one side, and vertical on another. I wonder if it's just a coincidence or if it's something they make a point to do a lot in Russian packaging, but it really does make for very versatile arranging in the kitchen!

And then the cow crackers I spotted in a 79-cent bushel and figured why not? The only thing on the packaging in English is the ingredients list, so I tried to imagine what they'd taste like based on that, but I mean what can you really tell from a list of popular baking ingredients? But sugar's pretty high up on the list, so these "cream flavor" crackers are very potentially delicious.

I'm picking up my sewing machine tomorrow from the repair shop, so hopefully it will be in super perfect condition because I really need to have the lace on my camisole sewn on and ready to go for Wednesday. More on that and the sewing circus that was last class another day.

Project CamiSOLE

I'd been pronouncing it cami-ZAHL. Who knows why.

So this is basically the same pattern (style) we're using for our project. I didn't pick it; we had no choice. Our fabric has to be a silk or other slippery woven, not a knit like in this picture. [Just to be clear, I do NOT like this Josie Natori cami I'm using as my example here. In the voice of Michael Kors, "slutty slutty slutty!" Or maybe just cheap-looking, even if it is selling for 125 at Neiman Marcus. Sorry, beep beep., I know you love you some animal print!]

I might be sounding a little blah about the pattern, but that's really only because I have doubts about how flattering it's going to be on me, because it's so body-dependent with the bias cut. I'd prefer a nice blouson [probably another word I can't say in real life] style to temper my pear shape. Like this:

Eco-Boudoir at figleaves.com

But I don't want you to think I'm being a Debbie Downer about something that has barely even started; I actually have great hopes for my little cami. I found a pretty royal-purple-blue silk at Britex and a cream French lace from Satin Moon to match the color of the tiny polka dots. (Another girl from class got the same lace, said one of the sisters at the store, so we'll see who that was on Monday. Either we'll be great friends or rivals for life.) I'd actually been having daydreams of a fragile black Chantilly eyelash lace with my silk, with the fringe at the edge of the neckline, but apparently it's hard to find as a trim; it's usually sold as a fabric. And the one they had at Satin Moon was 100$ a yard. Plus, one of the sisters warned me away from using black with my "blue" silk. ::sniffle:: But without further ado, these were my choices, and I think the combination looks promising:

Classy, not trashy!

P.S. Oh wow, I was googling to see if Chantilly lace was really what I thought it was, and this I.D. Sarrieri is exactly what I was thinking of (though it turns out that "Chantilly" and "eyelash" are two separate concepts):

Fall Semester '08

So the new term's started, and after a summer of doing basically nothing, it's been a bit of an effort getting used to this new routine. No more sleeping without an alarm. Which means no more sleeping in until anywhere from 2 to 5. But it's kind of nice, joining the real world again, being awake when most other people are.

Figure Drawing's my security blanket so far. It's round two of a class I took last spring, so the same teachers, classroom, etc. help me feel normal. Or safe. And confident. I need some new charcoal sticks, though. Utrecht just opened a new branch in my neighborhood (but I'm still going to drive) so that should be fun to explore.

Fashion Draping looks like it's going to be fun. On Thursday, we got to pick the mannequins that we'd be using all term, so I was like this is a big deal--if I get a crappy one, I'm stuck making clothes in the wrong size till the end of the year! So I'm trying not to run and push everyone out of my way, everyone else also trying not to look like they're That Competitive Student, but you knOw we all had one eye trying to figure out which mannequin came in our own sizes. Or at least I did. I found one that looked pretty small with a "2" stamped on her neck, so I was happy. Well, I was going to ask the teacher if there were any zeros in the bunch, but then I looked at my mannequin, and her waist was tiny! Apparently with "vanity sizing" going on now, the size 2 I thought I knew is really like...a size 8 mannequin.


Anyways, we draped experimentally--only having lightly researched Madeleine Vionnet and Paul Poiret on our own--with 2 sheets of 1-and-a-half yards of muslin. I was a little nervous but secretly also really excited for what could happen, like what I could end up making. And in the end I was pretty happy with it. I know it looks a little crazy, but I would seriously wear this. I ran out of room on the paper, but that's kind of where the dress ends off anyways. Can you believe: this is 36 square yards of fabric! That is a lot for a 2-foot-long dress.

And Lingerie Design & Construction. So far it looks like this might be more sewing techniques specific to fabrics often used in lingerie (think slippery and stretchy) than design, but we'll see. I mean I would enjoy that by itself anyways, since this is all new to me; I've sewn before, I would even say that I sew kind of regularly, but I have no idea how my standards compare with those of professionals. Our first project is a camisole [I'm so used to saying "cami" instead, I just realized I've been pronouncing this word wrong!], and I'll have pictures of my fabric and lace selections up later. I think the teacher might not like me, though. My theory is that my auto-pilot "polite" voice actually ends up sounding whiny.