Fawshun.

Oh god the fashion illustration assignment. Thiel gave us this one and I just couldn't seem to get it going. I did some sketches and settled on this one idea that I have played with in my head a great deal. There is something unsettling about amputation, there is also something poetic and beautiful about it and I thought about it and the fashion industry breaks (primarily) women up into component parts as needed. So I fell into this idea, I wanted to have the woman on the floor, limbless with that same fashion stare, dead eyes, she had to look cold, but at the same time she needed to be sexualized. I had to include the hands and feet as disembodied seperate fashion images partly because it helped the point and partly because I didn't want to be accused of hand/foot avoidance:
So Iworked this idea, I took a long time compiling photos and I made this photo-collage sketch for Thiel and he hated it. He finally just said, "No, absolutely not, you can't do this." I spent that class working on it anyhow because I had no other ideas. I ended up with something I could work with and turn into something nice, but that's as far as it got. All told I miss the above-view of the initial sketch and I think I need to get someone to model for a couple of photos so I can complete the image as I really wanted to.

After he finally decided that my idea was too... I dunno, I actually have no idea what his objection was aside from the fact that he just didn't like it. If that's the case then he should have decided it was not okay right away because there was no way he was going to suddenly be less disturbed by amputees. Anyway, after he said no to this idea he decided that the project was due the next class. This wouldn't be such a problem if it was the wednesday session of our class. But it was the monday session, which meant I had a day to do a complete illustration from start to finish. I asked Thiel if he found nipples offensive but the discusion quickly became one of "do they publish nipples in magazines like Vogue?" The answer is yes. Anyhow I found some photos that I liked, edited them cropped them and made them into something I could draw from and maybe make a nice image out of. I am certain I made sufficient changes for my own legal protection. Anyway, here is what I came up with in a day:
Thiel liked the second one for technical reasons (I shouldn't have used the salt on the first one, I didn't have anything to block the skin with) but he still said they weren't acceptable and that I should do it again. So I sat down and got out pencil and a paper and drew a super-skinny gross fashion girl with no breasts and that dead fashion stare. Thiel liked it, he said I should ink it. I wanted to put down ballpoint on it, I thought it would work nice, alas, my ballpoint pen had died in my bag so I used this clunky brush-marker, then I put down some watercolor and then some gouache, Thiel says that I murdered it: (I will replace this image once I re-scan the picture, the file got lost)
Eli felt it might have been okay if the colors hadn't gotten so muddy, but they're muddy on purpose, I don't want this grotesque creature to be mistaken for an attempt at creating something appealing, which he got but he still suggested making it look like it's trying to be something nice and I think he's right. He also had some good advice about inking, I need to work on that. Regardless Thiel wanted me to re-do it, and not ink it or color it, so I have:

A little different but the same general idea... and that's where the fashion illustration project stands!

Love and coffee,
Anne