#MBsociallydriven: Exploring My Los Angeles, Part 1

SPONSORED, UNPAID 

I’m partnering with Mercedes-Benz to share my version of Los Angeles.
I used a special MB provided App to create this slide show culled from my Instagram feed.

THAT went fast, right?
Hey, kids, slow it down for us OLD PEOPLE!!!!!

Here are the individual photos, which you can linger over at your leisure:

The obligatory cliche Venice Beach shot. 

Chasing a giant spool on the I-105 for my #dailytruck project.
Pay no attention to my hazardous driving skillz.
The App didn't "recognize" any of my Waterlogue images, so I gamed my IG and added a source image.

Dave and Phil Alvin sketched at the Ruth B Shannon in Whittier.
I got their autographs on the sketch after the show!
This image may disallow my entry, are the Alvin brothers "celebrities"? Is a sketch of celebrities OK?
Shoot, I was thinking of doing a "My Oscars" one today...

Food. Had to include a food shot.
These Kranse Cakes are awesome and I want one NOW!
Copenhagen Pastry, Culver City. Read a detailed review on my Dessert blog.

The Mobile Studio in the back seat of my car.
I haven't been #lunchbreakfashionsketching all that much lately. I'm needing a rest period.

Wow, these photos are like a tour of my various blogs!
That's My Instagram for you, EVERYTHING in one place.

[Nerd alert]
My Inspector SpyGirl study of what the App liked on my IG.
Did not like the new multi-image album nor the Waterlogues, among other things. Why didn't it like "BOOM!"? So sad! It liked Severo a lot, that's for sure. And my #COTDstyle shots. And all the "Good morning"s.
[I made screenshots of my IG feed. The App goes back only one month. It also loads the images in reverse chronological order. Unable to rearrange images for the slideshow].

You're welcome to click on image to see bigger.
Orange √ = top App picks
Red √ = all other picks
There is some overlap at the top from gaming IG after I first tried the App.

So, what's YOUR version of [insert city name]?
If you live in or plan on visiting NYC, LA, Chicago, Austin, Miami, or Denver, Mercedes-Benz is inviting you to share your city in a simple and artistic way on Instagram. It's easy—you create a quick (but beautiful) animated album of 5 of your best geotagged photos and upload it to Instagram. [Once I get the green light, I'll add the link to the App. You have to connect through your smart device]. Then, you share your album on your feed with the hashtag #MBsociallydriven—and your photos might be featured on the Mercedes-Benz website! Get busy, the deadline is March 5.
MB suggests these guidelines:
Because this is a Mercedes-Benz brand initiative, please avoid posting the following types of photos (as much as we love them): competing car brands, celebrities, outdoor murals and graffiti, images that primarily focus on tattoos, advertising, and profanity.


[Nerd Alert part 2]
Check out the City Colorways on the MB site --
ALL THE NYC VIDEO COVERS ARE BLACK AND WHITE! And Miami is all blue! SO WEIRD!
Also, it looks like every city got its own font. Pattern Recognition, people. Pattern Recognition.

Ready to rediscover your city?

If you DON'T live in one of those 6 cities, share your local 5-image slideshow here!
If you can think of an existing App to make the slideshow, please mention it in the comments.
HAVE FUN! LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUR EFFORTS!

Freedom and Fashion Experience, the Sketches

Part Two of my report on the Freedom and Fashion event held last Saturday at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. 

You met the designers on Sunday.

Today, I give you some more sketches that I did at the show.

SpyGirl caught in the act! [photo source] 

Did those guys know that I was sketching them? 

This one I randomly added people to make a crowd scene. 

Shan Boodram mounted the stage and got the show rolling:

Part 3 will be more photos from the show.

Quick Draw: FotoSensori

CREATED/ LINKS/

Some sketches from Saturday night.
Which reminds me -- I'll be taking Diana Vitale's Fashion Figure Drawing class at OTIS starting this Thurs. An opportunity to draw and make a mess! Oh my chalk pastels, how I've missed you!

Johana Hernandez Sketch

CREATED/ LINK/

Johana Hernandez, designer

Dear Johana,
I'm sorry I was mean and didn't let you keep my pen. We artists tend to fetishize our drawing implements. Just like you as a designer perhaps have some special shears for cutting your patterns. I never let anyone use my shears when I was at OTIS, and I really shouldn't lend my drawing pens. Especially when I'm only carrying one. The whole time you had it, I was thinking, "when will I get my pen back?" Then again, if I hadn't asked for its return, this sketch never would have happened. I'm glad your friend found you another pen so that you could finesse your intro at the Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's screening. You did a great job.
Kisses,
SpyGirl

Blogger Connecting at Lucky FABB

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Here's a sweet little sketch that I did at Lucky FABB. This girl planted herself on the reptilian couch in the outside lobby where I was lurking. She was glued to her mobile for at least 30 minutes.

Live Sketching at a Photo Shoot

CREATE/LINK

Kelly, Gina, Kelsi

I brought a ginormous apple pie, grapes, and my sketchbook.
I came home with about 30 fashion sketches.

The photoshoot for the ASOS Marketplace LA Fashion Council Le Shoppe was a lot of fun.
I will post more about it sometime soon...  [and will link up Le Shoppe when it goes live next week] LINK [link not working until new merch gets added]


Gotta go to the day job and work on some mens boxer prints right now. Sometimes I'm frustrated by the constraints of my economic situation.

EPIC LA Eco Fashion Show. part 2

Echo Park Independent Co-op [EPIC] hosted a fashion show on 3/14 featuring SOLDAT, ISM Mode, Hovey Lee and PERI. 
In Part 1, I was positioned along a display wall...

I was in the middle of drawing this girl in the crowd:

"Excuse me, but you're going to have to move. You're too colorful."

And so I was relocated from my excellent spot near the model platform to an area near some clothing racks where I could see the models for a minute or two as they posed. I was so rattled that I left my "camera" (phone) on a shelf and couldn't retrieve it until after the show. The sketching suffered. I did what I could [apologies to Hovey Lee -- I didn't realize what your segment was showcasing until after your scene was over]:

SOLDAT

ISM Mode

PERI

I could rant on and on, I'm still very annoyed. However, I will be gracious and act like a lady.
It was unfortunate, my creativity was hampered -- but the show wasn't "about" me, was it. I understand.
Next time, I will dress "more professionally" and wear Suzy Menkes Black.*
And if I'm STILL asked to move, I will know that it's for other, uglier reasons.

I'm linking up with Patti's Visible Monday -- she appreciates a stand out look.

*I'm referencing this post by Suzy Menkes, "The Circus of Fashion"

Quick Draw: @GUESS x @MarieClaire at South Coast Plaza

Guess and Marie Claire hosted an event at South Coast Plaza that included
a live DJ, free manis, mini makeovers by NYX, and sweets and libations.
Here are my quick draws from the evening. Photos to follow later...

This guy was the ever elusive Yeti. Garbed in a fabulous fur vest,
constantly slinking out of visual range whenever I hoisted my pen.

Do you like my fancy event drawing paper? I remembered what a nice substrate color copy paper made from my quick draw session last year at LA Live. That time I'd forgotten my sketchbook and grabbed old printouts at work. This time I resized and recolored the flyer, placed it in the corner of an 8x10 page and printed out a bunch. Worked great!

Quick Draw: LA Fashion Council Popup Shop at the W Westwood

I attended a fun event last night, hosted by Kelsi Smith of The Los Angeles Fashion Council. It was the opening party for a popup shop comprised of local designers, situated off the lounge of the W Hotel in Westwood, 930 Hilgard, 90024.
The shop will be open 12-5pm until Saturday, 1/26/13.

Upon checking in, we were given a list of the participating designers with their twitter handles.
MOST HELPFUL! It was so dark in the room, I could hardly see a thing.

The list and their links:
Wren
Olima
Gypsy Junkies
Odylyne
Rojas
The Battalion Eco Couture
Jenny Dayco
Shallow Fashion
Bryan Hearns
Bijou Van Ness

Speaking of Twitter, if you follow me, you were subjected to these horrible snaps:

as you can see, I was attracted to texture + prints
No surprise there, amiright?

from top right, clockwise:
Bryan Hearns' shaggy lurex clutches
Battalion's super soft fake fur coats -- WANT the leopard one
Rojas' real woven ikat sheath and great B+W ethnic print tops
Wren's ikat print dress

I went to the event DETERMINED to do some sketching.
So, despite the cramped conditions, I pulled out my Moleskine and had at it:

These hats from Bijou Van Ness were so whimsical, I HAD to capture them
(plus, they weren't moving around)

After warming up my hand with the hats, I did some Spy Sketches of faces in the crowd:

Jasmine on left, adorable Marlita on right

another mystery girl, wearing a stunning coat

I'm proud of myself for ignoring my self-consciousness and going ahead and sketching in public.
You would never know from this blog that I'm EXTREMELY shy, especially in crowded party situations.
It felt wonderful doing hand sketching -- the pen to paper, letting the ink flow -- I just don't get that with digital drawing.
Analog -- it feeds my soul!
What do I need to improve? Overcome my shyness and get the names of the people I sketch!
Too many "mystery girls" here!
By the time I started looking for the above two, they had vanished.

I'm linking up with Katy's Fashion Beauty Friend Friday.
This month's theme is New Year, New You.
I promised myself this year to attend more local LA fashion events and to live sketch --> done and done!

See more of this week's responses here.

To learn more about FBFF, click here.

Quick Draw at the Republic of Pie

Here are Ivan Pyzow and Anny Celsi, sketched while they performed last night at the Republic of Pie, in North Hollywood.

Here are some very bad, dark photos:

Anny is one of my favorite singer/songwriters. I featured her album in a music list here.

Ivan is Anny's son, and very talented.
He sang a couple of his own compositions too.

"Where's the pie?" you ask.
Of course I had pie! How could I not?
First I had a savory - a mushroom and spinach quiche. Yummy!

I took home a couple of slices from the sweet category...

Coconut cream for The Mister (lower left row above), apple for me (no image).
Delicious!

Quick Draw at the Blogger Picnic

This is Tosha, of Bambi's Armoire.
She left the park before I finished the sketch or got her info.
Through the power of Twitter + Instagram (and her friend Sheryl of Walk in Wonderland),
I tracked her down and applied the finishing touches to the sketch.

Kelsi, of Dedicated Follower of Fashion, and Two Point Oh LA hosted the picnic.
She wore such a cunning (as my grandmother would have said) dress -- it had cupcakes on it!

These are my two Quick Draw sketches from Sunday's blogger picnic. I decided to try something new -- drawing on my iPad using the Brushes App. I want to get proficient with this so that I can do some decent sketches during my upcoming trip to the east coast in August. Last year I only had my iPhone, which resulted in minimalistic landscapes such as this one. I've returned to Danny Gregory's Every Day Matters drawing Challenge (the impetus for my first blog in 2008) to practice and improve my drawing skills. Drawing with one's finger vs a pen sure makes for some crude line work! (I also had a old school sketchbook, which I still find the best for fast sketching).

I've never been very good at drawing fashion figures from scratch and always used a croquis template when I was in school through to my Barbie designer days. On the iPad, Brushes has layers like Photoshop so I uploaded a figure that I offer my digital design students.

It's not my own figure and I didn't like using it as a template. Time to revise!

Quick Draw: Lucky FABB

This week's LA Weekly's cover article, Invasion of the Beauty Bloggers is Gendy Alimurung's take on the Lucky FABB West conference that happened last month. Her experience was very different from mine, probably because she is a journalist and I'm a fashion blogger (not "beauty blogger" as Gendy termed all of us). The article was a bit snarky, and painted us all as narcissistic nitwits. Eh, whatevs, as the kids say. I know I'm not a ninny and being interested in fashion does not suddenly turn me into a shallow materialistic zombie.

I've held back the sketches that I did during the conference and I'm not sure why. I had some sort of reluctance to scan and post them. I shot Instagrams as I was drawing, and those got transmitted immediately. Here, finally, are cleaner scans of sketches of lots of talking heads, surrounded by my notes. Yes, Gendy, I too am one of the "girls in the audience [who] scribble copious notes into cute little notebooks". I'm not ashamed. My notebook is Pantone Tangerine Tango.

Zac Posen, Brandon Holley

Panel 1

The Honest Company: Christopher Gavigan, Jessica Alba

Panel 2

Kiernan Shipka

Janie Bryant, costume designer for Mad Men

Panel 3

The loafer of Jeff Rudes, Elizabeth Banks

Randi Zuckerberg: "Never treat people as a +1"

I shot a bunch of candid photos during the three days of events as well.
SOMETIME, they'll get posted on FB and Flickr.