Live Fashion Illustration

Speed fashion sketching.

Another amazing Live fashion illustration event for Paul Green: this time at Tretter Munich, a large shoe retailer.  

It has been a bit different this time, as the live illustration wasn't part of a night event as the one at Breuninger Stuttgart, but a special offer of the shoe retailer for their regular Paul Green customers during the day. I spent the whole day in their sales area, sketching all the wonderful ladies who bought Paul Green shoes during this day.

Usually I am fully focused on drawing illustrations for books or for company branding - alone in my office and with my own schedule. Making live illustrations means therefore a complete change of my working behavior. And that is great! It’s always an amazing experience to step outside the comfort zone and to try out new working styles.  

I learned a lot during these live illustrations, and I’d love to share 2 of my social learning here with you:  

The social dynamic of a sketch.

During the sketching process are the people in a rather uncommon situation as I am glazing at them and sketching their whole body. But they get quickly used to it – we are both blending out the loud and bustling surrounding – I am fully focused on the person in front of me that I am sketching.  

This creates a very intimate situation, where the ladies often smile at me curiously or start a conversation. After these 10 minutes of sketch there is a kind of familiarity between the models and me. 8 hours of sketching sounds so long, but with this amazing familiarity during each sketch and this joy on both sides to be part of the speed sketch, time flies so fast and I forget about everything but sketching this one specific person in this moment.  

And exactly this feeling is, what makes me looking forward to the live illustration events. It is a wonderful kind of connection with people, created within a few minutes of sketching. It is a special experience that would never happen when I am hiding in my office behind sheets of paper and the graphic tablet. (Although I love this place and a good cup of coffee with it as well ;)

Another great learning of the live illustrations was to see the amazing and fascinating beauty of every person I have met and sketched on these events.  

It’s a classical effect, that, if we are engaged in something, we start seeing it with different eyes. If we are, for example, not interested in insects, but due to certain circumstances we are faced with them and learn more about their way to live and communicate, we start getting impressed by these great and strong animals.  

And it is the same with humans. The closer we look at a person, that we do not know, the more we see the beauty of this person. Speed sketching allows me to have a closer look at the people and I always enjoy looking at them. I was sketching women of all age groups and body sizes – and I saw so much beauty in each of them. A real pleasure to sketch.  

And this was also the start of my #weareallbeautiful fashion sketches on Instagram. Because we are indeed all wonderful. 

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