LFW AW12 Round-up/Round-down



DR NOKI's NHS AW12 by Gareth A Hopkins



For whatever reason, I couldn't keep anywhere near the same pace this past London Fashion Week as I did for the last one, and in my opinion the images I turned out were a bit weaker than normal. 

But I'm going to resist the temptation to bang on about it like a little emo loser and instead share a couple of images that I made from LFW for FUN. This is actually the first time I've created fashion-based images without having a brief or a deadline, and I'm really happy with them.

First is a painting of one of the looks from DR NOKI'S NHS (up there, at the top). I love Noki's work, and have always wanted to create an image which is as lurid and threatening as his fashion work. Whether this is 100% there, I'm still not sure, but taking a few days to work on this paid off.

And secondly here's an image of one of the models from Oliver Spencer's catwalk show. I've never seen a model carry so much disdain for the audience as this guy did, and he instantly became a hero of mine.



Angry Model for Oliver Spencer AW12 by Gareth A Hopkins



I also did my first Fashion Review for Amelia's Magazine this year, for the Asger Juel Larsen VS T.Lipop show, and commissioned some genuinely great illustrations from Sam Parr, Jo Ley, Gemma Cotterell and Lo Parkin. And I wouldn't have been able to get anywhere with it without the support and editing skills of Matt Bramford. I actually think my writing was more successful than my illustration this LFW. Interesting to see how that develops.

Finally, I did an illo for Alia Gargum's review of Sibling, which I took two shots at finishing. This is the first one, which I wasn't happy with at the time, but in retrospect is OK.

SIBLING AW12 by Gareth A Hopkins

Gareth A Hopkins VS London Fashion Week September 2011

House Of Worth Lingerie SS12

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, and elsewhere, but I love illustrating London Fashion Week for Amelia's Magazine. Even with designers I'm familiar with* will throw up totally unexpected things, and responding to those is really exciting.

To make things even more 'interesting', this past LFW coincided with my moving house, a process which took longer than anybody really expected it to. A lot of my stuff was packed away -- my paints and my lightbox in particular -- and I was living at my inlaws' without any dedicated space to work in (I ended up camping out with my laptop and scanner in the dining room most nights). Some of the illustrations were finished either during my lunchbreak or after hours at work, with their oddery old copy of Photoshop but excellent scanning facilities. These restrictions forced me to approach illustration from a totally different angle, and I think that shows in a lot of the images I produced. Some are the best Fashion work I've done, or at least the work I'm happiest with. Some isn't so great, but I'll let the images speak for themselves -- the ones dotted about in this post are naturally the ones I like the most.

I got through a lot of images. Like, A LOT. I'd ideally be doing a seperate post for each of the images, or a paragraph for them as I did in my last post, but with time constraints and everything else gonig on, I can't even post every image. The best I can offer is a few images and a complete list of the designers I covered and links to the respective articles at Amelia's... In some cases, I'll add some comment on how I felt with the image...

I'd also like to take this opportunity to say a big thanks to Amelia for allowing me to carry on drawing stuff for her despite the fact i'm always bloody moaning about one thing or another. And also to Matt, Alia and Maria (and any other writers I've worked with but forgotten) for being amazing to work for.

And so, in mostly chronological order:

A La Disposition Preview (2 illos)
Jasper Garvida Preview (1 illo)
Emesha Preview (1 illo)
Toni And Guy (2 illos) I talked about how much I enjoyed drawing Toni And Guy hairstyles in my previous post, but I decided to take the opportunity to share this image here, too.

Toni & Guy SS12

Bora Aksu (2 illos)
Mark Fast (2 illos)
Jasper Garvida (1 illo) After the success of my drawing for the preview that Amelia's ran (covered in my previous blog post) I was looking forward to this, but somewhere along the line the head went really wrong. I can't help looking at it without seeing Anne Hathaway crossed with Sloth from Goonies.
House Of Worth Lingerie (2 illos)
Jayne Pierson (2 illos) In contrast to my moaning about David Koma (below) I was pleasanlty surprised by my illos for Jayne Pierson. I've illustrated her clothes once before and the result was pretty atrocious, and these images are really strong

Jayne Pierson SS12

James Hillman (2 illos)
U.Mi-1 (1 illo)

Shinsuke Mitsuoka (2 illos) I was really proud of both images I produced for this review, in particular the one I've posted here. Before I saw a preivew photo from the collection I was ready for a night off, but it's rare that I get to do Sci-Fi Power Ninjas (my description, BTW) for Amelia's so I jumped at the chance.

Shinsuke Mitsuoka SS12

Christian Blanken (1 illo) I really like this. And it's totally different to last time I did Christian Blanken, which was very quick and rough with the models have circles for eyes (which was something I was pushing back then). The old one worked really well, but I'm glad I've been able to show another side here.

Christian Blanken SS12

David Koma (1 illo) I was disappointed with myself on this one. I didn't give myself enough time to finish it properly, which was part of the problem. But the other was I wasn't really into Koma's designs this year -- when I've illustrated his collections before I've been really excited, and the results have been good, but it just wasn't working for me this time.
Asger Juel Larsen (1 illo) I was overjoyed with the original ink pencil and ink work I did for this one. Really channelled my love for Brian Bolland, and put me in mind of the biker stuff he did for the Death Race story in Judge Dredd in the 70's. Adding the colour and background stripped some of the impact off. I still love the image, but am sad to have lost the original. But then, that's the first lesson any artist, illustrator or writer should take to heart -- never be precious.

Asger Juel Larsen SS12

KTZ (2 illos) I was lucky enough to be at KTZ's LFW AW11 show earlier this year which blew me away with it's mondrian-inspred stripes. So I naievely thought that their SS12 collectino would be along similar lines. So when I got the images of African-inspired prints which were very detailed, and layered, I balked a little. I think I made the right choice for the image below, deciding to do a really focussed piece on a cap/scark combo. It's one of the things I'm proudest of from this season.

KTZ SS12

Trine Lindegaard (2 illos)
Posthuman Wardrobe (2 illos) Believe it or not, but I often try to be quite light and airy and ethereal in my illustrations, which I finally acheived for these Posthuman Wardrobe images. I think some people saw them as a bit sketchy and un-worked, but I like them.

Posthuman Wardrobe SS12

So, by my count, that's 29 illustrations done, which isn't bad going I reckon.

*Just being able to say 'I'm familiar with partiular designers was unimaginable when I started this blog...

LFW Sep2011 Illustrations for Amelia's Magazine Pt 1

I love illustrating London Fashion Week for Amelia's Magazine -- get such a mix of styles to work from and the hectic pace suits my way of working -- if I get a long time for a image it goes two ways: stale or perfect (but usually stale) whereas banging out two images in a few hours without really knowing what you'll be doing tends to inspire. Everything stays raw, which is how I like it, but working from images of polished, expertly designed clothes means that the rawness is tempered slightly.

Illustration of one of Toni & Guy's SS12 suite of styles, before I tarted the image up in PS.

I especially enjoyed working on Toni & Guy for this article by Matt Bramford, because drawing hair is one of my favourite things, and it's rare to get to focus on it. I agonised over the backgrounds and levels for about two hours, and you can see both final images over at the article, where they really belong. But I particularly liked the 'tall hair' as it came out of the scanner, which I've posted above... it's not the sort of thing that I'd submit to Amelia's as it's a bit too wonky, but I love it.

I did this image for a preview of Emesha by Amelia Gregory (in an hour, at the last minute), and really love it, even if my appreciation for Abigail Daker's work is a little too obvious (well, it is to me...). One cool unexpected benefit is that the model that I drew added me as a friend on Facebook. So, you know, I did something right.

Also did this image of Jasper Garvida for Alia Gargum's interview with the designer. I was chuffed to bits with the figure -- I didn't need to fuss with it or redo anything on it, it just formed there on the page. Trouble came when I added the background, because as try as I might it just didn't work for me. Which ultimately led to me temporarily returning to my old style of adding the background in afterwards for the rest of Fashion week.

I did some more preview ones earlier in the week and have also done a few more already, but will talk about those in a later post. In the meantime , go and read Amelia's Magazine because it's not just the articles that i've illustrated for which are amazing.

Three new illustrations at Amelia's

Designs Felicity Brown and Simone Rocha (London Fashion Week Preview)

This week I've been very busy for Amelia's Magazine, doing two illustrations as part of their previews for London Fashion Week, and one of the band The XX for their Mercury Music Prize preview. I really like two of them (Felicity Brown/Simone Rocha and The XX), and despair a little for the other (Cooperative Fashions) -- the despair arriving on the back of the fact that I did it when very full of illness, so my usual critical faculties were out.

The xx (Mercury Music Prize preview)

Cooperative Designs (Interview as part of run-up to London Fashion Week)

If I wasn't still so full of snot and headache I'd endeavour to do a 'process' post for one of them, but as it is, I haven't the faculties...