Cedric Rivrain

Cederic Rivrain spent most of his youth at a boarding school in France. His first drawing was of his mother, a woman who introduce him to fashion. Fashion has been part in his family. His mother can also be credited for his artistic use of makeup. Like most of his work, the book's illustration largely grow out of Rivrain's childhood fascinations cartoons, anatomy, and , of course, eyes.

If we see most of his work, we can say that he loves to draw eye very much. He said "drawings are better when you find the perfect emotion in the eyes. And it was interesting to see how mechanical eyes could give emotions."

The reason why he is in one of my favourite fashion illustration lists is because his work are brilliant. He can mixed between fashion illustration and fine fine art really well especially at the face part or eyes part. It was a classic drawing combined with colours.

His comment about fashion and art is he said that he doesn't want to differentiate between his art and fashion drawing. He just want to feel free. He think fashin illustration brings you some poetry back to the commercial fashion world. It was something authentic. Fashion images are all so digital now and with illustration, we know there's a human behind it.

Nadia Flower

Nadia Flower is a fashion illustrator who lives in New Zealand. Her name is well known to clients all around the world. Incorporating vector work, watercolour and even type design. Many group exhibition used her illustration as part of their exhibitions & book publication in Australia, Tokyo and also The United States.

Nadia Flower is one of a greatest fashion illustration nowadays. Most of her illustration was girly and she use soft colours to go on with her illustration. Just like her name, we can see she loves to use flower everytime she draw. Her illustration is mostly plateful, sensual and also where dreams, fantasies and fashion combine into one. 

Not only fashion, she also illustrated a variety of perfume bottle. She was given complete freedom which allowed her to express her creative talents to the fullest. Now she has released her own stationery range in New Zealand.

Jacqueline Bissett

Now i'm going to write about a London based fashion illustrator, Jacqueline Bissett. She was actually from a small town in Midlands. She was trained at England's Epsom School of Art and Design, which is located outside of London. She is getting used to draw with line weight and water-colour. She has been working with a big clients such as Givenchy, Selfridges, Kurt Geiger, Moet & Chandon, Rimmel, Samsung, and many others.

Most of her illustration are simple, but strong. We can see the it from the line that she apply and she can mix and match color pretty well into an illustration. From her illustration we also can say that she really has passion in illustrating and it also showing that she has been illustrating since she was sic a young age.

In one of her interview, she said she started to drew picture from a very early age. She was inspired from a fairy stories such as "Cinderella" and "The Princess and The Frog". She saw how the dress was drawn and then changing the designs.

She has always loved "playing around" with art materials. She love the contrast of flat color and brush strokes. She thinks that the line that she draw show confidence of how many years of illustrating.

Her advice for aspiring illustrators is we do not have to bother unless you are absolutely hardworking and determined to do well. It's a very competitive field she said. We have to be thick skinned to take the knocks and critism that inevitably one gets with hundreds of jobs. It is a wonderful career though.

Katie Rodgers

 Katie Rodgers is one of my favourite fashion illustrators. She is Boston based illustrator. Paper fashion is what her website is. She grew up in Loganville, Georgia. Once she worked as an apparel designer during the day and run her website in her spare time.

Art, illustration and fashion are three things that she always LOVE. From middle school until the end of high school, she spent every summer at Interlochen Arts camp in Michigan studying cello or art and one summer at Philips Exeter Academy in New Hempshire studying art, web design and music. All of these experience have definitely given her the knowledge and drive to be where she is now. She said she never set out to be an apparel designer, or an illustrator, but somehow she was on a path to get there.

The reasons why i love her artwork is because she got her own style in illustrating. Especially when she drew from a model. It turns out to be an absolutely amazing illustration in a lovely way. She described her artwork as a happy realistic and whimsical all art once. Mostly she work with watercolor and ink pens.

Katie has been on receiving end of a nuber of enviable commissions of late- most recently she worked with Coach for New York's Fashion's Night Out where she appeared in store and illustrated a number of handbags for a line of eager customers.

Stina Persson

Stina Persson is a fashion illustrator based in Stockholm, Sweden. She studied fine art in Perugia and fashion drawing in Florence, she has a degree of illustration from Pratt Institute in New York. She was awarded the society of illustrator's Student Scholarship in 1996 and in 1997, and she has exhibited her work in several shows in New York and Japan. She has both traveled extensively and lived for several years in Italy since then.

Stina Persson's art is beautifully imperfect and promising. Her illustration looks original and glamorous fashion paintings with some sixties touch.  In her illustration work she mostly uses ink, watercolor, photography, vector, drawing or collages with ceremonial Mexican cut papers to create a style that is vivid and elegant. She fuses the traditional with the edgy to introduce a modern look to illustration. She has done something for big clients such as Nike, Absolut Vodka, Coca cola, Sony Music, Atlantic Records, Macy's Department store, UNIQLO, American Eagle Outfitters, Volvo Japan, Harper's Bazaaar, Elle, Marie Claire and Blue Note Records.

I adore her artwork as well as the other fashion illustrator. Stinna teach me, from her painting, of how to  do shading in a portrait, how to mix different color but still it looks outstanding after the drawing. When i saw her paintings, i always amazed that she doesn't have any outline like what i always do. It shows that her ability in using mixed media is superb.

There is an interview with Stina Persson about how does she paint usually. She said when she starting on a piece, she uses picture reference to get the structure and pose. But others also can see it from the movement of human's body. She found her inspiratio n from thrift shops, flea markets, travels, foreign supermarkets, her child never ending imagination, color,and fashion magazines.

Audria Brumberg

Audria Brumberg is a fashion illustrator based in Brooklyn. She has worked for clients such as Calvin Klein, Loreal and Mattel Barbie. Her works are stunning especially her personl artwork. Her paintings are the combination of minimal and rock and roll style, with the use of monochromatic pallete combined with a bold typographic approach. Her illlustration are very different than the usual fashion illustrator. It's not boring, alive and fresh.

In one of her interview she said she started to paint since she was little. She got into graphic design during her first year of college. She also said that some of the most challenging aspects of design come when you have to please not only the client but also yourself with the outcome of a design. She describes her style of painting as preppy minimalist meets timeless rock and roll. Her work ranges from web design to fashion illustration, just to name a few.

For me her type of fashion illustration is a little bit new because from what i see from another fashion illustator, they only use dots and lines to crete their illustration. Different from the other, Audria is combining, dot, lines, and typography to create such an amazing illustration. Not only that, the technique that she use in combining color is pretty unique. it's not too much. Everything seems balance in her paintings. nothing is too much nor less.
Her artwork really inspired me to be a person who can see beyond the lines. To experiment with everything that you know, see, or feel to your illustration. Fashion illustration isn't always about a full body or a dress. It's just the way how do you see fashion in a person and you draw it to a paper full with your imagination of how do you want that person to look like.

Laura Laine

   Laura Laine was born in 1983 in Finland. She is a Helsinki based fashion illustrator working. Once Laura had finished her studies on fashion design at the university of art and design in Helsinki with an interest mainly of fashion illustration. After graduating from the University of Art and Design Helsinki she went on to teach fashion illustration at the campus and works freelance in her spare time. From the very beginning of her career she knew she wasn't keen on designing rather more interested in illustrating the designs for portfolios and only after the first course of fashion illustration she'd felt she had found the perfect field for expressing herself. A little while after, realising she was able to make a living illustrating. Mostly being inspired by fashion, literature and art via browsing through magazines and attending fashion shows in such countries as Italy. Mostly working with photographer Nicolas Clerc for Muse magazine, it had inspired Laine to invent more colourful designs. More recently she has been working for the New York Times Magazine, Vogue Nippon, GAP, Muse magazine and many other big named clients.
    Her signature in fashion illustration are beautifully rendered, wind-swept hair- , tall, slender figures found within the drawings of Helsinki- based fashion illustrator Laura Laine. It was quite a unique illustration that she created because at some points it's creepy but highly aesthetic when understand it.  How she start drawing is with a mood or a shape or an idea of a colour, she sometimes get the idea
from what she see around her, photographs, paintings, or clothing. The whole image just evolves on its own from there. She said she doesn't really sketch unless the client requires a sketch. She feel that the end result is the best when  she doesn't think or analyze too much. So that are the organic process and the result can have an element of surprise in it!

Kelly Thompson

  Kelly Thompson was born in California and lived in New Zealand. Her distinctive seductive illustrations and penchant for beautiful girls have caught the eye of the art and fashion community and launched her career internationally, and she is now one of New Zealand's most popular and most recognised illustrators.
  A nomadic life informs Kelly Thompson's experience as an artist, academic and researcher. Her interests are in exploring notions of location and identity, travel and material culture read through personal experiences and postcolonial discourses. She explore the role of textile as signifiers and the intersections of age-old and 21st technologies to produce new cloth experiences, embedded with narrative content.
  Kelly Thompson is an Associate Professor in the Department of stuudio arts/ fibers and material practices, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. Previously she was head of the BA textile program, at Goldsmiths, University of London for four years, and before that at the Otago School of art, New Zealand. She has a BFA from the California College of arts and crafts 1985, and a MA (visual arts) 1994, from the Canberra School of Art, Australian National University.
  Beside fashion illustration, Kelly is a also a photographer and art director, with a creative eye and attention to detail that ensures her vision is realised without compromise. All of her illustrations are very alive and we can see from it how she is so concern about the detail in every images that she created.
   Kelly's clients include Penguin Books, Covergirl, Nintendo, New Zealand Opera, Nike, Mimco, Westpac, Grey Paris and Telecom New Zealand, and she has spoken at the Semi permanent conferences in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane along with hosting Masterclass for Nintendo

Cecilia Carlstedt

Today I want to write about one of a successful fashion illustration from Stockholm, Sweden , Cecilia Carlstedt. I think she is one of those talented artist, who can create such a delicate artwork using a combination of pencil, water-color and ink as her media. Her passion towards illustration makes a lot of big major brands interested with her talent. Those brands are: Bloomingdales, Swarovski, La perl a, Paul Smith, H&M, and MTV.  From her website, she said that drawing and painting has always been her medium of expression from an early age. After beginning her formal studies at the Stockholm University reading the History of Art she continued with a foundation and BA in graphic design and illustration in London College of communication which also included a semester of exchange at the F.I T in New York. After graduating 2003 she begun her career as an illustrator and have since then been commissioned for a wide range of clients such as H&M, La Perla, Swarovski, Paul Smith, Victoria Secret, Martini Gold, Elle, Vogue, New York Times and W magazines. From all of her artwork, I can assumed that Cecilia Carlstedt like to experiment with different mediums of drawing. She also got inspiration from random sources. Her inspiration can come from a person on the street with an interesting look, an exhibition, a fashion spread in a magazine, a dream at night. Everything around her can help her to make an unbelievable artwork.Many other artists have influenced her as well and that have been varying through time. From Gustav Klimt with his ornamental flat and often pattern like paintings along with the Japanese wood cuts like Hokusai to more contemprorary artist like Marlene Dumas for her expressive portraits and use of paint and ink for similar reason Elisabeth Peyton. She said "what excites me when creating a fashion illustration is the unlimited scope for interpreting a design. This combines with the satisfaction  of capturing, in an unexpected way, what i am to impress." Here are some of her fashion illustration artwork:

Hayden Williams

 I was browsing on instagram one day and suddenly I bumped into Hayden Williams' account. I was stunned by his drawing because it seems real, flawless and beyond perfect. Hayden is one of my favourite fashion illustrator ever.
 Hayden William is a fashion designer/illustrator who live in London. He has been drawing since the age of 3 years old. Most of his inspiration has come from his childhood where, as child, he was amazed by Disney movies and started to draw his beloved Disney character. His extraordinary designs also tend to be inspired by vintage fashion editorials and films.
  Now his skills has developed and he has created a lot of amazing fashion illustration. But so many times people don't believe that he draw those stunning designs with just a simple pencil and a scanner to put it up into his computer. He also felt that social media like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest had helped him to share all of his creation.
 He said: " A lot of people are surprised that i do things old school and do everything by hand. I think an illustration is much more interesting looking with less Photoshop. I love that iconic designers such as Oscar de la Renta and Karl Legerfeld still hand sketch everything."
 He also revealed that it can take as little as 10-15 minutes to do a quick sketch and one hour to fully completed the illustration.
 Here are his advice for us who's still struggled with fashion illustration: "I am still growing and learning myself in many ways, but i would say to do it because you genuinele love it. Always be consistent with your craft. The more you draw, the better you will become!"



Here are some of his illustrations: