by Patsyfox on March 7, 2010
Gimme a deadline, any deadline, and I’ll slide under the gate as it’s closing to deliver whatever it is I’ve just finished, after having procrastinated until the night before. Do I love the fear of maybe not making it? No! Then what? Having important work to do is the only time I actually feel like doing housework/matching jars to lids/pairing socks/sewing up hems instead of stapling them. God, recently I even weeded to avoid work.
The disappointing side of this apparently common habit is that I also procrastinate about doing work I like, and that’s just dumb. So even though I had 2 months to work on a bookmark design for The Book Depository’s competition, I still left it until the night before I had to drive up the stinking Hume Highway to my Mum’s for Xmas.
But wait – it gets dumber. I decided to create my image by almost pure collage – intricate, tiny collage requiring tweezers and patience I only have when I shouldn’t. Even the fact that when I looked at the final image I realised I could have created it in photoshop in a quarter of the time didn’t phase me – it might be indiscernible to the naked eye, but that background is one complete piece of tissue paper with letters cut out. Wacky! And stupid.
I pompously sent it off to the UK only to be bitterly disappointed a month later to discover that not only did I not win, a bunch of bozos did. Meh/whatevs/talk to the hand. I’m using it as the first of the bookmark and postcard designs I’ll be selling here in my soon-to-be-opened on-line Patsyfox shop, so I guess I’m a winner after all.
If you make it to the exhibition, please do justify my old-school ways by getting up close and noticing all the teeny pieces.
by Patsyfox on March 4, 2010
There’s nothing quite like having a friend who’s working on a Ph.D. living next door, when you are working from home. Cup of tea? Great. Oh look – it’s 6 o’clock – make it a G & T? Lovely. It gets even better when they’re interested in what you do, because in their endless compulsion to procrastinate, they are likely to find and flick you the most fabulous pictures, websites, articles, objects of desire, and news flashes imaginable.
Of the plethora of material my neighbour Mary has sent my way, my favourites are: Godammit, I’m Mad!, internet shopping in general (thanks a mill’ for that one), The Book Depository, the tip that The Sartorialist was in town at that very minute (I have no idea how she finds out some of this stuff), and countless pictures of very cool ideas.
How she finds all of this, and finishes a Ph.D is beyond me, which makes her quite the smart arse, because this week her Ph.D was passed and she is as good as Dr MP. Definitely the best-heeled doctor I know. Check out the Giuseppe Zanottis.
by Patsyfox on March 2, 2010
Just when you thought it couldn’t get more exciting – or more self-promoting – around here, it does: I give you The Patsyfox Drawing Salon.
Launching during the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival with Fashion Illustration workshops held in the Patsyfox exhibition space at Guilford Lane Gallery, The Patsyfox Drawing Salon offers boutique style Fashion Illustration classes. Class sizes are half those of regular classes to allow for the personal Patsyfox touch, and held in the evening so people who work or study full time can attend, and in bite size chunks of 12 weeks.
Two course levels are offered: Introduction to Fashion Illustration for beginners or those wanting to re-cap the foundations; and Creative Fashion Illustration for those with some drawing experience who just want to get better and better, and more versatile. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a lot of fun. Check the website for more info. The Patsyfox Drawing Salon also offers private tuition and schools-based workshops. All tuition by me, naturally!
See the LMFF classes schedule here.
by Patsyfox on March 2, 2010
Geez, has it really been a year that I’ve been sitting here late at night eating wasabi peas and drinking brandy? Apparently so, because next week I celebrate the first birthday of Patsyfox with an exhibition of around 30 illustrations from throughout the year. Yes, exciting!
What’s even more exciting is the opening night on Thursday March 11th, 6-8pm. Come witness me drink an unfeasible number of champagnes within 2 hours while attempting to speak to everyone in the room.
Read some of the accompanying anecdotes, and spot some of the actual people from the drawings…maybe.
Stand transfixed by the colour and movement of the Illustration Installation – a looped film projection cut with illustrations – a collaboration between Patsyfox (legend), Nevada Duffy (designer), and Deb Varrasso (film maker).
Most of the works are even for sale, including The Sartorialist illustration, signed by the man himself.
Where? Guilford Lane Gallery, 20 – 24 Guilford Lane, Melbourne.
When? 9th – 21st March 2010 (Opening night Thursday March 11th 6 – 8pm)
Why wouldn’t you?
by Patsyfox on February 25, 2010
I have a pitifully small collection of Vivienne Westwood garments, and god knows I don’t seem to be the shape they’re designed for – I need to be 5 inches taller and 2 cups bigger, according to the adjustments I make to them. But like all things I love, the impracticality of it only makes it more desirable. Even the experience of having to throw myself off a tram while wearing a VW plaid bustle skirt – which bound my legs together like some ancient foot-binding practice – did not dissuade me.
And so under the plaid-spell have I been since seeing her new Red Label fall/winter 2010/11 collection, I failed to recognise an old familiar within it. It wasn’t until I was drawing it that I realised – ah, isn’t that a flannie? Oh yes, it is. Growing up in a small country town in the 80s, I wore and saw my quota of flannies, and not even Kurt Cobain with all his charisma could tempt me back over to the dark side.
I’ll take the orange tights, I’ll take the pink plaid obe, I’ll even take the flannie tie. But the flannie? Viv, you can keep it!
by Patsyfox on February 23, 2010
I’m a fan of the back-up plan, a big fan. I’ve had a spare cyan cartridge sitting on the shelf since the first of the 24 months my printer’s been saying it needed it soon. So imagine my displeasure when out of nowhere tonight it stopped saying what it wanted soon and became all about the now. Magenta – now. Talk to the hand I told it. Oh yeh? it said – How’s kinko’s at midnight sound? And I’ve noticed you’re already in pyjamas. Daaaarrrgghhh. The printer won.
Besides planning for the illustration class I’m teaching tomorrow, I was also printing a picture to draw from the Fall/Winter 2010/11 Vivienne Westwood Red Label, which I’ve become instantly and more than mildly obsessed with. The plaid – the plaid! Plaid in pink, plaid in green, plaid with plaid. Wrap me in it, roll me in it, I love it.
But alas, I am victim to printer fug, and had to think of something else to draw. I give you… Girl shot with the plaid gun. Reminding me more than a little of a certain ex-boyfriend who liked to dress in head to toe plaid. I didn’t mind – it made him easy to find at parties – seen a guy in plaid?
by Patsyfox on February 18, 2010
Anyone who knows me knows how rarely I’m lost for words, even when I should be. However the death of Alexander McQueen last week has left my fingers still on the keypad.
Suffice to say, sadder than the loss of his great talent is the loss of a life, particularly when you think of how anguished he must have been.
Besides simply loving so many of his creations, I loved his bravado in not playing safe, and the fact that he could be so shocking, but back it up with incredibly solid skills of execution. Anyone can be shocking, but very few people can do it with finesse.
Alexander McQueen, Autumn/Winter 09/10
by Patsyfox on February 16, 2010
Given that Jaclyn yesterday cut her long black hair off into a Louise Brooks/Uma-Pulp-Fiction style bob – a move I would have deliberated over longer than she’s been alive – I was prompted to consider what feels like an entire life of variations on the same haircut – mine that is. Friends may think I’ve tried other hairstyles, but really any variations have just been the result of bad communication with the hairdresser (and really, what the hell language do they speak anyway?), or just bad haircuts.
Hang on – didn’t I see a new look in a mag recently and sketch it into my diary? Yes, I did.
Argh, it’s only a curve on the fringe.
And the bobsters…
by Patsyfox on February 11, 2010
In an indirect way, I could kind of attribute my career choice of fashion design to knitting. As soon as I was old enough to hold knitting needles I insisted my mother taught me to knit so I could join her and my sisters in their fun-seeming circle of gentle click-clack knitting. One episode of The Rockford Files and one knitted row later, my new hobby was ovah. I mean, are you knitters serious? You are really willing to spend that long producing one lousy item of clothing? Forget it. At the age of 5 I turned to the sewing machine and pronounced it my new best friend.
Of course there was another option, but I didn’t warm to the knitting machine either, since it represented 2 things in my eyes: 1. Standing beside the machine with both arms up at a right angle holding the “hank” of wool firm while mum wound it into balls to use on the machine (um, doesn’t that constitute child abuse in some countries??), and 2. The relentless sound of the soaring side to side of the (hand) knitting machine, in the background of every stinking song I attempted to tape off the radio – in those days kiddies, the cassette recorder also recorded the ambient noise. (Hence the funniest thing in your sibling’s life was to bust in on you recording your favourite song and say something really stupid. Hilarious.)
BUT, allow me to wax lyrical over the machine-knitted creations I have just seen launched at the new exhibition at RMIT Gallery in Melbourne: The Endless Garment – The New Craft of Machine Knitting.
You’ll find the amazing work of ten leading international and Australian designers, some of whom aren’t stocked in Australia so this is the only place you’ll see them.
Part of the gallery has also been transformed into a knitting factory with two computerized flat bed knitting machines that produce amazing garments and “push the boundaries of what knitwear is.”
This truly is a fabulous exhibition. So make like Coogee never existed and go check it out – these garments are not your average swettahs…
SANDRA BACKLUND, Stockholm. Control-C collection 2009
by Patsyfox on February 9, 2010
As with anything you yourself do, you can bet the house that no-one you know will ever do it for you. As such, my walls are bereft of portraits of me, and my wardrobe without any clothes made especially for me. Oh wait – there’s that dress made for me by that ex-boyfriend ages ago. Now there’s a story – there’s something decidedly NQR about a boyfriend that can hand-sew better than you can. I really should have seen the light flashing when he presented it to me with a blonde wig and a set of false eyelashes – I mean really, did he want to pretend he was going out with Paris Hilton or was he planning to pimp me out? I never did ask, and again I digress.
There really is nothing like having a garment hand-made for you, to your measurements. The measure-up, the fitting-like-a-glove – it’s a line you’ll cross that you’ll never want to go back over. Lucky for me in my circle of endlessly artistic/clever/talented friends, there is a source of such a thing.
I’ve been coveting the designs of Kara Baker since I saw them on the catwalk at The Venue in St Kilda in 1984 (I was 3) in the Fashion Design Council’s maverick parade. Even better than buying them off the rack is visiting her in her studio to peruse the sample collection, try them on, choose a style, get measured up, then start the satisfying wait for the especially-and-only-for-me garment. It’s the only way to shop, and makes you feel very, very spesh. File it under T for try it.
