An Illustrated Fashion Blog by Angie Réhe

I’ve never cared much for the green ribbon.  It goes back to my school days when I carefully chose the sporting events I entered, based on a simple criteria which merely required a complete lack of competition.  Shot-put anyone?  Anyone??  I’d stroll over to the far side of the oval, half-heartedly toss the ball 3 times and walk away with 1st 2nd and 3rd ribbons. That is until the day the I found myself standing in the shadow of the new girl – the female incarnate of Jaws.  I suppose I should thank her for pushing me off the sporting field and into the art room.  But I digress.

Allow me to present to you the artwork that secured me a Highly Commended in the 2012 Illustrators Australia awards for Australian and New Zealand Illustrators. This is the illustration I did for Gorman as an interpretation of “The Melbourne Look”, published in The M Magazine in The Sunday Age.

You can check out the rest of the gold, silver, and highly commendeds  across all categories in this month’s edition of The Australian Creative magazine, or on the Illustrators Australia website.

Winning isn’t everything.  No really, it’s not.  I mean it.  A bit.

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Contrary to appearances, I’m actually drawing my fingers to the bone.  I’m at the tail end of a fabulous and massive illustration project which has forced me into obscene levels of sobriety, and kept me in every night of the last 3 weeks except two.

Speaking of which, while killing time waiting for Jaclyn last Friday – time that I could have spent with a G & T in hand – I picked up a piece of chalk and scratched out this little number on my kitchen door, which is conveniently a blackboard – not that I don’t already consider all walls and surfaces to be a canvas!

Inspiration the increasingly cute Frankie.

Check out the fantabulous work of the very awesome students of the Patsyfox Drawing Salon!  Exceedingly pleasant and talented, I think you’ll agree their work is wonderful.

Fashion Illustration classes at the Salon kick off for 2012 on February 14th for the Introduction to Fashion Illustration, and February 15th for Creative Fashion Illustration (the on-going advanced level).  There are just a couple of places left in each course, so if you like the idea of being able to produce drawings like these, then perhaps the classes are for you… The classes are made up of all manner of peeps: People who’ve never drawn before and work in a completely unrelated field to fashion;  high school students working towards a tertiary fashion course; current fashion students who want to amp up their illustration skills; fashion designers and product developers who want to improve their illustration skills; textile designers who want to learn to illustrate their designs onto garments; just people who want to have a fun and creative outlet in their lives.

Introduction to Fashion Illustration suits those with some drawing experience and skill, through to those who haven’t touched a pencil since primary school.  The 8 week term covers all the most important principles of Fashion Illustration, teaches you how to get started, and inspires you with the very best examples of illustrators’ work.

Creative Fashion Illustration is a unique continuing advanced level of Fashion Illustration.  Each week brings a new challenge, watch your skills grow.  The most amazing work is produced, and this term will see the addition of some illustration from a live model, a la Antonio, Downton, etc etc.

Who am I to teach you?  I design by day and illustrate by night, teaching Fashion Illustration at RMIT city campus, and taking Fashion Illustration workshops for the NGV International, and the Bendigo Art Gallery – as well as the very special boutique classes of The Patsyfox Drawing Salon.  Learn more about the classes here, and see some of the previous gorgeous photos and student work here, or here.

Want to sign up or just know more?  Email me at salon@patsyfox.com

Here’s a smattering of work from last term, and a few from terms past.  I’ve been a very bad record-keeper lately and mixed up the names that go with some of the files, so in fairness I’ve left them all nameless – many apologies to the artists!

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It’s with negligible guilt that I admit Australia Day means naught to me other than a day off.  Make that a day in, because apart from pausing to whip out this little aussie number, I’m slogging away at the drawing table working on my best-yet and mega-biggest drawing commission evah.  And you know what that means – procrastination like I’ve never witnessed, even in myself.  My socks have never been so well-matched, my toaster so shiny, my dishes so washed-dried-and-put-away.

I shit me.  No really, I shit me.

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Like many of my other New Year’s resolutions, my commitment to debt repayment is wobbly at best.  But my iron will has never shone through brighter than the day I returned this Diane Von Furstenberg dress I bought after stalking it for 3 months.  I’m pretty sure there was a tear in my eye as I walked home from the post office, and anyone present could tell you the guy at the desk did have to wrench the parcel out of my hands.

Iron will aside though, the sad truth is that the dress on my doorstep was the commercialised version of the runway look, and it just didn’t look as smoking on me as the model.  Quelle surprise!

Sigh, how are your New Year resolutions faring?

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Year that is, and bring it on I say.

Here’s to slightly less hard work in 2012, but a lot more sleep, and  a lot more time with my friends.  Kicking off with some fun in the dirt and JD’s espresso martinis. Nothing not to love about that.

To get you in the mood, here’s a little piece of happiness I found while on the couch at Mum’s on Xmas eve, fiendishly switching channels from Carols in the Domain while she was in the shower.  My god these guys can dance! Mandy Moore is my first choreographic hero.  I’m now slightly addicted to watching this, so watch it at your peril… Or for a preview of my moves on the dance floor tonight…Argh, I wish I was joking.

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Can it really be that time of year again?  How can it be that another year has passed and yet I haven’t aged a day?

To me, Xmas eve is huge relief – I’ve run the race, there’s nothing more I can do – no more presents I can buy, no more drinks I can drink (cough), no more friends I can catch up with.  Done.  Just kick back, eat too much, and try not to drunk-shop as the emails come through announcing all the things I’ve been wanting to buy over the last 2 months are now on sale…

So as I head off to spread myself over this state and the next, I wish you the very best and Happy Xmas you could possibly have, and maybe even happy new year, in the case that I am too lazy to post again before then.  Thanks for reading.

Ax

P.S. This drawing is my response to the theme “The Modern Muse”.  It’s a crazy mixed up world, see if you can spot the many influences on this muse…

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So it was a couple of Fridays ago, a heinous day capped off by a haircut that made my head look like a bowl someone took a bite out of. Really. An arduous drive home across town to the former sanctuary of my house.  I say former, because waiting for me up high in my dressing room was what looked like an elderly statesman of the big fat hairy huntsman club.

Let me put this into perspective – I’m a card-carrying member of arachnophobes anonymous, and this does not go down well.  I was planning to hit the liquor cabinet anyway after aforementioned day, but I can tell you I pretty much levitated to it, poured myself a wine and inhaled it.  Then jazzed up on dutch courage I returned to the scene with a broom and the bug spray and emptied a can of mortein on the sucker, who apparently preferred it to all other beverages.  I mean, WTF?  Are bug sprays going the way of antibiotics and the bugs have now developed resistance to them all??

The only option left was to go in with the broom, and before I knew it the drunkard eight-legger was swinging off the broom laughing and dropped into the centre of the room onto a pile of clothes and shoe boxes.  I think it was at this point I started hysterically screaming.  A one-by-one garment elimination eventually revealed the shoe box with the hairy legs sticking out, and the frenzied axe-action began.  I swung that broom like a mother trying to save her first born, all the while screaming die fucker die! Just die!!, until there were pieces of spider legs spread throughout the room.

Whoever knew I had it in me?  Imagine if I’d known at that point that on Sunday afternoon I’d discover the ecosystem he’d created for his family in my knitwear shelf…

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In the haze of pre-xmas busyness the Patsyfox Drawing Salon wrapped up this week for another term and another year, and yet again meant saying bye-for-now to another bunch of supremely lovely people.

Nothing better than finishing the term with collage & mixed media (demo for the Introduction class above).  Check out the fruits of students’ labours below, including the very talented Creative Fashion Illustration wunderkinds, who just keep getting better.  Classes beginning again in Feb next year are already half full – watch this space…

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