August 2020 series Intro

​Man, July was a tough month not even gonna lie.  There is so much 'behind the scenes', especially in terms of social media...through it all I am thankful to have my daily art to maintain my sanity.  This year I decided to focus on fashion illustrations for the entire year- and that has also served me well because...I didn't know.  None of us knew what kind of year 2020 would become.  Fashion is something that comes easier for me, I can just sit and my ideas just flow onto the paper.  With what would become such a trying year, between the pandemic and moving to a new state, starting a new job, gaining and losing friendships...knowing every day that I was going to sit and work on a fashion piece has been my comfort.

So for August, I added an additional buffer by revisiting a previous series that I really enjoyed- my #PaperCutsJLG them from July 2017.  I worked on that series when I was on my FAEA STAR artist retreat at the Hermitage in Englewood, FL.  That is a whole seperate post...no literally, here it is;

https://www.jenniferlovegironda.com/blog/july-2017-faae-star-a-wedding-dress-re-vamp-daily-art-plus-much-moreall-in-one-post-gulp

​The idea of the cutouts was new to me at that time, and I applied it to my 'big eyed girl' style that I revisit from time to time.  The beginning of the month started with just the cutouts and during my residency experience I continued to push myself, adding rendering to my faces and watercolor backgrounds, and completing some larger pieces, too in addition to my fiber work.

For me that time in my life represents a high- and a low.  I was recognized at the state level for my artistic ability  and chosen on that merit to attend and create art.  I formed new friendships that I still hold dear.  And I had a whole month to do nothing but just create and focus on myself and my art- all with an ocean front view.  However I will always look back on that time with a little sadness, as that was the time that my little soul cat Scooter was becoming ill, which we didn't realize.  He would pass away later that December.

I decided to revisit that theme, this time with fashion illustrations.  There are actually many artists out there using cutout in their art, one that directly inspired this body of work is Shamekh Al-Bluwi. Here is a great article about his fashion cutouts;

https://mymodernmet.com/paper-cut-out-art-fashion-design-shamekh-al-bluwi/

The idea is to do my style of fashion illustrations, include cutouts and then take them on location to find my 'fabric'.