Which way would you go? Pretty or edgy!?
Tag Archive for 'fashion'
Which way would you go? Bright or subtle?
There are a couple of steps between a first sketch and finished tee… “Cafe Break” started as a quick doodle at a cafe in Paris. This first drawing was done while we waited for some awesome savory gallettes near the Paris University Hospital. We met some nice people. It was a great lunch. Just a quick shot of Lily content by a sunny window.
We really wanted to have an image in the line about the slowness of a Boulangerie…. no one is in a hurry to go anywhere. Conversation and something nice to drink. Erin would order some delicious looking Cafe au Lait, or coffee and milk. I’m Mormon, so no coffee for me! Jealous! Haha.
Luckily Paris had a fantastic alternative in the AMAZING piping Hot Chocolate there… It always came out to the table with a little pitcher of milk and a pack of sugar. SOLID chocolate… like someone just dropped a candy bar into a pot or something… so, basically, I drank like a thousand calories a cup but it’s all good!
When we got home, I imagined a quiet moment for Lily and Zeb at a small street side table. Soda Break was a favorite of the first season of Lately Lily, so I set up the image as sort of a sequel. I imagine the Traveling Girl and her stuffed companion finding a spot like this everywhere they go. A place to be still. To take a break!
My first sketch is always loose and all about layout. I then scan it in and make composition changes in Photoshop, tint it blue and print it out. Why blue? It’s a holdover from the days when people would draw with blue lines, ink the drawing and make copies. The copy machine couldn’t see the blue lines… Magic! I find that a greyscale scan reacts in a very similar way. So, when I ink the drawing and scan it in, its really easy to get rid of the blue lines underneath. The lines allow me to be spontaneous in the “final” drawing, while still having a guide to get it exactly how I want it.
Next I scan that final image and bring it into Illustrator to prep for screen printing, deciding on a final composition and dividing it up into the ink colors of the final tee. In this case, we ended up dropping a lot of the background elements to focus on Lily and Zeborah… but I left in an extra puff of steam from the lady at the next table over… because it was pretty! My favorite element of the final design is the striped table cloth. Love combining hot pink and warm red. The colors are very close, but shimmer off each other. It’s a very Lately Lily combination!
♥ Micah
Ever since Erin and I founded Lately Lily, we’ve been talking about a Paris season. Flashes of inspiration here, a little reference there… I built Paris into Lily’s back story by making it her city of birth. Paris is a part of her. It stands for something elusive that we want to convey in Lily, just out of the sight of my mind’s eye. Adventure? Wanderlust? A persistent curiosity…
To my very American soul, Paris is a feeling.
The day light streets are all open arms and generosity. Alive and monumental. Icons of architectural beauty, so symbolic of adventure and romance from the paintings and stories of my youth, brought into today with a snatch of graffiti or tacked on poster… Reminding me that this is not a painting. This is not a postcard. This is a city and it lives on, outside of me. Outside of my expectations and needs.
Paris is a feeling.
It is forbidding in its shadows, with quiet menace and age old rivalries. The tomb of Napoleon, heroic and barbaric all at once. The citadels and courtyards still echo with shouts of Revolution ringing through stone arches – the rage of a not so bygone age, its hopes and apprehension, softened by years but not forgotten.
Paris is a feeling.
A father walks down the cobblestone street of Rue Clair, a daughter on each arm. Walking them to the school with the buoyant sounds of children playing in a yard behind high walls. He has a certain slouch. Confident and weary. I think of my family, thousands of miles across the sea. My little bottles of Windsor and Newton inks sit beside a porcelain pitcher of hot chocolate, steam rising in the early dawn. The dry bristles of my brush crack against the page in their first dab of ink and he is there forever. Forever in my notebook with his beautiful, impeccably dressed children. One eye toward the future, his feet meeting the needs of today on the streets of another age.
Paris is a feeling.
♥ Micah
One of the most inspiring and thought provoking things we saw on our recent trip to Paris were these beautiful doors that lined the city’s streets. While I (Erin) was busy taking pictures and admiring the colors and craftsmanship of the doors, Micah was obsessed with figuring out what was on the other side! This gives you a little insight about how we work together here at Lately Lily. 
Each door was just a little different from the next and if the timing was right, we were able to peek inside! ♥ Erin
