the swmsuit edition

so i walk out of my apartment on sunday and get a shock - the streets are closed and there are a million people out on the road.

it's a street fair/flea market!! i had no idea that was happening!! i was wondering why there were some shouting and all going on downstairs, but didn't know it was because there were SO many people out there. i love fairs like that and spent two hours looking at everything, only to regret later cos i had so much to do and should not have been at any fairs!!

it's been a crazy two weeks and i haven't been having much sleep. i woke up late yesterday and had a major panic attack. i mean, it's ok if i was late for class - that's just a "late" on my record - but i think because all this stress has been building up, i really had a weird panic thing going on and my heart was POUNDING.

god i'm stressed and i really need a massage and some time to go out and have fun.

so anyway, i thought i'd share with you guys what i've been up to the last couple of weeks. as part of my never-ending pile of homework, we've been doing swimsuit designs.

(did the title make you feel a bit playboy-ish?)

we started off with creating a mood board. a mood board is basically a concept board with pictures or words or sketches, that help convey the overall feel of the project. doing one helps to keep one's focus, by keeping all the images of inspiration together. our objective was to choose two icons, and bring them to two different places, and get our inspiration from there.

my inspirations were "napoleon goes to tokyo"

and "betty boop and the harajuku girls drink vodka in moscow".

then we did sketches and drew many different swimsuits, then picked five that we liked the best as our collection. while i was doing it, there were times where i just felt stumped and felt like i had zero creativity juices, but after everything was painted and i looked through it, i felt this odd surge of inspiration, like light bulbs were going off everywhere (you know how they do it in cartoons) and came out with so many more ideas.

i haven't finished it yet, but here's roughly how it is going. from next week on we'll be moving into designing dresses, which i am REALLY excited about cos i love dresses. i mean, the last time i wore a swimsuit was perhaps 10 years ago so i was really dying the last few days. it was also hard for me because i like over-the-top things and wanted to add on a million complicated details, but my teacher kept telling us not to make it too costume-y. this project killed me.

i find that because i'm not that fluid and confident with my sketching and drawing, it is really hard for me to convey all my ideas that are in my head and transfer them to paper. for those of you who love art and design as well, do you have similar problems? how do you work your way around it? i'm really lost and it's so frustrating.

anyway, here is my little incomplete collection.

well, i thought i wanted to share with you guys what i've been doing. it also seems that all my creative energy is being channeled into schoolwork right now and although i wanna blog more and i have some articles that i have lined up to write, it would be great if you could let me know if there's anything you want me to write about too.


i need to design more cover-ups for the skimpy swimsuits, and perhaps i'll post them when they are more presentable. what do you guys think? all constructive criticism and comments are welcomed. :)