Another portrait of live model Eve, emerging from the darkness, last week on Week 32 of my 52 Live Fashion Stories.
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A second portrait of live model Jennifer last week for Week 31 of 52 Live Fashion Stories, playing with a different hair texture.
Week 30 of my 52 Live Fashion Stories took place, spur of the moment, on Thanksgiving day actually. My bf and I spent the day in Huntington Beach with his mom, Joann, and I painted her portrait outside, in the beautiful early afternoon, after our yummy Thanksgiving feast (while a certain someone was snoozing, post pumpkin pie ;-) Not only did I get to paint live on Thanksgiving, but I was happy to spend a beautiful and (unseasonably) warm day for this time of year hanging out with no less than three puppies!! Shorts and puppies on Thanksgiving? Yes, please :-)) Luna and Body are two six-month old brother and sister puppies - and by 'puppies' I mean almost fully grown dogs behaving like three-month old puppies, while knocking you off your feet with their boundless energy and puppy-ness ;-) And Chase (technically not a puppy, but as cute as one) is the most adorable Frenchie who loves to play with any and all squeaky toys. The squeakiest, the better! <3 Keith and Chase stand off: man vs beast ;-)) Giving thanks for a day of 'too much fun' and wishing all of us as many of them as possible!
xo Cristina Last week, for Week 29 of my 52 Live Fashion Stories I had a back-to-back double feature of painting live portraits: at my house, with my friends Madison and Bryan, and at my new friend Colette's party! These two are always fun to be around! My friends Madison and Bryan are also architects, and old coworkers no less, and it's always nice to reminisce about what brought us together in the first place: architecture! We had a blast catching up, and I loved (finally!) getting to paint their portraits!
Thanks for being such great models, guys! ;-) And thanks for taking pics and videos and for the organic strawberries ... yummmm!! You sure know the way to my heart lol Colette's party the day before was such a blast! Here she is, a beautiful muse and gracious hostess, photo-bombed by her bf Aarun ;-) I met some awesome people with interesting stories, all from such different backgrounds than my own. Always nice to step outside the norm for a change. Thanks so much for having me, Colette! I had lots of fun, and it was great to meet everyone!
Inspired by an explosion of brushstrokes for Week 28 of 52 Live Fashion Stories and painting live model Eve's portrait last week.
Loving minimal portraits - last week was Week 27 of my 52 Live Fashion Stories, inspired by live model Jennifer.
Less is more! Obsessed with bringing the face to life on paper with a minimal, edited amount of brush strokes!!
Week 26 of 52 Live Fashion Stories last Friday was inspired by live model Georgina. Live model Brittney was my beautiful inspiration last week for Week 25 of my 52 Live Fashion Stories - putting a spin on color - why are we humans so obsessed with the color of our skin? What if our skin were blue, or purple? Here is Brittney in reds and pinks! We come in all different colors, so let's paint the rainbow!
Last week, for Week 24 of 52 Live Fashion Stories, I painted live model Aurora's portrait again, this time from a different angle and in color! I gotta say, I'm loving the use of color - while still keeping things minimal and monochromatic.
Have you ever been so excited to try something new and yet so scared at the same time? For the past few years I've been painting and illustrating using a lot of two-dimensional reference images from magazines of Internet images on my laptop. This is where I feel the most comfortable. I love to get lost in the detail and the nuances of each painting, and the more layers I apply, the more nuances I notice. It's a very intuitive way to paint, and I'm getting into a Zen head space during this process as I follow my instinctive observations and inspiration. But lately I've been very intrigued by painting live. I'm so excited to develop a new skill and to grow my powers of observation and of filtering the three-dimensional information I see into a faster and more gestural illustration. You may remember my previous two attempts at live painting with my besty Natalie here and here, and the one time we attended a workshop of painting from a live model together here. When Natalie helped me practice live illustration, we had so much fun! She modeled several different outfits and poses, and we timed each illustration in an attempt to improve my speed. And when her sister-in-law, Megan, planned to have a baby shower, we both thought this would be the perfect time for me to take the leap and do this 'for real', for people I didn't know. We asked Megan, and thankfully she accepted my offer to paint her guests during the baby shower. I was set. Actually I was terrified. And super excited. I thought, what if I fall flat on my face? What if nobody likes my paintings, what if they all think I'm not good enough and my paintings are a joke? I was a nervous wreck. I had no idea what to expect. But I took a leap of faith. And so two weeks ago, I ended up painting for four hours straight at Megan's baby shower! I think I only made it to the bathroom once, grabbed a cookie on the go at some point and had a few sips of water. The rest of the time I was so absorbed into painting, those four hours just flew by! I had such an amazing experience! And Megan's guests were so incredibly kind and supportive of me. All the kids at the baby shower had a blast, too. They were hanging on me like grapes on the vine. They kept asking curious questions and were mesmerized by my painting process. They could hardly sit still for their portraits, and they were all very excited. And everybody took home their personalized illustration at the end of the day. Another satisfied customer: the lovely Nusha with her portrait - photobombed by Megan and her aunt :-) Megan and her aunt. What a beautiful and joyful mommy-to-be! Action shot! One thing I learned from this experience was that the scanner wand loses a lot of detail - plus I have to allow time for the paintings to fully dry before I drag the wand over them to scan - oops! Next time I'll focus more on taking photos. My high-chair pseudo-studio. I hope the baby didn't mind sharing ;-) And of course I wore white pants, which are practically a magnet for paint. Yet somehow they remained miraculously intact all day, despite the palette being knocked to the ground at some point and paint flying everywhere! ;-) Thanks to everyone at the shower who allowed me to paint their portraits on the spot! You all looked beautiful and so cheerful. I had such an amazing time with all of you, and I loved sketching everyone. I appreciate all your kind feedback and comments more than you can imagine! You guys made my day!!
Thank you so much, Megan and Stephen, for allowing me to use your baby shower as a testing lab ;-) Congratulations, you guys are going to make the best parents! And thank you, Natalie, the best besty in the world, for your incredible support and for being there for me. My experience surpassed everything I could've hoped for, so much so that I have decided to pursue this direction even more in the future. I can't wait to see where my live painting skills will take me next! Ready to step out of my comfort zone and do some live fashion illustration with my bestie, Natalie. This was so much fun, it's a must to do it again!! Painting live is so different than painting from a static photograph. Both are great sources of inspiration, they just flex different 'muscles'. It's so much easier for me to get lost in the details of a source that remains unchanged, to look at all the details at length. But painting live forces me to edit down all the details, to focus on the gesture and the essence of my subject, especially when throwing in the fashion element, complete with color and pattern. So fun! My beautiful friend, Natalie, is not only a great model, but also so observant and intuitive. As an artist herself, and as a friend who knows me well, she is always giving me invaluable feedback and critique, so helpful to improve my skills and to grow as an artist and as an illustrator.
And who best to torture with standing in heels for hours than your bestie? Thanks for putting up with it, Natalie! :-) A couple of weeks ago my friend Natalie and I had the awesome experience of painting from a live model at the Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra as part of The Drawing Club. The club focuses on weekly painting and drawing from a live model based on a different theme each week - this time the theme was Dr. Who.
This was my first time painting live! And it was a nerve-racking experience, as I am usually just naturally focused so much on getting the 'likeness' down ... I guess it's something I like a lot and aspire to do as a general rule when I paint, and it's something that drives me. Which is probably why I usually enjoy very detailed work. But sometimes it's nice to just let go, speed things up and see what comes out, and to just trust the process. This was definitely a freeing experience, and something I look forward to doing again. Keeping it to a limited color palette helped a lot with becoming more relaxed and focusing on the feel of it more than on details, too. It was so much fun! It really made me want to practice more of this quick gestural painting and to get out of my comfort zone more. Thanks for the awesome idea, Natalie! Can't wait until we do this again :-)) |
WELCOME!
I'm Cristina Tudor, a Beverly Hills fashion illustrator. I paint live illustrations at fashion, retail, entertainment, bridal and lifestyle events for clients such as Chanel, Ferragamo, Piaget, David Yurman x Galia Lahav, Badgley Mischka, Bloomingdale's, Warner Bros. Studios, Diptyque Paris, Ted Baker London, Eric Buterbaugh x Beverly Hills EB Florals, and Survey Monkey, among others. FOLLOW CRISTINA:
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