Lily Collins in Valentino

This gorgeous Valentino dress, worn by the beautiful Lily Collins, completely caught my eye!  I love the print and the colors, and as always, Valentino creates fantastic proportions with placement of prints.  And of course, Lily Collins looks amazing in it!

I used to avoid illustrating patterns.  I think that's mostly because I'm very meticulous by nature, and when I would work on detailed paintings and drawings, I would always get lost in the details and spend a great deal of time getting every little part of it just right.  

In the past year, I've been very inspired by fantastic illustrators like Meagan Morrison of Travel Write Draw to become more adventurous and to capture a feel, a gesture, rather than to literally painting every little detail. This was definitely a challenge for me, as detail-oriented as I am, but once I started to keep this new focus in mind, it became easier and easier to let go of the control and to experiment. Painting directly on paper without first adding a pencil drawing for guidance is also making a big difference. I'm enjoying the freedom of this process more with each illustration, and I find that painting more loosely is also adding so much more energy to my illustrations.

Adding contrasting black to pop the dress into the foreground brings those vibrant colors into focus.

And here is the illustration, in progress, next to the inspiration, the very lovely Lily Collins.