SILHOUETTE OF DREAMS



Pink, girly, romantic! I really enjoyed drawing this, the big, bouncy curls were especially fun :)

SEOHEE



This illustration was created in collaboration with the fantastic Asian Streetstyle blog, La Mode Outré.

The subject of the illustration, Seohee, was spotted on the streets of Seoul by James Bent, the photographer and editor of La Mode Outré. I was then given the task of interpreting the photo of Seohee in my own illustrative style.

Click here to see the post on La Mode Outré, which includes the original photograph and a short interview.

LITTLE FILLE

Never before has an illustration taken me so long to finish. I started this before quite a few of my completed illustrations, then I forgot about it for a while and finally came back to it a couple weeks ago. It has turned out to be one of my favourites as it's so detailed. It's based on an image I came across quite a few months back from a campaign shoot for a headband fashion label called Little Fille. They make the sweetest headbands in all different styles and fun patterns, and are sold in Topshop. The model in the illustration is fashion blogger Zoe Badley.

ILLUSTRATION PRINTS FOR SALE!

Hey everyone,

Just a quick note to let you know that prints of some of my illustrations are now available for sale on Etsy.

The five prints for sale are:

 Cylia

Grand Plumage 

Love Nouveau 

 Rain on Fire

What's Her Name?

They are printed on A4 size (8.3in x 11.7in) quality archival Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm paper. Image measures 8in by 10 in, so this print fits perfectly in an 8 x 10 photo frame (as seen in photo; not included with print).

The cost of the prints is $28.00USD (approx. £17.50GBP)

If you are interested in purchasing one of these prints for yourself or for a special stylish friend, visit the Danielle Shepherd Fashion Illustration shop.

RAIN ON FIRE



Adele is one of the most talented and successful singers in the music industry right now. I had the privilege of seeing her perform "Someone Like You" live at the Brit Awards earlier this year and she had the entire O2 arena completely captivated by the raw, powerful emotion in her voice and lyrics.

I've been listening to her song "Set Fire to the Rain" nearly every day for the past few weeks and I still feel overwhelmed every time I hear it. Her songs always manage to tap into those feelings of desperate love and heartbreak that most of us have experienced at some point.

Even though Adele's songs tend to be quite wistful, her personality comes across in interviews as quite upbeat and bubbly. I wanted to portray both the melancholic and vivacious sides of her character in this portrait.

THANK YOU!

Hi everyone,

Sorry I'm a bit late in doing this but I just wanted to thank everyone who voted for me in the L'Oréal Paris 'Style Cheryl's Hair' Facebook contest! I was not chosen as the overall winner but I was one of the top 50 highest voted entries so I did win a L'Oréal goody bag! I really appreciate all the support for my work.

It's been a bit of a busy time for me recently, I got a new part-time job as a Retail Sales Advisor (unfortunately illustration isn't paying at the moment) and I'm also still searching for another one so I don't have as much free time as I used to. As soon as there's some balance and order to my life again, I'll have some new illustrations to share with you!

Thanks again and much love! xx

STYLE CHERYL'S HAIR

Hey everyone!

I just entered this portrait of Cheryl Cole in the L'Oréal Paris 'Style Cheryl's Hair' competition to inspire Cheryl's hairstyle for the next L'Oréal Elnett commercial. I would really love it if you would vote for me!

You can vote by liking the L'Oréal Paris Facebook page, go to my entry http://dev.mccannlondon.co.uk/elnet/entry/442 and vote vote vote!

The competition ends on March 18 at midday and only the top 50 entries will be considered so please pass it on to everyone you know!

Thank you xxx

PAI SKINCARE

Portraits are always enjoyable projects for me, particularly the ones of regular people. It's amazing to be able to capture the unique nuances of a person's features and to convey a certain emotion and/or story through their expressions. 

The portrait above is Sarah Brown, the founder of Pai Skincare, and was created to accompany an Amelia's Magazine article on this ethical beauty brand.

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LFW A/W 2011 ILLUSTRATIONS

Amelia's Magazine provided excellent coverage of many LFW shows this season, with articles bursting at the seams with detailed reviews, beautiful photos and inspired illustrations.

Above are two illustrations I contributed, the top one is a look from the Prophetik collection (review article here) and the bottom one is from Bora Aksu (review article here).

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CHARLES ALBERT JEWELRY

Dress: Alexander McQueen, Necklace & Cuff: Charles Albert

A couple weeks ago, MTV Style tweeted a link to a photo of American actress and singer Kat Graham wearing the most gorgeous, insanely large jewelry I have ever seen - just the sight of it caused instant heart palpitations! MTV Style said "We're OBSESSED with her necklace and ring!!" and how could you not be?

Kat's amazing accessories were made by American jewelry designers Charles Albert whose eye-popping pieces have recently been worn by other Hollywood celebrities such as Glee's Amber Riley, Ke$ha and Mya. Their jewelry has also been featured in various fashion magazines including Vogue Germany, Elle Mexico and Marie Claire.

Founded in 1990, Charles Albert jewelry is all handmade and comprised of one-of-a-kind fossil, mineral, gemstone and fine sterling silver. They have a wide range of edgy, beautiful pieces that any girl who loves a bit of fashion drama would go crazy for!

To see more Charles Albert jewelry, visit their website here.

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ADA ZANDITON LFW A/W 2011 PREVIEW

I, along with a few other illustrators, was asked by Amelia's Magazine to interpret the dress above from Ada Zanditon's upcoming London Fashion Week A/W 2011 collection.

This was a really interesting task as the photo we received showed the dress on a hanger so we all had to imagine what it would look like on a model. Though not an overall difficult project, it was a little bit of challenge for me to capture the same architectural precision and beauty of the sleeves - the focal point of the dress. 

I usually use patterns for the background but I decided to switch it up a bit with this one. The sleeves on the dress reminded me of the Egyptian Pyramids, and because there's a link between the Pyramids and the constellations, I thought I would create a cosmic background to compliment the dress. The cosmic dust was made using oil pastels and the stars were created using Photoshop.

To top it off, I gave her a sculptural, avant garde hairstyle, as this is how I imagine women would style their hair when wearing this coat!

To view the Ada Zanditon LFW AW11 Preview article on Amelia's Magazine, click here.


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SAATCHI ONLINE SHOWDOWN

Hi everyone!

I'm currently participating in the Saatchi Online Showdown competition to have my work "Grand Plumage" shown in the Saatchi Gallery in London.

At the moment, I'm in the top 500 of over 5000 entries but I need to get into top 128 in order to be in with a chance of winning. 


You don't have to sign up to Saatchi Online to vote, you can connect using Facebook so it's a simple process.


Please vote and encourage others to vote for me here - http://www.saatchionline.com/showdown/match/showdown/4/artist/219653/art/104833


Thanks very much! xxx


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LOVE NOUVEAU

The first illustration above is called Love Nouveau and it's a piece I created for Valentine's Day. I've long been a fan of the detailed Art Nouveau drawing style - one of my favourite artists is Alphonse Mucha - and I also like the way the subjects are usually surrounded by an intricately detailed frame which makes it all the more romantic.

With this piece, I tried to merge elements of the Art Nouveau style with my own and use soft, feminine colours to create a unique, romantic piece for Valentine's Day.

Unfortunately, as V. Day is only four days away and I have not yet had a chance to get them printed, I won't be able to sell this piece before then.

However, I would still like to make prints of this illustration so I was thinking if I tweaked the colours and add some text, it may work as a lovely print for a Bride-to-be.

I'd love to know what you think about this one! Would you purchase this print as a Bridal gift?

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CYLIA

A couple weeks ago I was contacted by French singer Cylia who invited me to participate in a fun, little art contest on her Facebook page. I basically had to illustrate one of the photos on her page and her Facebook fans would pick their favourite. The illustration above is what I came up with.

I also decided to put together my first progress slideshow video of this illustration. It's very short but I promise to make a better one next time with more photos taken at more regular stages in the process.

Hope you like it! xx

 



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INSPIRATION: BLACK ALLURE

  

 (EPIC SHOT)

Currently obsessing over this gawwwwgeous spread called "Black Allure" from the February issue of Italian Vogue. It's beautiful and bewitching and it features some of my fave models such as Jourdan Dunn and Melodie Monrose.

Italian Vogue had previously done an all-black issue back in 2008 and now this time around, there's some skepticism over whether it's an attempt to show diversity in fashion or an interesting gimmick. I personally think it's most likely just a strategy to get attention but that doesn't matter to me. What matters is that this spread is awesome!!

I've just selected a few of my favourite photos from the spread but you can see all of them here.

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GRAND PLUMAGE

As much as I am amazed and inspired by fashion designers' collections every season, I try not to let that inspiration translate too literally in my personal illustrations. It's much more interesting for me to choose various elements that I like and find a way to incorporate them into my work. This illustration draws loose inspiration of the retro hair and makeup styling from the Louis Vuitton SS11 show and the colours and textures from the Alexander McQueen SS11 collection.

I have also decided to use this image on the home page of my new website. I've been working on it for quite a while but I was never really happy with how it looked so I hesitated in sharing it. Now that I've done a massive revamp, I'm really pleased with it and I finally feel comfortable enough to share it with everyone!

Please take a look and tell me what you think - Danielle Shepherd Fashion Illustration.

I've also set up a Danielle Shepherd Fashion Illustration page on Facebook to connect with anyone who is interested in my work. You can go here to 'like' this page or you can also connect through the widget in this blog's sidebar. Looking forward to connecting with all of you!  xx

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AUTUMNSONG

This is an illustration I did for Amelia's Magazine to accompany an article on Herefordshire-based ethical fashion designers, Pretty Rubbish.

According to their website, "Pretty Rubbish is a partnership between Victoria Geary and Rebecca Griffiths, two textile designers who are passionate about the influence of sustainability on design and fashion. They focus on recycling old textiles into funky new clothing, accessories and objects of beauty."

I've been a fan of Amelia's Magazine for a long time and I jumped at the opportunity to do an illustration for them. For this illustration, I wanted to convey the mood of a windy autumn day with the colours of the leaves in the background mirroring the colour of the Pretty Rubbish jacket.

This is the first time an illustration of mine has been featured anywhere so I'm really excited about it!

Check out the Amelia's Magazine article here and have a look at the Pretty Rubbish website here.


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MUSIC INSPIRATION - "STRONGER" BY INDRANI

This song didn't inspire any piece in particular but I always feel good when I listen to it, and when I feel good, creativity flows. I'm from Barbados originally and I'm proud to say this song is by a Barbadian singer named Indrani. I'm not usually a fan of reggae music but this song is so soft, beautiful and atmospheric, I can't help listening to it over and over! Enjoy! xx

Btw, the Avatar AMV was done by a friend of mine, who also introduced me to the song (thanks Delvin, stealing your vid! :P)



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LA MUSE ANGELIQUE

Don't you just hate it when you're trying to remember the name of someone you've heard of before and you just keep drawing a blank? Well that's what happened to me last week when I was trying to remember the name of Renee Perle. For some reason I thought her name was something like Cecile or Celia (nooo I idea how I got that!) and all I could remember about her was that she wore T-shirts and stacks of bangles. The name search yielded no results (as it was so fantastically off the mark), so I decided to search for '1930s stacked bangles' and lo and behold, there was a photo of Renee Perle. Cue sigh of relief.


Renee Perle was the Romanian muse of Jacques Henri Lartigue, a prominent French photographer in the 20th century. I first found out about her when I came across a photo spread in Vogue Germany that was inspired by her sense of style. With her T-shirts, armfuls of bangles, wide legged trousers and large hats, she had a unique style which was very modern for its time. After finding out about Renee Perle again and going through numerous photos of her, I decided to create this piece which is inspired by her dark, mysterious features and beautiful clothing style.


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COFFIE

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you've all enjoyed Christmas and you're having a wonderful start to 2011.


This is the first illustration I've done for the year and it can take some effort to start new work after a period of no creative activity. A friend of mine recently asked me how I start my illustrations - whether they begin as a concrete idea or with a more spontaneous freeform approach. The truth is, it's somewhere in the middle. I do tend to start with fairly vague concept in mind but most of the details are built up as I work.

For this illustration, all I knew before I began was that I wanted to create a strong image of a black woman with distinctive ethnic features as I hadn't really done that in any of my work before. I also wanted her to have a braided hairstyle. All details such as her pose, the gold ear/hair piece and the background were thought of and included as the work progressed.

There's something really special about starting with just a rough idea and the process of developing that idea into the final artwork.


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Also, a little while ago, I was asked to donate some of my artwork to be auctioned off at a charity fashion event coming up later this month. I hastily agreed before realizing that I have no prints of my work to offer and I have no idea where to start. If anyone can offer any advice on professionally printing and packaging artwork, I would be very grateful! Thank you :)