FASHION ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY WATERCOLOUR: LONG DRESSES AND DE PROFUNDIS QUOTES!

September 27, 2024

Hello dear readers and fellow bloggers! It's almost ten. I've had a long week and I'm quite tired and sleepy. However, I'll try to wrap this post up for you tonight. What kind of post? Well, a post about art. Fashion art to be more precise. I've been on a roll lately with my art posts. After a period of not posting my art at all, due to a variety of reasons, I started posting my art in every post. I got back to my destination art series, and now it's time for another post in my fashion art series. Friday Fashion Illustration is somewhat of a regular feature on my blog.

Today I'll share two watercolour pencil fashion illustrations of mine. I sketched both of them this Summer in my A3 mixed media sketchbook. I sketched the long yellow dress first, and then the blue and read one. The medium for both of them is watercolour pencils on paper, the same brand I always use. I find watercolour pencils to be quite practical, especially for sketching. I often use them to make fashion illustration. They are quite easy to use, you just sketch and then apply water later. You can also use them with other media, such as acrylics. Some artists use watercolour pencils to sketch when they work in other media, because unlike regular pencils, watercolour pencils can be covered up more easily with paint or even erased entirely with enough water. Anyhow, I used a touch of acrylics at the end, just because I ran out of my watercolour pencils. Scroll down to read and find out more about these two fashion illustrations.

“Art only begins where Imitation ends.”
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

With books, flowers and art, who could not be perfectly happy? I'm paraphrasing Oscar Wilde here. In De Profundis, Wilde famously wrote:

“With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?”

I must admit that this quote often comes to my mind. Certainly one can be unhappy, even in the best of circumstances, even in the finest library or art gallery. However, books and art do help to make life more bearable. Well, at least they do for me. Flowers and the moon are pretty wonderful as well. Now, about freedom...that's a tricky one. Who of us is really ever free?

I do love Oscar Wilde. It was years ago that I've read his complete works and I always keep coming back to him. Even when it comes to fashion, Wilde's an inspiration to me. “You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”, Oscar Wilde said and I believe him! Dressing up to be in company of arts or books, is there something better? I must admit that I'm sometimes overdressed, but like Oscar Wilde I try to make up for it for being overeducated.

OSCAR WILDE REVIEW POSTS AND READING RECOMMENDATIONS

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2023/12/rereading-picture-of-dorian-gray-street.html

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2016/07/two-novels-one-play-literary.html

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2016/11/hemingway-and-wilde-what-did-they-have.html

BOTH OF THESE WATERCOLOUR ILLUSTRATIONS WERE INSPIRED BY A BLUE GOWN

Back to the illustrations I'm sharing. Both of them were actually inspired by a blue vintage gown I wore back in Spring. I loved how flowy and glamorous this long vintage gown felt. When I saw the photographs my husband made of me, they made me think of art deco period. Inspired by all that, I made these sketches...and now I'm sharing them with you. An additional inspiration for the illustrated yellow dress was a real mini yellow dress I wore a couple of times in the Summer. A couple of times I paired that yellow dress with a scarf to turn it into a maxi.

I like how the illustrations look a bit freestyled and messy. Sometimes I like my illustrations to be neat, sometimes I like them to feel more impressionist.

YELLOW AND PURPLE VS BLUE AND RED

The first illustration shows a long yellow gown with a long purple sleeveless cover up. The other illustrated maxi dress is red and blue, completed with a rose bouquet and an olive green cape. If you remember, I actually wore an olive green blazer with this blue gown.

Anyhow, the colour combinations are based on contrasts: yellow and purple vs blue and red. These two were fun to paint, so I hope you'll enjoy them!

MORE FASHION ILLUSTRATION POSTS

FANTASY VIBES 2024

FRIDAY FASHION ILLUSTRATION: SPRING STYLING 2023

FRIDAY FASHION ILLUSTRATION APRIL 2023: A BLUE MAXI DRESS 7TH OF APRIL

SPRING INSPIRED FASHION ILLUSTRATIONS published on 24th of March

FRIDAY FASHION ILLUSTRATION : TWO PORTRAIT SKETCHES published on 10th of March

FASHION ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY: MY SELECTION published on 24th of February.

AUTUMN AND WINTER INSPIRATION and published on 7th of October.

MORE FRIDAY FASHION ILLUSTRATION POSTS

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2022/04/fashion-illustration-friday-spring-vibes.html April 2022

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2022/03/fashion-illustration-friday-winter-to.html March 2022 https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2022/02/fashion-illustration-friday-stanka.html February 2022

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2022/02/fashion-illustration-wednesday.html 16th of February 2022

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2022/02/monday-fashion-illustration-versace.html 14th of February 2022

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2022/02/fashion-illustration-sunday-casablanca.html 13th of February 2022

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2022/02/fashion-illustration-wednesday-faux-fur.html 9th of February 2022

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2022/02/fashion-illustration-friday.html 4th of February 2022

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/12/fashion-illustration-friday-free.html 24th of December 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/12/fashion-illustration-friday-mint-blazer.html 3rd of December 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/11/fashion-illustration-friday-gucci.html 26th of November, 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/07/fashion-illustration-friday-summer-is.html 16th of July, 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/06/fashion-illustration-friday-red-summer.html 24th of June, 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/06/fashion-illustration-friday-summer-vibes.html 12th of June, 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/06/fashion-illustration-friday-coloured.html 4th of June, 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/05/fashion-illustration-friday-rujiste.html 6th of May, 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/04/fashion-illustration-friday-peak-into.html 30th of April, 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/04/fashion-illustration-friday-spring-in.html 16th of April, 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/04/friday-fashion-illustration-red-puffer.html 2nd of April, 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/03/friday-fashion-illustration-spring-vibes.html 26th of March 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/03/fashion-illustration-friday-two-pencil.html March 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/02/friday-fashion-illustration-two.html February 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/02/friday-fashion-illustration-reference.html February 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/02/fashion-illustration-friday-magenta-coat.html February 2021

https://modaodaradosti.blogspot.com/2021/01/friday-fashion-illustarion-dior-d-and.html January 2021

MORE LINKS TO POSTS ABOUT FASHION ILLUSTRATING

DIGITAL RETOUCHING WITH PAINT 3D, LADY IN A LILAC DRESS and BALL PAINT FASHION ILLUSTRATION.

Today I'll also share some quotes from De Profundis, a letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment.

SOME BASIC INFORMATION ABOUT OSCAR WILDE AND DE PROFUNDIS QUOTED FROM WIKIPEDIA

De Profundis (Latin: "from the depths") is a letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, to "Bosie" (Lord Alfred Douglas).

In its first half, Wilde recounts their previous relationship and extravagant lifestyle which resulted eventually in Wilde's conviction and imprisonment..... He indicts both Lord Alfred's vanity and his own weakness. In the second half, Wilde charts his spiritual development in prison and identification with Jesus Christ, whom he characterizes as a romantic, individualist artist. ....Wilde wrote the letter between January and March 1897, close to the end of his imprisonment. Contact had lapsed between Douglas and Wilde and the latter had suffered from his close supervision, physical labour, and emotional isolation. Nelson, the new prison governor, thought that writing might be more cathartic than prison labour. He was not allowed to send the long letter which he was allowed to write "for medicinal purposes"; each page was taken away when completed, and only at the end could he read it over and make revisions. Nelson gave the long letter to him on his release on 18 May 1897.

THE FASHION ILLUSTRATION VS THE INSPIRATION

15 MEMORABLE QUOTES FROM DE PROFUNDIS

1) “The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?”

2) “To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.”

3) “The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.”

4) “The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.”

an old portrait sketch (watercolour pencils)

5) “Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.”

6) “A sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. We think we can have our emotions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing emotions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine. The intellectual and emotional life of ordinary people is a very contemptible affair. Just as they borrow their ideas from a sort of circulating library of thought—-the Zeitgeist of an age that has no soul—-and send them back soiled at the end of each week, so they always try to get their emotions on credit, and refuse to pay the bill when it comes in. You should pass out of that conception of life. As soon as you have to pay for an emotion you will know its quality, and be the better for such knowledge. And remember that the sentimentalist is always a cynic at heart. Indeed, sentimentality is merely the bank holiday of cynicism.”

7) “It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon.”

8) “Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster's scales. Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less. You were my enemy: such an enemy as no man ever had. I had given you all my life, and to gratify the lowest and most contemptible of all human passions, hatred and vanity and greed, you had thrown it away. In less than three years you had entirely ruined me in every point of view. For my own sake there was nothing for me to do but to love you.”

9) “The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.”

10) “When you really want love, you will find it waiting for you.”

11) “When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else - the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver - would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.”

12) “I believe I am to have enough to live on for about eighteen months at any
rate, so that if I may not write beautiful books, I may at least read beautiful
books; and what joy can be greater?”

13) “What the artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in which soul and body are one and indivisible: in which the outward is expressive of the inward: in which form reveals.”

14) “Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that one should live. If any love is shown us we should recognize that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved... or if that phrase is a bitter one to bear, let us say that everyone is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling..”

15) “He sees all the lovely influences of life as modes of light: the imagination itself is the world of light. The world is made by it, and yet the world cannot understand it: that is because the imagination is simply a manifestation of love, and it is love and the capacity for it that distinguishes one human being from another.”