And what is Dr. Sketchy’s, you might ask? It’s Burlesque Meets Art Class - Cabaret Life Drawing. It’s music and drinks and burlesque dancers, circus freaks, and other birds of paradise. It was great fun – even if I did feel terribly out of practice...
...I only get around to doing any life drawing once in a blue moon these days it seems, and I’m not the sort of person who takes a sketchbook with me everywhere I go (to draw in parks or cafés, etc). I admire, and am a tad envious of, folks who do, but it’s just not me. Sketchbooks I’ve taken with me have almost always been left un-drawn-in. More often than not, I’ve ended up writing diary entries in them instead. I guess when it comes to most public situations I simply prefer writing pictures to drawing them.
So I draw at home and for my illustration jobs. And these days I mostly tend to draw stuff more or less out of my head - with various photos as reference (I have a huge archive in the meantime. I’m a mad and hungry picture junkie and regularly scour the internet for reference material and images that inspire me). So drawing from live models made me feel inept and slightly helpless. But it was really good to get my life-drawing chops going again.
Berlin’s Dr. Sketchy guests were Dr. Sketchy’s creator herself, Molly Crabapple, and the extravagant likes of Hedoluxe, Joey Love, and Lethal Lily, among others. It was great meeting Molly. She’s a doll. And I also met the lovely, lovely folks from Dr. Sketchy’s Manchester there. There are Dr. Sketchys all over the place in the meantime, and I’m hoping a Dr. Sketchy’s Berlin can be set up as well. This one was a one-off, for starters. I took only my drawing supplies and myself, by the way - but once there I was sorry I had not also brought a camera. Lots of people did though, and I’m looking forward to seeing the first photos begin to appear online.
But now on to more directly www.mildredlovesyou.com-oriented things...
I haven’t actually made any big official Monday Pin-Ups announcements yet (Mildred’s MySpace page has been left dreadfully neglected for the past several months). A few people have been told and do visit, but I’ve been happy enough to sort of half-hide in our little corner of the internet so far. This is because I wanted to get into the swing of things before making a big deal out of it. And I’ve been having growing pains. Many of the pin-ups have been delayed along the way, and I’ve also simply not been satisfied with most of the results of my work so far. But I had promised myself I would start the series on Monday, June 16th, 2008, and I did - just jumped right into the deep end - even though I didn’t really feel ready to yet.
But my three most recent pin-ups have taken a slightly new direction that I’m much happier with, so a big official MySpace announcement shouldn’t be too much longer in coming now. :)
Monday Pin-Up #14 – "Shock Pink"
featuring Copper Kitten and Kitty Derail
Monday Pin-Up #15 – "Three Graces"
featuring Mildred Mahler, Tamara Toffy, and Coco Delish
Monday Pin-Up #16 – "Rocking Horse Godivas"
featuring Ivory Towers and Thérèse-Constance van Ticklinckx
Cheers!
LaLaVox
www.mildredlovesyou.com
[edit: March 28th, 2011]
Because of problems with my current mildredlovesyou.com domain host, I have set my Mildred Loves You site up at an alternate address for for safe-keeping (but am still hoping that my mildredlovesyou.com domain will go back online at some point anyway)...
www.lalavoxbox.com/mildredlovesyou.html
