Live portrait sketching for Chanel Fine Jewellery Exhibition - Day 1

This event was pretty rare, as the client requested for portrait live sketching. The nearest one was 3 years ago (browsing through my blog) when I did live sketching for Dior Addict. That event was mainly to draw the lips of the guests, with some portrait and caricature live sketching done.


This one was pure portrait live sketching for 3 days.
Venue was Theatreworks at Mohammed Sultan Lane.
First day was 12:30pm - 1:30pm, and 7pm - 8:30pm.
These 2 timings were right before their lunch and dinner hosted by Chanel.
They need 2 portrait artists. Thus, I got Reggie to partner me.
If fact, the client has no other choice, since there are only both of us which do live portrait sketching for events, from what I know. The rest are caricaturists. There are quite a lot of them in the market, in relation to portrait artists.
Live portrait sketching is a lot harder, as you need to take into consideration of proportion, lighting, and speed. You don't expect the guest to sit in front of you for 1-2 hours, like studio sketching. You must be able to capture their features in a very short time frame.
Caricature, on the other hand, is to capture their essence. You can go out of proportion. Some 'caricaturists' can't capture the resemblence at all (no joke). When the guest asked why it doesn't look like me, they can get away by saying"this is a caricature, and my impression of you."


Nice setting, but considerably dim lighting for us.
First session was for the media.
As for previous Chanel event, we agreed not to show the guest faces in the photos.
Thus, you can only see the portraits here for this event.

This was simple sketch of pencil portrait, without full shading. Took me about 10 minutes.


Some finger rubbing for the shades here.


Pure pencil cross-hatching techniques.


End of first session, after the above portrait sketch was done.


First guest of the evening session.
She told me that this is the "Best portrait I have!"
Oh thank you.:)


Added more shading, given that the response from the guests was better.
Almost all of them wanted to look pretty, and the client was happy with our speed, we decided to give higher quality portraits, than just pure quantity.


This guest was here this evening. I have sketched a caricature for her for previous Chanel event on day 2. See if you can spot her here?


Seems like the guests all dolled up for this evening event.:)
Dim lighting. I snapped this photo in the dark at low speed. The photo turned out blur.


I like this portrait - the mood, the smile, the execution, despite without full shading.