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Fashion illustrator David Downton has painted the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Dita von Teese
His new ebook, David Downton: Portraits of the World’s Most Stylish Women, options his favourite portraits
NCS
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For the final 20 years, David Downton has gained the hearts of some of the world’s most glamorous girls.
The London-based artist is one of the style world’s most famed up to date portraitists, capturing the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Diane von Furstenberg and Catherine Deneuve for premier magazines (Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar…the record goes on), and London’s historic Claridge’s hotel, the place he’s been the artist in residence since 2011.
This fall, he has dug into his star-studded archive for his first monograph. David Downton: Portraits of the World’s Most Stylish Women (Laurence King) brings collectively 46 of the world’s trendy type icons, from director Sofia Coppola and burlesque performer Dita Von Teese to octogenarian mannequin Carmen Dell’Orefice.
“What unites them is tenacity, humor, strength of character, individuality and – of course – style,” says Downton.
Style, sure. But what precisely he means by that … properly, he’s not fairly positive both.
“I’m not sure I could describe what makes a woman stylish; you have it or you don’t,” he says. “The concept is easier to draw than to put into words.”
Creating the ebook required sifting by way of and deliberating between lots of of sketches, work and drawings, earlier than narrowing the ultimate choice to nearly 200 with out getting repetitive.
“My rule of thumb was every drawing had to earn its place and say something to me – if to no one else – about the moment in which it was done.”
A portrait of Sarah Jessica Parker, say, would possibly recall to mind a barefoot sitting in a Claridge’s suite. A black-and-white illustration of “lynx-eyed” Charlotte Rampling? An easy-going, stylist-free session at Paris’ Hôtel Costes. Donatella Versace (“D-I-V-A,” he writes) means laughter and a lit Marlboro Red.
And then there’s the creative high quality of the pictures themselves. Most of his watercolors are deliberately missing intimately, relying on surrounding white house to fill within the blanks, and singular factors of curiosity – an intense gaze, a scarlet mouth, a pointy jaw – draw the viewer in. This would possibly clarify why many of his topics have robust, distinctive faces.
“Pretty does not work in a drawing. That is for photography. Strong features, long lines, and a sense of self all inform the drawing and make it fly,” Downton says.
But the portraits he cherishes most are these of his repeat topics, girls like Dell’Orefice and Von Teese, who’ve turn into shut associates over time.
“The difference that makes, as with any working relationship, is that they know the rhythm, the shorthand. You want the same thing, ultimately, from the drawing,” he explains. “It makes for a great creative harmony.”
David Downton: Portraits of the World’s Most Stylish Women is out now.