My month's faves: October 2017

This is an exercise of awareness: to pay attention to things and people I especially like and to write it down and, once a month, look back at that list and share it here. I have done it for one year now and I will keep doing the main part (paying attention and noting it down) but I won't be able to publish the list here. I have decided to prioritise my time differently. But this last time to complete the year must be. And I will probably keep sharing it but just on my Instagram account. So, for October 2017 my favourites were:

• One of the best things of having drawn at so many events this year is the amount of fantastic young girls that I have met among my clients' employees or working for them in any way. Power girls with a lot of energy and an impressive CV despite their young age. One of them was Beatrice, who I met as I was drawing for Madeleine Fashion at the Tribute to Bambi awards. She was my assistant that night and I loved her attitude from the beginning, she did her job perfectly with a fabulous presence, diligence and charm. As if it was her thing since ever. I told her I would love to have her as my assistant everywhere. Maybe, one day. After I came home I googled her, as you do, and was even more impressed by her web site and the content in it.
• Speaking about young girls excelling at her job and attitude: Julia Zimmermann, the make-up artist working in the Laura Mercier shop in Ludwig Beck, Munich. I came there to draw live fashion sketches for Riani and did not have my make-up set with me because it was in my luggage, which was in Frankfurt, still travelling from Berlin, where I had worked the day before. I looked the way you do when you wake up at six in the morning and sit two and a half hours in a train. I asked her if she could please make me look like a normal person and she said yes. We did not have time for the normal "how do you like it better" conversation, so she went straight on and finished quickly. I looked at the mirror and it was as if I had slept four hours longer and were at peace with the univers. I especially liked what she did with my eyes. Next Saturday I will be drawing in Ludwig Beck again, I hope she is there and I can buy from her the miraculous products that she used that day. Although: I guess the art was not only in the products.
• In a very different context: one of the most helpful discoveries I made last month was the "Convert for Smart Filters" option in Photoshop (under the "Filters" menu). It converts a normal layer into an smart one so that you can adjust and even make invisible the filters you apply to that it. Before I used to create a copy of the layer, just to have the original one in the reserve, and then tried one filter, undid it, tried it differently, or another one, undid again and so on. It works especially interestingly with the off-set filter, which you need to make patterns. That is the way I learnt it, from this video by the amazing Anne was here.  If you don't know it yet: Try it!