Introducing Mara Cespon

We’re pleased to announce that Mara Louise Cespon, fashion illustrator and design student at FIT will be joining us for the Fashion Drawing Sessions this month.

Looking at the skillful fashion illustrations by Mara Louise Cespon, fashion illustrator and FIT student, it could be hard to believe that she’s so new to fashion illustration. Can you believe she’s only 22 years old, and just starting her career, as a student?

Mara has loved to draw since she was a child (and has fond memories of drawing Sailor Moon characters in colorful outfits, or creating her own characters and designing their clothes.)  Growing up in the Philippines, she did not know such a thing as fashion illustration existed.  She moved here when she was fourteen and embarked on a course of study that led her to enroll in FIT to study general illustration.

To her surprise, a required class in fashion illustration her freshman year led her to discover that “I like drawing fashion more than photorealistic illustrations.”

When she’s working by herself, Mara likes to listen to music or to Filipino language news radio, because hearing her native language relaxes her.  Her favorite music to listen to while drawing includes “recently I’ve been listening to Big Bang and 2ne1 songs (KPOP-Korean Pop music). Sometimes the songs I listen to inspire my concepts and school projects.

Mara has been enjoying all of her classes this semester from Fashion Drawing and Stylization III to Anatomy, which didn’t meet for the past several weeks “because we’ve been going to fashion shows and drawing runway models, which is really cool!” she exults. Now that’s what we call a class field trip! She appreciates the tight deadlines of Concepts Lifestyle/Fash Illustration III with Prof. Marcos Oksenhendler. “I like it because it pressures me to think about how I should do a project, what style to use, and which colors. That way, I discover techniques that I never even thought of before.”

Mara loves the challenge of drawing fast, as well as working on tight deadlines, so look for her to sit in on some of the warmup poses at the Fashion Drawing Session, as well as taking time to talk about her process and answer questions.