Haptic Flow With Sue Dray

by Natasha Lakic

Sue Dray is some­what of a per­ma­nent fix­ture dur­ing Lon­don Fash­ion Week where she can be seen sit­ting calm­ly on front row, sketch­ing on her iPad Pro as the mod­els walk past wear­ing the lat­est col­lec­tions. Sue describes her style as hap­tic, to her it’s all about respond­ing to the moment, cap­tur­ing the essence, flow, sil­hou­ette and feel of the sea­son in a fleet­ing vision.  This lends itself per­fect­ly to dig­i­tal illus­tra­tions, and she is now spon­sored by Apple to show­case the iPad and Apple pen­cil used dur­ing her live draw­ings.  

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“What you get is an explo­sion of marks, brush strokes and raw ener­gy. If I make a mis­take there is no eras­er I have to go with it and make it work”.

Com­mis­sioned to pro­duce live draw­ings exclu­sive­ly from cat­walk, Sue has devel­oped a sig­na­ture style, using strong lines with painter­ly tex­tures, com­bined with bright and con­trast­ing colours, to real­ly cap­ture the atmos­phere of the col­lec­tion she’s draw­ing.

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 “My work essen­tial­ly is about cap­tur­ing the moment and the emo­tion I feel in any giv­en sit­u­a­tion. I draw live, I draw spon­ta­neous­ly, I love time and phys­i­cal con­straints, I don’t pre-plan (well not often) I trust my instinct and my train­ing. I try and be brave and chal­lenge my skills, my vision and my soul.”

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“As soon as I sit down to draw the focus is all con­sum­ing noth­ing else mat­ters it’s just me my sub­ject and my paints. It’s real­ly the only time I lose my sense of self as a per­son and I draw from what I feel, see and expe­ri­ence. That’s why it’s my addic­tion because I set myself free”.

More of Sue’s work can be seen in our mag­a­zine, but in the mean­time OVERDUE is look­ing for­ward to see­ing Sue back­stage this sea­son.

Title image: Pam Hogg AW14 by Sue Dray