{"id":12480,"date":"2023-04-19T11:54:53","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T15:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/?p=12480"},"modified":"2024-01-24T15:30:43","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T19:30:43","slug":"elaine-drew-actor-tailor-medieval-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/2023\/04\/19\/elaine-drew-actor-tailor-medieval-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"Elaine Drew: Actor, Tailor, Medieval Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

After two novels that take readers back 1300 years to early medieval England, Elaine Drew<\/a> has just released a lavishly illustrated short story from the same period, A Knight\u2019s Bad Day<\/em>. Another is in the works.<\/p>\n

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Cover art “A Knight’s Bad Day,” by Elaine Drew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Drew had a bachelor\u2019s in English from Emory University<\/a> and had worked in public relations for General Electric before tiring of corporate life, turning to acting, and coming to FIT for an associate\u2019s degree in Fashion Design, graduating in 1976.\u00a0<\/span>\u201cActing at least has some link to English and writing,\u201d Drew said. But her mother had been a talented designer and seamstress, and her boyfriend at the time, an actor, had by happenstance gotten a free, reconditioned old Singer for her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe machine was shiny and black and beautifully decorated with gold scrolls. I was less than thrilled. But feeling guilty, I thought I\u2019d better sew something. I bought a pattern and learned to sew the way I had learned to cook: by slavishly following the directions.\u201d It was the 70s, pre-YouTube.<\/p>\n

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Detail from “A Knight’s Bad Day,” by Elaine Drew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cTo my surprise, I found this absorbing. I decided to decorate the long wool culottes I\u2019d made (it was, again, the 70s) with hand embroidery that I made up as I went. I was hooked.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Drew said her years writing university papers and corporate pamphlets had left her wondering if her output was any good. \u201cBut when I made a garment, I could hang it up and look at it. I could tell whether it was good or not. I decided to become a designer.\u201d<\/p>\n

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From “A Knight’s Bad Day,” by Elaine Drew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cue FIT:\u00a0\u201cI loved my classes. I even loved the sewing instructor who ripped out the zipper I had slaved over and then explained how to do it correctly. I dearly loved my tailoring tutor who taught us couture techniques, and my millinery instructor who showed us how to block felt into a shape.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI loved draping and pattern making. A big surprise was loving the History of Costume course. I had never liked history, and this introduction to the field from a different point of view came in handy when I started to research the early medieval period for my writing.<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Detail from “A Knight’s Bad Day,” by Elaine Drew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI got my start painting in the Fashion Illustration course, which acquainted me with watercolor and illustration techniques. The Life class started a lifelong interest in drawing the figure.\u201d<\/p>\n

FIT helped Drew get her first job, at a junior sportswear company called N.U.T.S. The owners didn\u2019t want to say, but in time they confessed it was the acronym for \u201cNo Underwear This Season.\u201d Again, and for the last time, it was the 70s.<\/p>\n

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Garden and castle from “A Knight’s Bad Day,” by Elaine Drew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a few years Drew went freelance. \u201cIt was the era of boutique clothing, and I created and sold one-of-a-kind pieces to department stores like Bendel\u2019s, Bergdorf Goodman, and Bloomingdales, as well as many small boutiques.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also made costumes for a group that put on medieval plays at The Cloisters<\/a> and was an exhibition consultant for The Met\u2019s Costume Institute<\/a>. She met fashion scholar Harold Koda there long before he was its curator. Drew had a gig in Paris for an exhibition of Ballet Russe costumes and later married and moved to Los Angeles and worked in costuming for the Center Theater Group<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Detail from “A Knight’s Bad Day,” by Elaine Drew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All of that has influenced her books:\u00a0\u201cI look at a character\u2019s costume from the point of view of its construction.<\/p>\n

\n

“I learned to go to libraries and museums. Illustration skills flow from design skills, such as thinking about the design of a page, the color story, and adding a telling detail while not distracting from the whole. As an FIT teacher explained, ‘You can only have one prima ballerina.’\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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From “A Knight’s Bad Day,” by Elaine Drew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAfter we moved to a small village in England, I decided it was time to find work that didn\u2019t depend on a specific location. I was writing more\u2014even poetry for Winchester Cathedral\u2014when Saxon remains were found under the children\u2019s school playground. I began thinking about these early English.<\/p>\n

“Wouldn’t it be fun to set the Cinderella story in early English times with a bratty and sassy heroine, the opposite of her usual portrayal?<\/p>\n

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Christine Mower in “Noah’s Ark,” performed at the Cloisters. Costume by Elaine Drew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That led to two years researching this period of Hampshire\u2019s history (around 802) and spawned her first book, Courting Trouble<\/i>. \u201cI enjoyed the main characters of that book so much that I did another book about them, Nun Too Clever<\/i>, a mystery.<\/p>\n

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Stephen de Pietri in “A Woman Taken in Adultery,” performed at the Cloisters. Costume by Elaine Drew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For those books, she illustrated the covers.\u00a0 A Knight\u2019s Bad Day<\/em> illustrates a tale featuring the hero of the first two books.<\/p>\n

The illustrations for that book were mostly manual. Drew did outline sketches designed as two-page spreads, then refined and enlarged in Adobe Illustrator and printed full size with a wide format printer. With a light box and Faber-Castell Ecco Pigment pens, she traced the line art onto Arches watercolor paper, then painted these illustrations with Holbein\u2019s gouache. The finished paintings were scanned and modified in Adobe Photoshop.<\/p>\n

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Detail from “A Knight’s Bad Day,” by Elaine Drew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For her next project, in progress, she\u2019s using only digital tools, adding an iPad and Fresco to the mix. She\u2019s back in the United States, living in the San Francisco Bay area, in the town of Pleasanton. But the Saxons followed her.<\/p>\n

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Elaine Drew in her studio, Pleasanton, CA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Elaine Drew\u2019s book “A Knight’s Bad Day,<\/a>” will be available shortly in the Gladys Marcus Library<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To see more of the writer and illustrator’s work, visit ElaineDrew.com<\/a> and on Instagram: @Elaine_Drew3<\/a><\/p>\n

To learn more about the School of Art and Design\u2019s Fashion Design major, visit Fashion Design at FIT<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All images used with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After two novels that take readers back 1300 years to early medieval England, Elaine Drew has just released a lavishly illustrated short story from the same period, A Knight\u2019s Bad Day. Another is in the works. Drew had a bachelor\u2019s in English from Emory University and had worked in public relations for General Electric before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":285,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[70571,70597,70572],"tags":[70574,70601,70584,70577,32948,70578,70594,70599,70593,70587,70581,70579,70573,70178,70600,70576,70591,70596,70586,70575,70590,70582,70588,70585,70583,70589,70592,70598,70580,70595],"class_list":["post-12480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fashion-illustration","category-millinery","category-singer","tag-a-knights-bad-day","tag-arches-watercolor-paper","tag-ballet-russe","tag-bendels","tag-bergdorf-goodman","tag-bloomingdales","tag-center-theater-group","tag-christine-mower","tag-cloisters","tag-courting-trouble","tag-couture","tag-draping","tag-elaine-drew","tag-emory-university","tag-faber-castell-ecco-pigment","tag-fashion-illustration","tag-general-electric","tag-hand-embroidery","tag-harold-koda","tag-history-of-costume","tag-medieval-england","tag-millinery","tag-nun-too-clever","tag-paris","tag-pattern-making","tag-pleasanton","tag-sportswear","tag-stephen-de-pietri","tag-tailoring","tag-winchester-cathedral"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p13xjz-3fi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/285"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/artanddesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}