I had a lot of different ideas about how to colors last week’s paper doll. I thought about a traditional princess scheme which would, of course, involve a great deal of pink. I also thought about something in pale blues and teals.
In the end though, I wanted to try to color these dresses as more of a “dark princess” look for the printable paper doll. Therefore I went with black and lavender, traditional mourning colors, so she’s a bit gothic. I accented the dresses with a set of white roses and a set of red roses. Most of my color schemes are a bit more diverse in their color selection. For this one, I stuck with a narrow selection of shades intended to keep things fairly simple.
I confess that coloring these gowns was quite fast thanks to the large swatches of one color.
I gave our princess black finger nails and black toenails to emphasis the slightly “gothic” feel of the princesses gowns. The gothic elements are also apparent in her bleached hair. This is not my typical princess, at least not the typical princess I keep in my head.
Julie, of Paper Doll School, and I are hosting a paper doll round robin with a beautiful base doll Julie created. Read more about it and join us, if you like. The deadline is Saturday the 24th at 12pm EST. 🙂
One of my good friends has nicknamed this paper doll, “Beardy Swordsman!”. I have decided to go with the poll name winner and call him Mikhail. Personally, I was rooting for Mikhail to win and that was my vote. I feel a little guilty because Mikhail won by just one vote and that might have been me. Still, I’m allowed to vote in my own polls, right? I didn’t vote more than once…
I decided to make a knight paper doll as the first of the Mikhail paper dolls, not out of any particularly grand plan, but because I think a lot about the sort of stories you might want to play out with the paper dolls. Back when I was a kid and I played with paper dolls, the narrative provided by the paper doll book rarely worked out as written. With a wedding set, I might decide I actually liked the Maid of Honor paper doll better than the Bride paper doll and she was going to run off with the Groom and the Best Man was actually the older brother of the….
Well, you get the idea.
So, when I create paper dolls I think about the types of stories you might want to tell. Since every doll of a series can share outfits with every other doll of the same series, Mikhail and Marcus can exchange clothes. Now along with being airship mechanics or casual dates, they can also be knights who rescue princesses or knights who get lost in swamps and need to be rescued themselves.
Several years ago, I met a young lady who was four (I think) and who very much wanted to be a knight. I thought to myself, “Good for you.” I drew a knight paper doll for her, but every time I draw a knight, I think of that young lady.
I have done a lot of dark haired guys, so I decided to make Mikhail a blond. Frankly, coloring armor is fairly dull. It is made of steel. It is going to be silver. There’s just not a lot of variability in that. I went with a lot of gold accents on the armor, because I have decided that Mikhail is a noble night and can afford to spend a fair bit of cash on his armor. Plus it broke up the grey.
In a totally unrelated note, as many of you know, I am currently conducting a survey. (At this point, my daily readers are like… Can she shut up about the Survey already?) I would ask that if you haven’t filled it out, please do so. It’s about developing products to open a Paper Thin Personas store in the next year. It should only take about 15 minutes and would be uber-helpful and I’ll send you a thank you paper doll if you leave me your email at the end. (The emails are deleted out of the survey results immediately to keep things as anonymous as humanly possible. So, don’t worry about that.)
Thanks again to everyone whose already done the survey! I’ve learned a lot from everyone’s comments and responses. Maybe at the end, I’ll do a post about some of the stuff I learned? I don’t know… does that violate the principle of an anonymous survey? Thoughts from my readers?
Meet the first Friend of Marcus! He doesn’t have a name yet- there’s a poll to vote for one below. Once he has a name, I’ll start calling him by it. For now, I think of him as Marcus’ bearded friend.
I’ve been wanting to do a knight with armor male paper doll since I added male paper dolls to the Marisole Monday & Friends collection. I waited a while though, because armor is actually rather hard to draw. I do think knight paper dolls make great paper dolls for boys and I am trying to be diverse in my paper doll creations.
I was complaining about how boring men’s hairstyles were and then I remembered- facial hair. Mustaches, beards, goatees, soul patches- There are many fun options for paper doll facial hair. So, this guy got himself a beard.
After doing some experimenting, I think the helmet works best for the printable paper doll if it is placed underneath the armor, rather than on top of it. He’s got a broad sword and an axe.
So I have narrowed my options down to four different names. Help me decide which one I should choose by voting below. The poll is open until Sunday.
[poll id=”11″]
One last thing I wanted to mention- I’ve decided to do a survey of my readers about potentially opening a shop to sell my paper dolls and setting up a Patreon account for Paper Thin Personas. The survey should only take about 10 or 15 minutes of your time. If you complete the survey and include an email at the end, I will send you a “THANK YOU” paper doll within the next week.
At the moment, I am trying to get inspired to give the male paper dolls some love. I am trying to convince myself that male clothing is as interesting as female clothing. I am trying to develop the same interest drawing for guys as I do for girls.
It is not easy.
I realize that a lot of it is in my head. I don’t think I’m good at drawing males and my insecurity makes it hard to want to try. Usually, I think of drawing male paper dolls as something I do “for my readers” and not something I do for myself.
This is a line of reasoning that I am trying to stop using. Drawing things for other people is, for me, a fast road to burn out. No one keeps up a blog like this for as long as I have by doing it “for other people”. Trust me. You have to do it for yourself.
But I also want to challenge myself. I also want to try things that I have never tried. I want to create things that I have never created. I want to stretch and do things that scare me a little. So, male paper dolls it is.
I usually steer clear of monochromatic color schemes. Nothing against them, I just think that they can be boring. Still, green is a nice color and when I asked a friend of mine what color I should go with for male clothing, he said, “Green.”
So, green it is.
One of the nice things about green is that I don’t find any of the shades really horrid. I mean, there are shades of yellow I think are awful and shades of orange that I don’t like either, but green and blue are pretty much all okay with me. So, a green prince to match, I suppose, my yellow and my pink princesses.
This isn’t an accurate depiction of Tang Dynasty dress. Though at times it seems to me that this would be obvious, most people (myself included) aren’t very familiar with the dynasties of China, let alone what they were wearing. Oddly, I never feel like when I draw stuff like this or this or this, I have to say it’s not accurate historical European dress, so perhaps my ned for a “disclaimer” is partly an assumption on my part about what my readers are familiar with.
So, anyway, these gowns were inspired by Hanfu and Tang Dynasty dress if anyone is keeping count. Of course, they aren’t accurate and they aren’t meant to be. I just had a lot of fun looking up gowns like this one and this one on Pinterest.
I find balancing research intense projects with non-research intense projects really helps keep me feeling sane. So, fantasy often seems to counter balance historical sets. I just finished, for example, penciling the largest 18th century set that I have ever drawn and then drew a space princess with a ray gun.
I went with a muted color scheme that I found on Design Seeds. I wanted it to feel a little less bright and more nature inspired than a lot of my color schemes tend towards. I have a lof of bright colors. I think the gray greens and soft lavenders go a long way to keeping things feeling soft and delicate.
I swear I had a reference from a contemporary Asian historical drama film when I drew her hair, but now I can’t seem to find the picture on Pinterest. Normally, I’m quite compulsive about saving these things, so I’m a little surprised to be so flummoxed.
Today’s printable paper doll is Hazel getting to rock some fantasy gowns. Sometimes I feel odd posting a lot of the same styles of things in a row, as I know I have readers who are into all sorts of different things, but I have certainly been on a fantasy gown drawing kick. Never fear, the March fashion magazines are out and Monday there will be something “completely different.”
That is to say, my other contest winner will get her paper doll set and it is not a fantasy set in the traditional sense.
I suppose in some senses every set is a little bit fantasy. I mean, most of these pieces of clothing, even my contemporary ones, don’t exist in real life. However, I think it is more useful to think in terms of fantasy as a genre. Since I think it helps people find what they might like around here.
Later this week, I’ll show off some of the stuff from my sketchbook (likely tomorrow or Friday) and then Monday there will be a Marisole Monday Post and then I’m not sure what’ll go up next. I have a few different things done.
Clearly, I’ve been on a bit of a medieval kick with Monday’s 14th century set and today’s psuedo-medieval Poppet paper doll set. Ironically, I’m not that much of a medieval fantasy fan. As far as book genres, I’m much more into urban fantasy than anything in the classic or epic fantasy genres.
Of course, urban fantasy generally doesn’t lend to crazy paper doll outfit sets.
This set is partly because of my goal this year to make  more Poppet paper doll sets. Last year, I only did eight Poppet sets which seems rather like a low number. This year my goal is at least ten. I also really want to do some historical clothing sets for them, since I have an absurd love of Victorian children’s clothing. Those sets, however, aren’t even drawn yet. I think I should finish some of my unfinished Poppet paper doll clothes before I start drawing more of them.
I have a lot of unfinished Poppet sets lurking accusingly on my computer and demanding completion.
Today’s paper doll set features colors in the same family as my Marcus the Warrior paper doll. I almost gave them real swords, but that seemed like a terribly dangerous thing to give a small child, so a wooden sword would have to do. I really do enjoy drawing toys as accessories for the Poppets.
Meanwhile, I have been giving a lot of thought to Copyright and other issues of posting content on the internet. Would people be interested on a post on that topic?
I had grand plans to get my 1300s Marisole Monday & Friends set done yesterday, but obviously that didn’t happen. So, we have Bodacious and Buxom instead with queens & dragons! (Sort of.)
So, when I posted my blog goals for 2015, I didn’t mention in my ten posts for Bodacious and Buxom that I had this post waiting quietly in the wings. Technically, I finished it when I finished the 1940s paper doll set, but I saved it as I don’t like to post two of the same series in a row.
I also have a nearly finished regency combined with steampunk set and a weird sort of farm girl thing in the works.
But today there are dragons, or at least humanoids who have some reptilian features. One of the things that my alchemist paper doll taught me is how many long dresses I can fit on a single page of the B&B series. The answer seems to be two dresses with a pair of shoes and some accessories. As a result, our Dragon Queen paper doll has two gowns, a sword, a mirror, a book and some shoes. Somehow I always imagine dragons as very vain creatures.
In my mind, today’s paper doll is either a dragon in humanoid form or from a species that believes they are descended from dragons. Her homeland is mountainous and rich in minerals. I imagine her people are sophisticated and tend to rely on their innate magic rather than technological acumen to solve their problems. Isolationists, they are uninterested in contact with other humanoid species, but maintain slight contact with the Dwarfs, for their technology and metalworking skills, and minor contact with the Elves, for their magic. Humans are, well, beneath them.
I chose a rich jewel toned color scheme for this paper doll set. I knew I wanted some sort of green skin, but I didn’t want it to feel too “lizard” like. I went with a rich teal. I also wanted her dresses to coordinate with her skin, as though they were chosen specifically to do so. I imagine she is wealthy enough to have her clothing tailored to match her coloring.
Today’s paper doll is named for a very close friend of mine in childhood named Akemi. Akemi was a very talented singer and dancer. Also, her family kept ducks.
The ducks got carried off by bald eagles on a rather regular basis.
And Akemi had all of the She-ra action figures including the horse and the cloud palace. I can not express how jealous I was of this She-ra collection. Hours were spent in her backyard feeding ducks, chasing off eagles who wanted to eat the ducks, and having epic She-ra battles.
So, when I was looking for a good name for my fantasy warrior paper doll, I immediately thought of Akemi and She-ra.
I’ve no idea what happened to Akemi. (Also, I’m not positive she didn’t spell her name Akimi, but I think it was Akemi. Now, this is going to bug me… Short of getting my mother to pull my old middle school year book from storage, there is no way to easily answer that question.)
Moving away from my childhood for a moment, today’s paper doll is a fantasy warrior with five mix and match clothing pieces, two pairs of shoes and some serious weapons. I’ve done a lot of swords, axes and spears, so I wanted to some crazy scythe like thing. I don’t think it would be a very practical weapon in the real world, but it does look cool.
And fantasy warriors should get cool looking weapons.
All in all, I am pleased with the color scheme I ended up with.I knew I wanted to use red and gold, cliche though they are, for her armor. I added black and cream for contrast after trying out brown and disliking how it looked with the red. Her hair changed color several times over the course of deciding on the black and blond dip dye look (for a while it was red and blond, also blue briefly).
That is all I have to say about that. Enjoy the paper doll.
I draw a lot more paper dolls than I post. This is why I sometimes am unsure about posting sketchbook images, because there are things which end up never migrating into the blog, or migrate onto the blog so much later than I meant them too.
And when I create a new series of paper dolls, as B&B is still in my mind, I often draw a lot and then lose interest for a while. This is my basic pattern of paper doll production. I am passionately fascinated with a series for a few weeks and then, after a while, I lose interest and move onto other things. One of the reasons I try to build a backlog is that if I didn’t have one, I would post nothing but say… Pixies for two months and then nothing but Flock for two months and… you get the idea.
Since, I’ve been struggling to get things finished over the last few weeks, I have devoted myself to digging through my folders and finding old things I haven’t finished and finishing them up. Truth is that I have a fair number of orphaned drawings which got scanned and then never got cleaned up and colored. This is one of those orphaned sets. I first drew this when I first drew B&B.
I often go back to themes I’ve done before. Styles which have, for best or for ill, been used in previous paper doll experiments or have shown up in other forms on the blog. I think everyone does this. Whenever I think I am “always drawing the same thing”, than I am reminded that some of my favorite paper doll artists (like Boots and Liana) have themes they return to as well.
I mean, can I help that I have a love of corsets? And leggings tucked into boots.
Also, I clearly have a thing for redheads. I have always had a thing for redheads. My grandmother was a redhead and I have always wished that I inherited that gene, sadly, I did not. Plus, I saw the movie Anne of Green Gables at a young and impressionable age.
Meanwhile, a few other announcements. Once again, my email system for mailing people with blog updates seems to be having trouble. I shall do my best to try to fix it.
And I have finally moved into the 21st century and am now on Twitter. You can follow me @paperpersonas though it’s not strictly blog related and there are plenty of comments about librarianship and my general life that happen as well.
Thoughts? Questions? Comments are always appreciated.
