WIP: Cut & Color Couture Designs

So, my flight home from the Paper Doll Convention in Indianapolis got seriously delayed and I had a lot of time to spend sitting in an airport. I spent much of it drawing paper dolls and listening to podcasts. So, I’ve been working on Cut & Color Couture paper dolls.

Two things I love about this series-

1. My niece has gotten into coloring and I am all about making things that she might like. So, black and white paper dolls for the win.
2. The dolls are symmetrical which means I can use Procreate to mirror my lines as I draw them. That makes for much faster drawing. (This feels a little like cheating sometimes, but I keep telling myself it’s more like using spellcheck. I still have to do the writing, I just don’t have to remember that there’s a second U in couture.)

So, I’ve been working on three different sets. One is formal gowns. One is historical themed. One is princesses with big skirts.

Formal Gowns

I was playing around with how to use some of Procreates features to play around with similar pieces looking different through variations in form. There’s an old paper doll series that Julie Matthews did of toddler paper dolls. If you look carefully at the dolls, there’s a lot of duplication of basic shapes. The details create the unique dresses.

This is something I’ve wanted to explore and drawing fancy dresses seemed like a fun way to explore it.

The 1920s, 1940s & 1950s

The Paper Doll Convention inspired the 1920s set. I used Good House Keeping from 1926 as my source and had a lot of fun. The 1940s foray was based on the 1942 Sears catalog- Spring Summer. I don’t love the 1940s styles, but this was largely an experiment in hair drawing. Also the fun thing about working from Sears catalogs is that they have everything- shoes, purses, dresses, hats, swimsuits and underwear.

One of my all time favorite looks I’ve ever seen is in the 1955 Spring Supper Issue of the Sears catalog. I debated between the one with the teal belt on the left and the one with the black bodice, before deciding on the black bodice one. My interpretation is not exact, but I love love how it came out and I am very proud of it. I can’t wait to see the set finished.

I haven’t started work on it- yet- but I want to do all the decades of the 20th century, but also I sort of have been thinking about also doing all the decades of the 19th century, too. Not there yet.

The Princesses!

So, I was going through my own paper doll archives (which I do occasionally) and I was inspired to draw some gowns based on older designs. I wanted to use them as a place to do some more princess gowns. I don’t mind at all borrowing from my own older work.

Plus, I wanted to be able to layer the gowns. So, the over gown could be a separate piece. I’m actually kind of obsessed with this over gown and I might have made more than one version…

You know, I just realized that there’s a lot of dresses here. I didn’t mean for that to happen, but it 100% did. So, might be time to draw these nice paper dolls some trousers.