Black & White Archives • Page 82 of 93 • Paper Thin Personas

Warrior Printable Paper Doll

May 21, 2020September 27, 2012

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So, I was pawing around the internet, as I do, and I stumbled across this wonderful German website that contained some beautiful vintage German paper dolls. The word for paper doll in German is “ankleidepuppen” which literally translates to something like “dress up doll” according to my good friend from Germany, but, she told me, its usually used for paper dolls rather than normal dolls. Paper dolls and paper models are still pretty popular in Germany, though not in the United States.

Right after college, I got a fairly dead-end job working at a local bookstore and toy store. One of the catalogs we received, though never ordered from, was a German catalog that sold beautiful paper models. The prices were far above what we could have possibly sold them for, so we didn’t stock them normally, though I seem to recall a customer who would come in and special order them.

I love beautiful paper toys of all kinds, though paper dolls are, understandably, my first love.

Silk and Steel: Paper Doll in Black and White

May 21, 2020September 17, 2012

Marisole has been a lot of things over the years… She’s been a zombie and a pirate and a ninja and a member of Star Fleet, but she’s never just been a warrior chick and I thought she should be, plus I have a friend whose really into Xena and she was remarking that Marisole has been a lot of princesses, but she hadn’t ever really been ready for a fight.

So, here she is, ready for a fight. Though… I confess her armor isn’t really very… practical. Still, she’ll look cute and that’s half the battle.

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Toni Cross

asked: Did you like playing with dolls as a kid? As in, the non-paper kind? If so, what doll was your favorite? If not, what toy was your favorite and why?

I love dolls as a kid. I still love dolls, though over the years, I have come to realize what I really loved was miniature clothing and things. I loved all the tiny clothing and accessories more than I loved the dolls themselves.

My favorite dolls were Ginny dolls by Vogue. My Ginny’s had all sorts of adventures, but my fondest memories of the Ginny dolls are when my Grandmother came to visit and she would knit and sew them clothing. I still own all the tiny outfits my grandmother made for them and the wooden furniture my grandfather made.

I should mention, Toni has a blog of her own where she has posted a few beautiful paper dolls, I particularly like her baby paper doll named Sammi.

Roccoco Fantasy: Paper Doll in Black and White

May 21, 2020September 3, 2012

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First of all, Happy Labor Day to those in the USA who get the holiday off. Had I realized it was going to be Labor Day when I posted this paper doll, I would have come up with something thematic… but instead we have crazy Rococo dresses. This is what happens when I work several weeks a head.

Though not Labor Day thematic, I love the 18th century… not historically speaking (I really don’t care much about the French revolution or the American revolution or… I digress), but the period is full of wonderful over the top dresses and wigs. I love the wigs.

Not that I would have wanted to wear them, since they were nearly impossible to clean and made of human hair or sheep’s wool…. and that gets gross fast. There are even reports of rats living in women’s wigs…. All I can say to that is “ewww”

Still, crazy wigs are cool in theory, if not in reality.

Now, for a question:

Dorothy D Lafferty asked: So when will you do a “librarian” paper doll?

Probably not anytime soon… though I do seem to draw a lot of books as accessory items for my paper dolls… so that might say something about me.

I suppose I should eventually do a librarian paper doll, but I don’t know what she would wear. What does a stylish librarian wear?

Unless she’s Batgirl…. Because Batgirl was a librarian… and then I would need a paper Batgirl costume and I don’t know if I’m up for that.

On the other hand, I got to say, Yvonne Craig is pretty darn hot as Batgirl.

And I do have one friend for whom the idea of a Batgirl paper doll would make absurdly happy.

What do you all think a librarian paper doll (Batgirl or not) ought to wear?

Paper doll blogging: Setting the bar low…

May 21, 2020June 23, 2012

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on blogging, website design or anything else. I don’t make money doing this and I don’t have a ton of readers. Continue at your own risk.

The trick to blogging I think is this: Set the bar low, so you can achieve your goals.

And no, I am not kidding.

I might want to post every day, but there’s not a chance that’s going to happen. So, if I say I am going to post a paper doll every day and than I fail to post every day, I feel that I have let people down.

At which point, the spiral of self-doubt and guilt sets in. This is a bad spiral.

Instead, I say, I’d like to have post once a week. I know my schedule says four times a week, but my goal these days is a post a week.

I’m moving. I’m starting a new job. I can not keep to my old schedule.

And I think one post a week is about the minimum for a blog to keep itself running. So, that’s my goal. One new paper doll post a week. Sometimes I make this, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I go over it.

But if I felt like I had created an expectation that I would post everyday and failed to meet it than I would end up just feeling guilty and bad about neglecting the blog and I feel guilty and bad about that enough already.

This is supposed to be fun. When it stops being fun, I seriously need a new hobby.

I was feeling abstract when I drew these paper dolls….

May 19, 2020June 22, 2012

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So, true story:

There was this girl in one of my classes last semester who had the most amazing hair. Every class she’d come in with it styled in a different way- sometimes it was in a huge afro and sometimes it was in tons of little braids and sometimes it was straightened and sometimes…. you get the idea.

So, one day she came in with all the small braids coiled up into these huge pair of buns on either side of her head. The way the braids were wrapped around each other made it look like they were woven- almost like baskets. It was utterly beautiful.

I wanted to try to draw that hair style for this paper doll.

I don’t think I really captured it.

Seriously though, I always wondered: How long did it take her in the morning to get ready? I’m lucky if I get my hair brushed and my clothing on.

Marisole Monday: On the Boardwalk in Black and White

May 21, 2020June 18, 2012

Somehow, this Marisole paper doll reminded me of trips to the seashore. When I was a child, I remember my family went to Atlantic city for a few weeks one summer. My father’s family is from the East Coast, so the whole group met there. While I remember only vague things from the trip, I recall distinctly walking down the boardwalk with my father and eating black cherry frozen custard which my father would buy for me from a stand on the boardwalk. I still remember how the purple custard was rolled in rainbow sprinkles until they covered it completely.

Every time I eat frozen custard, I think of my father.

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And now, for a question:

Ana asked “how many drafts of any one finished doll do you go through?”

The short answer is that it depends the doll. Dolls are drawn off templates which have seven to twelve drafts. Clothing is lightly penciled and than inked. I don’t usually draft the clothing full-size unless I am having trouble with something and then I do.

There’s also a more detailed long answer. If you want to read it, continue below.

Okay, so here is the detailed version:

I draw paper dolls in stages. The first stage is a doll template. Doll templates evolve over many drafts. Those drafts begin as very very rough and eventually become fairly smooth and detailed. When I was working on the Dictionary Girls, I posted a post where I showed bad scans of the stages of there development.

So, once I have a template, I trace the template and lightly draw it. Than I do a detailed pencil version over than a light penciled version and than I ink that. I took some photos of this a while ago with a set of dresses and you can see them here.

If I screw up a doll, and I often do, it’s in the inking stage usually. So I am always careful not to draw any clothing or anything else until I’ve inked the doll. I draw from templates, so that if I end up hating the doll, I can draw her over again without needed to redraw the body which is the hardest part for me. Plus I can fix things through the power of Photoshop.

I hope that answers the question. 🙂

I draw paper dolls… (Plus here’s a chick with some fantasy dresses)

May 19, 2020June 1, 2012

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So… here’s the thing… I said to the apartment people..I need a second bedroom, because I want a work space and a guest space…

What I didn’t say is this:

I draw paper dolls.
I don’t know why.
It’s not because I have an artistic vision or something… I just like them.
It’s a little nostalgia, a little amusement. It’s my hobby.
Why do some people knit or crochet or make pottery?
I don’t know.
I don’t even really know why I draw paper dolls.
Except this…
Every paper doll is a potential story. What humans wear are physical manifestations of social and cultural forces. We dress ourselves so we can become what we want to be. We dress ourselves as what we think we should be.
Every paper doll is a potential character. What that paper doll wears is about what that paper doll can become. Every time I draw a paper doll, I can create a world.
Also, I like pretty dresses.
This is my hobby.
I don’t knit. I don’t crochet.
I draw paper dolls.

Plus… well… I do need some guest space.

A Princess Paper Doll in Black and White

May 21, 2020May 28, 2012

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for the rest of this series}So, my drawing is still open (will be until Next Tuesday, winner will be announced with the Dictionary Girls post of that week), but I wanted to start answering some of the excellent questions I was asked. Since one of the questions was about Marisole and here is Marisole, it seems fitting to answer that question now.

Dee asked: Where did the original idea [for Marisole] come from, was the first doll based on anyone special.

The answer is yes, she was. Well.. sort of. The first Marisole paper doll was drawn in 2009, according to the note I have scribbled on the original art work, but I never got around to posting her until the site crashed. As a result, she was posted for the new site version in January of 2010 and made her debut.

She is based, vaguely, on Halle Berry in the James Bond movie Die Another Day which is a pretty bad movie. Jinx Johnson, played by Halle, walks out of the water in a tiny orange bikini and a spiky hair cut. The hair was what made me think Marisole looked like Halle. The rest of the paper doll’s features owe their proportions to the Bratz dolls mostly.

Beyond the Jinx Johnson connection, I wanted to do a paper doll that wasn’t white. I’d noticed that there just aren’t a lot of brown skinned paper dolls out there on the internet. (My attempt to collect some African American paper doll printables taught me there still aren’t a lot of them.)

I went utterly cartoony with Marisole because I was self-conscious doing strongly ethnic features. The history of black paper dolls, especially, is full of some remarkably cruel depictions and I wanted to make sure Marisole wasn’t one of them.

It is possible she’s a cruel depiction of compound eyed, huge headed bug people… but that can’t be helped.

Also, making the paper doll cartoony meant she could be any skin tone or style I wanted which is part of why I still like drawing and coloring her after 2 and a-half years. She’s been dark, light, and dead.

I’ve even made her an alien.

Today’s incarnation of Marisole is a fairly standard pseudo-Victorian set whose pieces I couldn’t seem to arrange properly and so lose the title. Oh well… these things happen. I hate coming up with titles anyway. Tune in next week for the color version. It’s going to be… bright.

Flirty Eyes and Puffy Sleeves: Printable Paper Doll

May 19, 2020May 25, 2012

So, first of all, I want to thank everyone whose entered my drawing and asked me a question. The questions have all been really interesting. It’s fascinating to think about what maybe I have or haven’t said on the blog that perhaps I should have said… and if that’s not the most convoluted sentence ever… I don’t know what is.

The drawing is open until next Tuesday and then I’ll use a random number generator to pick the winner.

And now…. A few words about the printable paper doll of the day….

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The Shadow and Light paper dolls are drawn in a style I developed in college after complaining that most black and white paper dolls needed to be colored to look good. I wanted to draw some paper dolls that were graphic enough to stand alone without being colored, plus I was reading a lot of comics in those days and had a love of the heavy shadowed style of Frank Miller’s Sin City and Marcelo Frusin, who was drawing the Hellblazer comics at that time with Mike Carey was writing it. I stopped reading comics when I got to graduate school, far to much to do and not enough time to do it in, but I hope to get back to them and at least finish Lucifer which I never did get done with and darn it, I wanna know how it ends.

Okay, I know how it ends, but I still wanna read it…

This particular paper doll has “flirty eyes” which is a term used to describe dolls that look to the side rather than forward. It’s a pretty common term in antique and collectable dolls and “flirty eyed” dolls were particularly popular in the 1900s with Googlies and Lenci dolls.

Argh… ’tis a Pirate Lass: A Pirate Paper Doll Set

May 19, 2020May 18, 2012

So… this is practically late. I mean… it’s like 11:50 here in Illinois, but I really really wanted to get a Shadow and Light doll up since it’s been a while since I did one and I have been feeling bad about that.

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Back in the 1980’s I was pretty young, but I remember wearing overall shorts, which were the latest thing, and having a weird affection for when I was old, because I was going to wear thigh high boots. I don’t know why I was so into the idea, but I remember drawing lots of paper dolls sporting thigh high boots and miniskirts in elementary school. Perhaps I saw Pretty Woman at too young of an age…. Oddly, my mother was never concerned as far as I could tell with my thigh high boot obsession.

As an adult, I have never worn thigh high boots… a pity perhaps.

Needless to say, my love of shoes was founded young and even now I love shoes (which I think comes through on my paper dolls.)

And, as you might notice, our pirate is sporting some pretty darn sexy boots.

Sweet Cream: Printable Paper Doll in Black and White

May 21, 2020May 14, 2012

Today’s paper doll is new and in black and white. Next week, she’ll be in color. I just don’t have the colored version done yet and I thought I would post a black and white version first. These are all pieces of clothing I found while looking through magazines in the airport. I really love the full skirted dress with the buttons. I would wear it, but then I love those full skirted vintage looking dresses.

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So, I disappeared there for a few days. I got busy and then I got overwhelmed and then I got lazy. But life has settled down a little, though I must confess not very much, and I am able to get some time in to work on feeding the blog. The truth is that while classes are over I have a few things to finish before I graduate and then, only then, can I consider myself done. Plus I am moving soon, so that’s another series of problems to worry about.

I saw the James Bond film Quantum of Solace tonight with friends and I had no idea what was going on for most of the film. I was rather disappointed. I really like James Bond, but…. I dunno. It was an odd film.

Beneath the Waves in Black and White Paper Doll

May 21, 2020May 7, 2012

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So… slightly slacker post from me today. I as out of town last week in Alabama and just got back. I prepped this while sitting in the Chicago airport waiting to get on a plane to go home. I posted Beneath the Waves in color last year in June. I found the file and decided to put it up in color. I have been getting more and more requests for paper dolls to color, so here is another one.

I love spring when the rains come and the paper doll blogs are in bloom. Actually, I joke, but I have stumbled across a few new blogs over the last few days. My latest find is called Miss Missy Paper Dolls, slightly unnerving for me since I have a good friend named Missy, never the less, I am enjoying the posts as I work my way through her archive. I recommend her blog to those of us who like such things (and if you don’t like such things, what the heck are you doing here anyhow?).