So, remember how on Friday I said there were going to be changes… Well, this is one of them.
The time has come to say a sad farewell to the Showcase.
I have been horrible about updating it and when I went through my email to clean it up a few months ago, I found dozens of things that people had sent me and I had done nothing with. I felt rather guilty and then decdeed it was time for the Showcase to go.
There is now a Pinterest board called “PTP Paper Doll Sightings.” I’ve seen a few pattern designers use this method for showing off the work of people who had made their patterns and I thought it was a great idea.
It is so much easier for me to just download the image from my email and post it up onto Pinterest. No fuss, no muss and I get to share things that people don’t send me, but I find around the internet where my art has been featured in various ways. Plus I can link to others sites very easily which lets them get some credit too. So, go check it out and let me know if there is anything I should add to it.
I will probably still do posts of readers creations once in a while on the blog, but I’ll update the Pinterest board much more regularly. I have been testing it for the last few weeks and it has performed admirably. So, feel free to go follow it and see how people have colored and used my art. 🙂
I’m usually not organized enough to get successive photos of the same page of the same sketchbook, but I planned carefully and am pleased to show off today the three major stages of paper doll gown creation.
Stage 1: The Light Pencil Sketch
The first step is to lightly sketch out the major lines of the paper doll gown, shoes and hair. This is one of two dresses that I have planned for a princess set. At this stage of the process the only two things I had decided were that I wanted a full-skirted silhouette, the paper doll was for Marisole Monday & Friends, her shoes were going to have stockings, and that I was going to make her black with an afro-puff styled hair. I hadn’t really thought much about other details yet.
At this stage, when nothing is really finalized, I always feel excitement and dread. More than one paper doll set has never gotten past the rough pencil stage.
Stage 2: The Detailed Pencil Sketch
The next step in the process is doing what I call “detailed” linework. This stage can take several revisions- that’s why I draw fairly lightly. I cleaned up some of the silhouette, added lines to indicate folds and then started thinking about pattern.
Lately, I have been really into traditional African fabrics dyed with a wax process. So, I decided to create several pattern elements inspired by those textiles that I could use to construct a pattern on the wide expanse of the skirt. I chose a lattice pattern for the jacket and then created four other motifs. I might not use all of them, but I like to have options. You can see my growing collection of African print fabrics on my African Prints & Fashion Pinterest board.
I changed the design of the tiara, because I wanted it to match the motifs I had designed for the pattern that will eventually go on the skirt. That meant altering the tiara accordingly. I really like the new design.
Additionally, I settled on adding garters to the tops of the stockings and decided on a psuedo-Victorian look for the shoes. Try as a might, I can’t help but associate these full skirts with the gowns of the 1860s. This is also the stage of the process when I add accessories like the hair pick and tea set. Everything on this page will be inked when I start inking.
Stage 3: Inking
After I have settled on a detailed pencil sketch, I begin inking. I always start with the major outlines and then work my way in. The last things to get inked are the fold lines on the skirts or ruffles and stitching on boots. Because ink can smear, I always take pauses while inking to let things dry a little before continuing my work. There are inevitably mistakes or I suddenly decide I want to add something I hadn’t planned, but mostly it is a slow and steady process. Inking is very meditative for me- I really enjoy settling down on my couch and getting to ink for an hour or so in the evening while watching television.
Opps… I just noticed I forgot to ink the folds in the ruffle at the top of the bodice. My bad. I’ll do that after I erase all the pencil lines.
Certain elements- like the strings on the instrument remain uninked, because I will add them with Photoshop. I am not very good at drawing perfectly straight lines.
Before I scan this drawing, I will erase all the pencil lines and check for and make any minor corrections I need to make. I’ve already noticed a mistake.
While putting all these together in a post only took about thirty minutes, the truth is that each of these photo represents weeks between stages. It takes a long time to get from Stage 1 to Stage 3 and there are still steps to go before the paper doll goes live.
So, two other little things. One, there is currently a poll on what to name my “bearded friend of Marcus” paper doll, go vote if you haven’t. Maxwell is currently in the lead. Secondly, I am currently doing a survey of my readers on Product Development for Paper Thin Personas. Sounds thrilling, I know… But it has been already very enlightening. So, if you should have about fifteen minutes and you haven’t done it already, I would urge you to please fill it out and, as a reward, you will get sent a Thank You paper doll, if you give me your email address.
An actual Viking oval brooch from the 10th Century- The Met- Accession Number: 1982.323.1
Today, we’re going talk about Viking women’s clothing, because I was working on a Viking paper doll. As always happens with me, I did a lot of research. This post could have been many more paragraphs, but what I wanted to do today was write a quick overview. The truth is that we actually don’t know what Viking women wore. Rather, scholars have examined various pieces of archaeological evidence and have come up with theories which, at times, completely contradict each other. In the this post, I tried to summarize the major scholars on the topic and explain what I learned while researching my Viking paper doll.
I maybe many things, but I am not a scholar on Viking dress.
Who were the Vikings?
The Vikings were a Germanic Norse seafaring culture which existed from about 700 ACE until about 1000 ACE. The main strongholds of Viking culture were Norway, Sweden and Denmark, but there where were Viking settlements in England, Ireland, Iceland and Greenland.  The Vikings also made contact as far as the Middle East, Russia, and China. Seriously, these dudes got around.  Their travels and expansion heavily influenced European medieval cultures.
Basic Overview
It is generally agreed that Viking women wore clothing; however, theories differ on what this clothing looked like.  Most agree that women wore a shirt of some kind underneath a dress suspended from two oval brooches. This dress is often called an apron-dress or smokkr. If you need to modern version, imagine a jumper. The apron-dress was held up by oval brooches, sometimes called dwarf brooches. Over top of the apron-dress women may have worn an apron in front, a pleated train in back, a caftan coat, a cloak or a shawl. That’s one of the areas  scholars disagree on. The exact meaning of the apron-dress and who was entitled to wear it is also a topic of debate. I’m not going to get into that discussion here. It should, however, be noted that this apron-dress does not appear to have been universally worn by women of all social statuses and ages.
Back in January, I outlined six goals for 2015. Since Monday was the Rosh Hashannah (Jewish New Year) and I have a tradition of going back to my goals every year around this time, I thought today would be a good day to see where I am nine months into the year.
I will be among the first to acknowledge that I haven’t done everything on my list, but then I never seem too.
So, here we go:
Goal 1: More Historical Paper Dolls. I want to create ten historical paper doll sets in 2015.
I actually have already completed this goal which I am very proud of. Depending on whether or not you count the multipage sets as one set or not, I have either made this goal or am going to make it in the next few weeks as I have a Viking st for next week and a 1950s set for sometime after that. I want to post a historical paper doll round-up post at the end of the year with all the historical paper dolls on the blog organized by era, but in the mean time you can check them all out in the Historical tag.
Goal 2: Focus a little more on Poppets, Ms. Mannequinn and Buxom and Bodacious.
Basically, I wanted to draw ten pages for each of these sets. So, far I have posted 5 sets for B&B, 4 sets for Ms. Mannequinn and 5 sets for the Poppets this year. There are several sets for both Buxom & Bodacious and Ms Mannequinn in the wings, but not quite ten. Now, the Poppets will definitely need some attention in the coming months to get to my ten posts for each in 2015 goal, but I think I will get there.
Goal 3: Do more Featured Artists.
Okay, so chalk this one up as a failure. I mean, seriously… the problem is that this always takes way more work on my part than I think it should. Anyone who says curating guest posts is simple is lying to you. The truth is that these posts can easily take as much time, if not more, than doing my own work. I think they are important, but I might change up the format a bit or something. I dunno.
I need to think about the options available to me. I really like interviewing other artists in this community and it is a very small community, so I think we need to support each other. At the same time, it is far more time consuming than it appears and I don’t know if other people are as interested in these posts as I am.
Maybe there’s an easier or simpler format I could use? Thought from the audience?
Goal 4: Actually send something into OPDAG Newsletter.
Not only have I not done this, but I think my membership has lapsed. Opps. I need to renew that and, you know, get my act together. I think part of the problem is that I only want to show off my BEST work to OPDAG since it has members whose work I admire so much. Anyway, I need to get over that and just do something. A completed “okay” project is far better than an incomplete “perfect” project.
Goal 5: Have another Mini-Series set.
This year my 18th Century Pixies Series rather took the place of having a mini-series since it has run for six weeks and wraps on Friday. I have some ideas for doing some special in December or transforming this goal into something else entirely. I have been doing a lot of non-series related drawing, but none of it is ready for prime-time yet. A lot of it is part of a project I’ve been working on for the last few months that, hopefully, will debut in December. More on that later. While I guess I haven’t really done this in a traditional sense, I do think I have been good about giving myself permission to draw “outside” the Series this year- even if some of that material hasn’t made its way onto the blog.
Goal 6: Upgrade the images on the blog to larger format images.
This is an ongoing mess of a project. You see, I don’t use WordPresses image management system because when I first started this blog, I didn’t understand how it worked and I could write raw code, so I did. Now that I am five years in, I have found that I just don’t like the image management system, so I continue to manually code most of these posts. As a result, changing something like image size means actually going into each post and manually re-coding the image width tags. Of course, if I had been smarter at the beginning I would have written that into the CSS, but well… I wasn’t that smart at the time, so I have to manually fix it all. Anyway, the result is a lot of mind-numbing copy and paste work. Never the less, I have gotten through May of 2013 so far and am chugging along. This is the problem when you know just enough code to get yourself into trouble.
Though I haven’t met all of my goals this year so far, I am actually really pleased with where the blog is. I think it is going to grow in fun and interesting ways this year and I have some cool stuff planned already for next year.
Most of all I am proud that I have been far more consistent in posting this year than I have ever been before. That is something to be very proud of, I think.
Sometimes the challenge of keeping up a long term art project like PTP is not coming up with ideas or worrying about how poorly I draw men, but rather simply the act of working on it every few days.
At while I enjoy drawing paper dolls and drawing paper dolls is my hobby, it is not my only hobby nor is it always what I want to do. Times like this, like these last few weeks, I begin to dread working on paper dolls.
Not because I don’t want to do it, but it because it just feels like “too much.”
I open my in-progress folder on my laptop and everything feels like so much work. There’s a dozen paper doll sets sitting there. None of them are finished. Some are months old and the idea of working on any of them is entirely overwhelming.
On some days when I feel this way, I ignore the problem.
I ink or I sketch. I come up with things to post on Twitter or I work on simple coding projects like re-sizing most of the blogs older images to a larger format.
But I can’t keep that up for long. Not when I have a little backlog as I currently do.
So, I would like to introduce my readers to what I call the “25 Minute Rule.”
The 25 Minute Rule: Once 25 minutes are spent on a task, you can stop.
The 25 Minute Rule is simple. It is how I get started when I don’t want to get started on something. I just promise myself that after 25 minutes working on a task, I can stop working on the task. It gives me permission to leave in the middle, but also the knowledge that 25 minutes isn’t that long of a period of time.
Like right now… Right now, I have dozens of mostly, partly, sorta finished stuff that I could work on and nothing I want to work on. I look at my in-process folder and all I see is problems… This one needs tabs. This one needs to be resized. These need to be colored. This needs to be…
My work in progress folder is actually usually messier than this.
Intellectually, I know that all I really need to do is, as my father is fond of saying, “apply the seat of my pants to the seat of a chair.”
I really don’t want to. Fighting my procrastinating ways can be so hard.
So, here’s what I have been doing in the evening for the last few days. I get home from work. I make dinner. I eat and then I set up my laptop on the dining room table and write down on a piece of paper what I am going to do. My having my task in writing, I hold myself to it.
Last night, my piece of paper read, “Clean up line work on Mini-Maiden Sets”
The Amelia Bloomer inspired steampunk paper doll set I spent last night working on.
Then I set a timer and I did it for 25 minutes.
When my timer went off, I stopped. Sometimes, I don’t stop. Starting is the hard part, so sometimes I keep going and then I look up and an hour has passed. Last night though, I had a list of other things to do- mostly involving cleaning my house.
So, I hope my 25 Minute Rule works for other people. It has helped me draw, clean and exercise. I find no matter how little I want to do something, I can almost always force myself to do it for 25 minutes or, if it is something I am really dreading, fifteen minutes. I struggle to start projects when they feel overwhelming and this helps me. Maybe it will help you too.
So, Miss Missy who runs a wonderful paper doll blog of her own over at Miss Missy Paper Dolls is currently hosting a contest where you design an outfit set on something like Polyvore or Pinterest and then she will let people vote on the winner and draw the fashions for this cute little paper doll.
While I am not the most Polyvore savy person, I did two designs. I submitted my favorite, but thought I would share my other one as a way to encourage people to participate.
And no… I am not being asked to do this. I just think it’s such a cool idea that I wanted to mention it. The deadline is July 30 though, so create fast!
So, my computer is dead at the moment. I don’t know what exactly it will entail to fix it at this point; however, I know there will not be a paper doll on Monday. If there will be one later in the next week remains to be seen.
Once I got an email from someone suggesting that “you should consider making [my male paper dolls] look happier.”
Once I had someone describe my work as all looking like aliens and suggesting that “smaller eyes make more realistic faces.”
Once I got an email informing me that if my paper dolls wore more underwear than they would be appropriate for classrooms and that this would “make them much more popular.”
I reply politely to these emails, as the best that I can, and then I ignore them.
When you are learning a new skill, it is common for teachers or classmates to provide constructive criticism. This is a very useful process and I would never suggest otherwise, but when you’re not in a class and someone offers you unsolicited constructive criticism, often in the guise of advice, it is hard not to feel obligated to accept it.
It is okay to ignore constructive criticism that you never asked for and constructive criticism you did ask for.
Ignoring doesn’t mean that the advice isn’t reasonable. It is true that my paper dolls have huge unrealistic eyes. It is true that my male dolls don’t smile (none of my paper dolls really smile, but that’s a whole different issue.) More covering underwear would likely go over better in a lot of school classrooms.
It is also true that if I wanted to draw realistic paper dolls, I would be working a lot harder on taking some figure drawing classes to try to learn to draw  realistically. If I wanted to draw smiling paper dolls, I would. If I wanted to make dolls in more conservative underwear, I would.
It takes a long time to be comfortable enough with your art to say, “You’re right. My paper dolls could smile more, but you know… I don’t like smiling paper dolls.”
I want people to communicate with me. I love hearing from my readers. I get a thrill every time there is a comment and every time I get an email. When I think about abandoning the blog or I really don’t feel like doing it one evening, it is these comments that keep me going, but I do not have to please everyone.
I really only have to please myself.
And I am still, despite emails recommending more happy looking paper dolls, my harshest critic.
But you know, I don’t have to listen to me, either.
It is okay to just let go and say, well… maybe, but I like my skimpy underwear and my frowning males and my huge eyes. This is how I draw. I will always want to get better, but I don’t have to listen to everyone’s advice.
This is a totally random collection of stuff. Normally, I try to at least nominally theme these posts. There is no theme here except that htese are all sci-fi or fantasy sets.
This first one is going to be for the Ms. Mannequinn series. I’ve been watching a lot of 1980s sci-fi with my boyfreind lately, so I blame him for this set. Truth be told, I do have a place in my heart for cyberpunk, so this should be a lot of fun.
One of my contest winners from January, Kitrona, asked for a Fallout inspired post-apocolyptic set with some armors and things. Here she is. I have this set colored and should have it up Monday. I haven’t done layout and I suspect not every piece is going to fit on the page. We’ll see how it goes when I get there I suppose.
Last, but not least is this set of two sets of Pixie paper dolls. Both fantasy themed. One is pretty classic fantasy and the other based on Chinese dress of the Han Dynasty. How is that for random?
So, here’s a fun little poll for the weekend… [poll id=”5″]
I’ve been hesitant to post blog goals this year. I don’t want to be too ambitious, so I am going to keep these fairly simple. Ideally also concrete, so that when I check back on them mid-year, as I usually do, I have some idea how I have done.
1. More Historical Paper Dolls. I want to create ten historical paper doll sets in 2015.
Ideally, I want to work in periods that I have done in the past, but also some periods that will requite lots of research. Right now, I am planning on a Tudor set, a Viking set (they won my poll), a 1300s set, and a new 1920s set for Marisole Monday & Friends. I also want to do some historical guys, so I am thinking a Victorian guy and an 18th century guy (probably Marcus, but maybe Puck… Puck needs a redraw.) I’m also planning on some historical children’s clothing for the Poppets, likely from the 1920s to 1930s, as those are one of my favorite periods for children’s clothes.
2. Focus a little more on Poppets, Ms. Mannequinn and Buxom and Bodacious.
These three series are my most neglected. I have a bunch of unfinished Poppet sets and a bunch of unfinished Ms. Mannequin sets. I want to really buckle down and get some of those sets done. So, my goal is to add at least ten sets to each of these series by the end of 2015.
3. Do more Featured Artists.
Okay, this is totally a goal from last year, but I want to keep it up this year. I think that it is really important to see what people say about paper dolls and there aren’t a lot of us around and I want to try to build some community among us.
4. Actually send something into OPDAG Newsletter.
I am SO BAD at this. I always promise myself I will and then I don’t and then I feel guilty. Anyway, this year I am going to buckle down and even if I don’t like the theme, I am going to make something for the newsletter, darn it! I am! The next two themes are Favorite Mysteries and Chanel. I can do something for those. I know I can… I just have to not procrastinate.
5. Have another Mini-Series set.
Last year, I spent ten weeks posting my Her Ladyship paper doll set. It was so much fun to get away from my series for a while and play. She also got a great response, so I want to do another mini-series this year. I have no idea what the theme will be. I have to think about it.
6. Upgrade the images on the blog to larger format images.
Back when the blog started, I used smaller images (350 pixels wide- to be precise) for my post images. One of the things, I want to do is update these to larger images for the blog, since I think the larger images look nicer and since the internet is no longer quite so slow for most of us. This is going to be a very long, rather painful, slow process.
After I wrote my tutorial on how to clean up line-work, it occurred to me that I should talk a little about scanning. I didn’t have space to do it in the linework tutorial, but I do have a few thoughts on scanning. Here’s some advice from someone who scans a lot both for my hobbies and for my job where I usually am the one digitizing historical materials.
Scan in High Resolution.
When I was first learning how to cut wood, I was taught- You can make a piece of wood shorter, but you can’t make it longer. In other words, cut a little bigger if you have to choose. Since slicing off an inch is easier than realizing you’re short an inch.
You can always reduce the resolution of an image, but increasing it will result in loss of clarity.
Resolution is something people seem to get confused about, so let me try to explain. Resolution is always measured by the number of dots per one linear inch (in the US, other places use the centimeter). This is shortened to DPI (Dots Per Inch) for as most printers or Pixels Per Inch (PPI) for digital media.
No matter how high PPI (Pixels Per Inch) your image is, the internet has a resolution of 72 PPI. Meaning, if you create an image that is 200 PPI and measures two inches tall, when you post it on the internet it will appear to be 5.5 inches tall. ((22 PPI * 2)/72PPI = 5.5)
Some professionals work as high as 1200 DPI, but I think that’s a bit much. Bare in mind that professional publications are usually printed between 300 and 400 dpi.
Choose your File Format Carefully.
There are many digital file types. I’m going to talk about a few common ones here.
“JPEG” stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group- a fact mostly useful to show off your knowledge, but won’t really matter much. It is sometimes also called a .jpg or a jpeg. JPEGs are always compressed files. JPEG is designed for compressing either full-color (24 bit) or grey-scale digital images of complicated real world images (photographs). It is a great format when there is subtle color change in an image, but using a high compression rate can result in loss of quality.
“GIF” stands for Graphics Interface Format. It is an 8 bit format meaning that maximum number of colors supported is 256. GIFs are always compressed and rarely used these days.
“PNG” stands for Portable Network Graphics format. This was an updated version of the “GIF” format and literally supports millions of colors. It is the format I usually use for my web posts as it tends to compress to a small size without loss of detail and my paper dolls are full color without a lot of subtle shades. PNG has largely replaced GIF on the internet.
“TIFF” stands for Tagged Image File Format. TIFF was originally designed for scanners as a universally acceptable format in a time when scanning companies all had different formats they were using. TIFF images are not compressed as a default setting. This is the preferred format for archival scanning, because there is no compression. However, the lack of compression results in very large sized files. Therefore, TIFF files are rarely posted or shared on the internet or printed from. TIFF files can handle bi-level (black and white), grayscale, palette-color and RGB full-color images.
When I scan, I scan at 600 dpi as an uncompressed TIFF files in greyscale, since I work in black and white.
Save your raw files.
I call my rough scans “raw files”. Theses are my 600dpi uncompressed TIFF files, usually in greyscale. They are very large files.
I keep them in a folder called “Raw Files” it contains all the raw scans dating back a long long way. Sometimes, you have to go back to the very beginning, so keep a copy of the unaltered scan in case you need it.
Hopefully you won’t, but if you do than you’ve got it. I have only had to go back to these files once or twice over the years, but I have been grateful I had them if I needed them. (Usually, because I accidentally deleted something.)
Know you Scanner and Choose it Well.
I have used HP scanners, Epson scanners and Canon scanners. They are all a little different. Learn your scanner settings. Read the manual. Get comfortable using it.
If you are scanning full color art work, than carefully check how many colors the scanner can read. A colored pencil drawing, for example, can literally have millions of subtle shades. If your scans are coming out poorly, than is it your scanner? Your scan settings? Or can your scanner just not handle the color depth.
I don’t own an expensive scanner. I use an all in one printer with a cheap scanning bed. I work in black and white, so I don’t worry about color loss. If you do worry about color loss, invest in a good quality scanner. If you do invest in a good scanner, avoid letting it get bumped or knocked around.
Prep your Image.
Before I scan, I erase all my line-work carefully, than I correct any problems I see.
I stick a piece of white paper between my sketchbook page and the next page, so the image on the page behind won’t bleed through.
These things make sure my scan comes out pretty good the first time. Re-scanning at the high resolution I want in takes time and I don’t always have that time.
So, these are my rules of scanning. What are your rules? Anything important that I missed? Let me know in a comment.
For my first paper doll artist to feature in 2015, I knew I wanted to feature a newer artist on the scene, so I interviewed Lina. Lina, of Lina’s Paper Dolls, has been posting her paper dolls for just about a year and ahalf, but her work is wonderful. She focuses on historical paper dolls based on various periods throughout history. Her paper dolls all share the same basic body and are in black and white for coloring.
In Lina’s black and white paper dolls, there is clearly a love of history. Her each of her paper dolls has one to five outfits relating to the story of the paper doll and their stories span the globe and time.
There’s Carolyn Collins who is in DC during Watergate and Elizabeth Tanner, who lives in Maryland, or Susanne Merritt, who lives in Canada, both during the War of 1812. Simone Spencer is a telephone operator during World War 1. Kalani Hikaru witnesses Hawaiian statehood in 1959. Basia Sienkiewicz survives the Swedish invasion of Poland in 1655. I could go on and on with more of the fascinating historical events Lina ties to her paper dolls.
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