Ramblings

I don’t mean to brag, but I pride myself on the diversity of my paper doll drawings. I do a lot of different themes, but Alina Kolluri might well give me a run for my money. Her work ranges from animals to mermaids to Christmas to 1960s fashions. Today, I want to look at the two paper doll books of hers I own- Gal Pals Paper Dolls and Mod Brides. These two were a gift, clearly by someone who knows my taste in paper dolls. These are probably the two I would have chosen, because I love historical fashion paper dolls. Both are from Paper Doll Review, but my feelings about them couldn’t be more different.

Spoiler: One of these books I loved so much and one of them I was super disappointed by. Let’s start with the one I didn’t like, so we can end on a high note.

Mod Brides Paper Dolls

Mod Brides is, as one might expect, a foray into 1960s fashions. The book is smaller, measuring 8.5 by 11 inches, rather than 9 by 12. There’s four dolls on the back which confused me a little, because from the cover I would have thought there would have been five, but that’s not really important. I like the cover design, I think it has some wonderful movement and the doily design really echos the flowers in the background and the pop graphic quality of Kolluri’s art.

I confess the rest of the graphic design in the book is kinda boring. The dresses are laid out fine, but there’s no backgrounds and no real attention is paid, it feels, to making the interior shine.

I wish, as always, there had been more variety in the dolls skin tones. The poses are also very stiff, but that’s just Kolluri’s style. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the paper doll’s hair. It didn’t read as super 1960s to me, because it felt like it lacked the volume of the era, but I think some of that was done to accommodate hats and veils, so I 100% understand those compromises.

Mod Brides is stuffed with clothing. It’s a total of 8 pages of very very 1960s fashions with peaches and pistachio greens abounding. It all looks pretty correct to me- including the shapes of the dresses- which for the 1960s are super specific. The lace details on a lot of the clothing are amazing, as is the drape of those veils. As someone who has avoided drawing wedding dresses, because I hate drawing lace, I have to say this felt like a reminder that it is possible to render lace beautifully in line work.

Plus, when you work in white, getting depth is hard. The light grey Kolluri uses really works to her advantage here.

As usual with Paper Doll Review, I am always happy with the quality of the card-stock and the paper. The covers are a little thin, but the paper feels satin smooth. I think it would be a dream to cut. I can imagine spending hours carefully trimming out these little outfits.

Not that I plan to do that, but if I did, I think I would be happy.

So, now for the big problem- I was super disappointed in the quality of the images. So disappointed that I almost didn’t review this book. The entire book looks slightly out of focus. And somehow the blacks aren’t black enough, so it almost feels pixelated. Or like somehow the images were interpolated one two many times by a graphic design program. For whatever cause, the results are disappointing and distracting.

I tried to capture this on camera and I don’t think I really managed to do it. It’s a case, I suspect, of the digital printing being part of the problem.

Because of the image quality, I just can’t recommend picking up Mod Brides. It’s super frustrating, because over all, the book’s content is fun. However, I can’t seem myself ever flipping through it again to just enjoy the visuals.

Let’s move on to a book that I am utterly in love with and will now get to gush about.

Gal Pals Paper Dolls

To start with the basics, Gal Pals Paper Dolls has four dolls and a lot of clothing. It’s a 9 by 12 inch book. The cover says 93 fashions and I could get nit-picky about that. There’s probably 93 pieces, but is a purse a fashion? Hmmm… Never the less, I’ve rarely seen a paper doll book so stuffed with clothing. This seems to be a trend with Kolluri’s work and I like it! Each doll has at least a dozen outfits, one of which is a wedding dress. Plus, there’s matching hats and purses for many of them.

The doll’s faces are super cute, the poses feel borrowed from a WW2 magazine which is awesome. I adore their victory roll hairstyles. Can we gush over the Gal Pal’s cover for a minute? It’s maybe the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. The dolls are flowers! Flowers in a watering can!

(Note: I’m like 95% sure this is a reference to 1940s paper doll books where the cover would have cut outs revealing the doll’s faces beneath.)

Also, did I mention that the borders on the pages of clothing for each doll match the doll’s swimsuits? How fun and cute is that. It’s so clearly thought out that it makes me super happy. This is paper doll book design at its best. All over the book the design is top notch. So much glorious attention to detail.

Granting that I didn’t exactly look for sources, within the confines of the highly stylized art, the clothing seems accurate to the era. There’s day dresses, coats, suits… everything. Even though I am not a wedding dress person, how fun is it that every doll has a wedding dress? The one for Patty (bottom left) looks strikingly like what my Grandmother was married in during WW2 (which might be why I photographed it.)

The fact that each doll basically has a micro-wardrobe is such a cool concept. I can totally imagine how much I would have liked this book as a kid. I can picture myself on the couch carefully cutting out each outfit, penciling the doll’s name on the back, and diligently storing them all in little envelopes.

(Yeah, given my paper doll storage habits as a child, I sorta should have known I would end up a librarian.)

So, if you haven’t already guessed, I love Gal Pals! I really have nothing negative to say about it. If you like color, whimsy, and want a fun diversion, here it is. It was wonderful to see a black doll included, though another skin-tone or two would have been nice.

I’m super happy to have added this to my collection. If you don’t own one, go grab it! Gal Pals is the kind of paper doll book that makes my heart happy!

(Also, I don’t think I’ve ever used this many exclamation points in one blog post. I feel like I should apologize to my college writing professors who would be wincing right now.)

I guess, as I finish this up, I think that these books illustrate how important graphic design is to an effective paper doll book and how work by the same artist can strike me totally differently. Even if the image quality of Mod Brides had been up to snuff, Gal Pals is just a better book. So much attention has been paid to all the tiny details and those details matter so much.

As my niece gets older and more ready for paper dolls, I often think about if I would buy the books I review for her. And Gal Pals I 100% would pick her up a copy.

I am super excited today to get to write a little about the latest issue of Paper Doll Review that arrived a few days ago. If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, you can grab it from Paper Doll review or subscribe, which is what I do.

I always look forward to Paper Doll Review when it comes in the mail, though I don’t draw for it that much. I was still recovering from my surgery when the deadline was and I hate recycling old things for the magazine (which I know is silly), so I let this one slide. I sort of regret it, because it is always fun to see my stuff in there along with other artists I super respect.

I am working on an animal paper doll for the next issue and let’s just say- not the easiest thing I’ve worked on!

Renaldo Barnette was the featured artist and his interview was fascinating, plus there were many images of his amazing at. You don’t follow him on Instagram, you should, because there’s always fun stuff to see. His ability to render fabric texture in markers (I think it’s markers?) is awe inspiring.

There was an article about Katy Keene where I learned some things I didn’t know about the history of the comic. A lot of space in the magazine was devoted to the Katy Keen Dress-A-Doll which was fun, but I confess I’m not the biggest Katy Keen fan on the planet. Nothing against her, of course, but there’s a lack of nostalgia for me, because I didn’t grow up with Katy Keen comics I think the same way people twenty years older than me did.

While I was going through the magazine, I noticed that two of my favorite Dress-A-Doll designs by artist Tori Wright had exposed skin. Wright illustrated the doll’s skin tone for those outfits brown, much darker than the Dress-A-Doll figure. It made me wonder what the result of dressing Katy in some of these costumes would have been- a sort of strange paper doll semi-black face? I realized that if I had wanted to dress Katy up in these outfits it felt wrong somehow to do so.

So, I thought, maybe they could have had a second dress-a-doll for those outfits that had brown skin. After that thought, I realized I couldn’t recall ever seeing a Dress-A-Doll in these magazines that wasn’t white. I don’t own enough back issues of Paper Doll Studio (no longer in print) or Paper Doll Review to do a complete survey, but the ones I have this was the case.

If the magazine was going to feature an artist, like Renaldo Barnette, whose rendering of black models is such a feature of his work, surely there could be a black Dress-A-Doll, Katy Keene inspired or otherwise? I’d love to see Barnette’s version of Katy Keene. I bet that would be fantastic.

If you don’t subscribe to Paper Doll Review, I would so highly recommend it! There’s some magical about getting a paper magazine in the mail every few months and I’m always so impressed the articles, layout, and amazing paper doll art featured. I took a few pictures of my favorite pages, but I didn’t want to reveal all the good stuff.

Did you get this latest issue of Paper Doll Review? What did you think of the magazine?