Work-In-Progress

Sometimes, I struggled to take a breath/break.

So, I decided to take a minute this week and highlight some things that are in-progress/in-process for the blog/newsletter/patrons. I like finishing things. I like seeing something and feeling like- yep, that’s done.

However, I do think it’s important to pause occasionally and consider the value of the process. The process has to be fun or why do it at all?

So, in this post, I am going to share some screen shots from a few of the paper dolls I worked on this weekend. None of them are done, all of them are in process, and I am 100% happy with that.

Dolly & Her Dresses

One of my patron exclusive projects has been these 19th century inspired antique doll paper dolls. These two dresses are both from the 1900s- a party dress and a sailor suit (which were super popular). I haven’t decided if I am going to continue these into 2023. I’m struggling to even think of 2023, because 2022 has been such a long year.

Still, I don’t want to face a cliff at the end of December, so I need to think clearly about what 2023 will hold.

1950s J&G Collection

I started this back when I was fill of vim and vigor and somehow decided to draw more for it than I really should have. It’s huge! There’s 5 dolls and at least 20 outfits and a dozen pairs of shoes. I haven’t even thought about how I’m going to break it up for layout or how I am going to actually color all of it. It was not the best planned out project I have ever undertaken which maybe why I am struggling to get momentum up on it- it feels overwhelming.

Anyway, steady progress has been made- tabs are being added, fits are being checked, linework is being cleaned up. Hopefully, it’ll all be done before 2023, though no promises on that front.

Newsletter Paper Dolls

I really love these dolls! I don’t know what it is about them, but they feel so easy to draw for. Probably because the pose is so very delightfully simple. I really have been enjoying these ones a lot. This is my take on some autumnal regencycore styles. The dress is, well, obvious, but the collar of the blouse is also super regency.

My big hope is to take a digital imaging class next semester from the Uni where I work and learn to do more of my work digitally. I love working on pen with paper, but I really want to up my coloring game and the long process of inking, scanning, fixing the inking leaves me a little drained these days. I need to streamline.

Plus, an my first formal art class in almost 20 years sounds like fun.

Which one of these are you excited for?

So, I’ve been working on a big collection of 1950s dresses for the Jewels and Gemstones paper dolls. Right now, there’s 5 dolls and a lot of pages of clothing. I have no idea if I’ll put all of it on the blog, save some for Etsy, use some for Patreon. Who knows at this point!

My major resources for this project were the Catalogs & Wishbooks Site which appears to be someone’s passion project and contains over 200 fully digitized catalogs from the 1940s to the 2000s. It’s an amazing piece of work which, as someone who manages digitization projects for a living, I am in awe of. These digitized catalogs have made researching 20th century fashion so much easier.

Other resources have included the Vintage Pattern Wiki and museums of course, but there’s something about the raw amount of content from the Catalogs & Wishbooks Site.

I didn’t really have a clear plan how I was going to structure these sets when I drew them, so everything is a little scattershot in terms of year and style.

I didn’t do anything that was evening gown level in this set. I tend to find evening clothing less interesting to me then things people wore day to day. One of the reasons I love drawing from catalogs, is because it means that the item was actually available to people to purchase, unlike fashion illustrations which are often very high end designer fashion. Nothing wrong with that, but it interests me less then what most people had access too. Catalog aren’t aspirational, usually.

One thing that struck me while working on this was how many pages in these catalogs were devoted to hats. Hats are something women do not normally wear anymore, but they were super popular in the 1950s and didn’t really fall out of fashion until the 1970s.

I digress.

The next step is to scan these and clean them up and then layout and color!

Sometimes, I just don’t have any finished paper dolls, my friends.

Creativity, for me, is something that comes in bursts. I truly believe that creation breeds creation. The more you work then the more you will keep working, but I also generally try to have more than one project in different stages at one time- that way if I am not feeling like penciling or inking, I can work on the computer.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve been busy, or maybe it’s that this last year has been A LOT, but I’ve gotten out of rhythm and I am struggling to keep the stages of the pipeline in-synch. Right now, I have a lot I want to draw, but very little have actually gotten into the sketchbook and less I’ve gotten inked or scanned.

But that’s okay. I’ll catch up.

In the meantime, I thought I’d give a little look into my little notebook, the one I carry with me 90% of the time. I have a bit sketchbook and this isn’t it.

Everything from to do lists to various doodles hang out in this little notebook. When it’s full, I replace it with another one, because I use a travelers notebook style cover. Easy, peasey, and low commitment.

Let’s look inside…

First up, a set of things I doodled after a round of ideal roulette (more about that over here).

My feelings about this round of this game were pretty mixed. I wasn’t super happy with anything I ended up with, except my regency fantasy armor looks. I do actually really want to draw, but I’m not sure for which paper doll. I’ve also got this cute gothic fairy idea which I might use for Halloween, except Julie of Paper Doll School and I have been talking about witches for Halloween.

So…. maybe need to wait on my cute little gothic fairy idea.

Past the idea roulette, we have four Vivian ideas. Vivian is my Patreon paper doll, named for a childhood paper doll with the same name. I am starting to think it’s time for a Vivian 2.0 reboot, since I’ve been drawing her since 2015, but in the meantime, there’s some steampunk dress designs I’ve doodled here.

And after Vivian, we have an assortment of other things.

On the left, there’s a redraw I’ve been wanting to do of an old Marisole Set and a Curves set, along with a “outdoorsy” set for Talia Tuesday and some fantasy Regency dresses to go along with the armor I came up with. And on the right, there’s an autumn addition to the Big Princess Dresses Jewels and Gemstones thing, but I’m not super happy with those designs, so they may not happen. We’ll see how I feel when I start penciling them.

The primary reason I don’t show these off very often is there’s a pretty high chance that some of these will never make it from “idea in my head” to actual paper doll content. These are about as raw as my ideas get. Some of this, if not most of it, will never be finished.

My other big project is a 1950s set for the Jewels and Gemstones. More on that later this week.

I get a fair number of questions about my process and one thing I really wanted to do is show people how I create what I create. I admit sometimes I feel like a slacker, because very little about this process has changed dramatically in the decide the blog has run. I’m sort of in awe of people who really dramatically switch up their methods on the regular.

I’m trying to learn to use Photoshop on ipad, so I can occasionally draw something directly on the screen and it’s already stressing me out. But I am getting better at it. Maybe sometime I’ll share a few of my attempts.

I pencil everything first. So, on the left is the “rough” sketch over which I will be inking. There’s usually few more tweaks that happen, like adding details to the “ray-gun” and fixing the shape of the skirt which I clearly wasn’t super happy with this stage, but that’s the basic idea. The themes are ballgowns and retro space alien, in case you’re wondering what ray-guns and ballgowns have in common.

So, for October themes include – a witch (I’ve been practicing witch’s hats for a project that may or may not happen) and a October themed clothing set sort of like my March themed clothing set. I need to think about winter stuff and if I am going to try to do a paper doll for Thanksgiving. I never have before, but I guess there’s a first time for everything. How hard can it to be draw a Turkey?

None of this is specific for a month or anything, but the clothing on the left was a sort of regency-core inspired set of clothing and the gown on the right was me playing with fantasy dresses. I like having sets that aren’t based on a specific holiday, because it allows me to calculate where to put them in the order of the newsletters.

To give further context, there’s about 19 weeks left in 2022. Since the Newsletter comes out very two weeks, that means I need ten more paper dolls to get me through the end of the year. Friday’s paper doll was number 14, so in September there will be 15, 16, and 17. Then October will have 18 and 19 and then… well, you get the idea.

Anyway, the goal here was create enough content to get me through September, October and a little bit into November before I decide what to do next. Hence why I haven’t drawn a turkey… yet.

Want to see these paper dolls when they’re all finished? Be sure to sign up for the Newsletter here.

Happy August! I used to do these sorts of work in Progress posts all the time and then I started Patreon and I sort of decided these sorts of posts should be Patreon exclusive. Then somehow I stopped doing them over there and I honestly do not know why. I think I was nervous- what if I shared something and I never finished it? Would people be upset with me?

But I know that this is silly. I’m not promising completion here. I’m just showing you some screen captures of a few things that I’ve been working on, so you can see them and maybe find them interesting. Maybe not. I have no idea. I would love to know if you do and I’ll try to do more of these.

So, first up we have a regency historical fashion set using my 2020 Patreon 365 project doll base. I love that doll base and I think she’s super cute and I really like her size. She feels like the perfect paper doll size to me- just right to fit in an envelope and tuck into a pocket.

The set will likely be either Patreon exclusive or an Etsy set, I think. It’s going to one doll, eight dresses for a total of three pages and each dress has a matching hat. I am conquering my fear of bonnet drawing! There’s a morning dress, dinner dress, carriage dress, ballgown… basically what a lady of the 1810s needed to be dressed properly in around 1810ish. No riding habit though… perhaps for another set.

Yes, I have been watching too much Bridgerton… why do you ask? 🙂

My Mermaid set is next up. I know Jaime said her and her kids were mad about mermaids, well…. here’s a sneak peak of the mermaid coloring pages I plan to get up on Etsy hopefully before the end of the month.

There’s four dolls, a bunch of tails and a lot of different “land” clothing all done in the same sort of flowy garments theme that I seem to associate with mermaids.

It’s big and I am realizing that I probably need a few more accessory items to help the pages feel full (otherwise there’s gaping in the layout and things start to feel to sparse to me). So, I may need to hit the sketchbook again and make more necklaces and daggers or something. What accessories make sense for mermaids has be me a little stumped… Tridents? Harpoons? Bones of drowned sailors?

Maybe not that last one…

Moving rapidly along, this is a little preview of a circus set I’ve been working on. This is Jade. I tied to do this lipstick thing and it may not survive the coloring process, because I am not 100% happy with how it looks… Maybe I’ll like the lips more in color.

Or I’ll decide it was a bad idea and fix it. Thank goodness for Photoshop!

The circus set is gong to have a mix of things from old Patreon posts and some older Jewels and Gemstones stuff. I sometimes like getting to pull those items back together to make a set, because man it does save me time! So much time, but it’s not always as much for me as new stuff. It’s still fun, but fun in a different way. Sometimes working within a structure if sort of liberating.

So, that’s it. Little preview of things to come I hope.

Let me know which of these you’re most excited about in a comment!

It’s been a while since I shared some sketchbook stuff and so I thought it would be fun to show off some of my work in progress.

I classify my fantasy outfits in my head based on silhouette and my two favorites are my vaguely medieval ones and my big skirted ones. This one clearly falls into the big skirted princesses dress model.

One of my long time patrons asked for more Gothic stuff and fortunately for her, I was already itching to draw a set of gothic Lolita dresses, partly because I really wanted to draw a bonnet.

Before I share a new series on the site, I like to have at least a few sets drawn and finished for them. I have to know that I actually like drawing for the paper doll enough to commit.

So, that’s what’s in my sketchbook at the moment. I have been enjoying sharing these with you all and I hope you’re as excited about these up coming paper dolls as I am.

I just recently realized how long it has been since I’ve done one of these sketchbook posts. I kinda missed them. They’re relatively easy and the results are fun and I like showing off my sketchbooks. These days these sorts of things tend to show up on my social media and that’s hardly logical. No reason I can’t share the there and here.

My 365 (366?) Day paper doll project has really revived my interest in doing paper doll sets. This Circus collection has been a lot of fun and I am sharing it now with my 5 Dollar Patrons.

The Jewels and Gemstones get some steampunk and some modern stuff here. I love the patterned pencil skirt.

And this is some inked things. These are more modern things. This time of year, with Spring Fashion Week, I always find myself wanting to draw contemporary clothing.

Any themes you would like to see? Let me know in a comment!