Mariana… A Steampunk Paper Doll

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First Pixie paper doll of the new year. That deserves some excitement, I think.

Maybe not for anyone but me.

She’s rocking a steampunk/neo-victorian paper doll theme. I think she hangs out with Jian, my steam punk male paper doll and probably makes trouble. Since I’ve had such a positive response to doing Marisole in black and white and in color, I decided to do this paper doll the same way and I might start doing this for all the Pixie and Pucks, we’ll see.

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Also, the poll is up until the end of the month and people should vote. I do actually pay attention to the poll.

I also pay attention to repeated requests (eventually) and I have had two ideas which more than one person has suggested. One is a cowgirl paper doll which has been stalled lately because I wanted to draw a horse and, frankly, drawing animals is not my thing. But last night I managed to sketch out a decent looking horse, so… a cowgirl may yet appear. The second thing I’ve been working on, and I expect this to make some peeps happy, is a male paper doll properly proportioned to hang out with Marisole.

So, depending on what wins the poll this time will depend on what I work on next year.

My point is this, if you want to see one of these things, vote for it, or if you want to see something else, drop me a comment.

The Skintone Pallette

skintones_set1So, several months ago I mentioned that I was collecting skin-tone colors. To the right is the palette I pull nearly all the skin tones I use on the blog. On top of each color block is the alpha-numeric hex code that defines each color. These tones were collected by looking at photographs of actresses and models from a variety of different ethnicity and than simplified from an original image file of over fifty different colors.

After a while, shades of peach and brown start to meld into each other until they all look the same.

Generally, I don’t think in ethnicity when I’m coloring paper dolls. I think in color. How much red is there? How much yellow? How much grey or blue? Is it a warm color or a cool color?

The human species is hundreds of colors, the differences subtle and complicated. Paper dolls on the other hand, especially those who are supposed to share shoes, need to be a smaller collection of colors. I thought someone other than me might find this set useful, so here it is. The other nice thing about this set is this: Each of the colors prints out clearly different from the others on my cheap color printer. That is an advantage which is well worth the limited palette to me.

In the Mid-1860s… Black and White Civil War Era Paper Dolls

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I have no real excuse for the lateness of this post, except that I was traveling yesterday and somehow I didn’t get as much done on for the blog on my vacation as I usually do. Something about traveling always makes me feel a little drained when I finally return to wherever is home. I’ve lived in several states and it always seems to takes me a year before one of them becomes home. As much as I love Alabama with it’s rolling hills (they call them mountains, but being from Alaska, I can’t honestly call them mountains) and it’s clear blue skies, but returning to Alaska still feels like going home. I suspect, eventually, Birmingham will become more homelike.

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Moving onto paper doll related matters, away from rambles about travel, today’s set is much larger than any set of Marisole Monday paper dolls that I have ever done before. It was not supposed to originally be three pages, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to remove anything from the sets and therefore decided to keep everything together. The result was that I ended up with an extra page. The swimming shoes repeat because, once the dolls are colored, they will be the only thing that exposes skin and I know I don’t want to do the two paper dolls in the same skin-tone. The corset and drawers repeat, because I feel strongly that both dolls should get a set of underwear. The hoop-skirt doesn’t repeat, because it’s big and, frankly, going to be white.

As some of you might notice, the second paper doll with the freckles is a different face than the original Marisole. I have named her Margot and she’ll be showing up from time to time along with the Asian version of Marisole who I’ve always thought of as Mia, though I don’t know if I have ever mentioned that on the blog.

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All of these dresses are based on garments from the mid-1860s, hence the title. Something about being in Alabama has made me want to draw huge hoop skirts. Not normally my favorite period in fashion history, but it’s growing on me. I had an Addy doll when I was a child, but I honestly can not recall any exposure to real Southern History outside the standard Civil Rights stuff and a little on the Civil War. Strange how moving here has made me fascinated by all things Southern.

An Elf with an Obi: A Black and White Paper Doll

So, today I wanted to draw a paper doll that was a little edgy and inspired by Asian traditional dress with obi’s and mandarin collars (though there is some debate as to the evolution of the mandarin collar… and whether it evolved from Chinese contact with European military uniforms or European contact with Chinese dress… I’ve read both versions in respected literature on the subject, so I have no opinion except to say we don’t know and leave it at that), but I realized I tend to draw Asian looking paper dolls when I’m drawing Asian inspired costumes and that seemed a little… odd, so I instead made her an elf with braids, resulting in a sort of African elf in an obi.

I’m sure if I was more awake today and if I really wanted to, I could probably read some interesting orientalist thing into all this, but I’d rather just stick with the “it’s a paper doll and it’s neat” side of theoretical endeavors.

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Anyhow… as you might have noticed on the right side of the blog a few things have changed. I’ve added tags in an attempt to try to create a genre sort of listing which crosses paper dolls styles. So, if a person wanted to see all the fantasy paper dolls or felt a need to look at every blond paper doll, the option would be available. The three tags I am sort of uncomfortable with are Asian paper doll, Black paper doll and Hispanic paper doll. I did them, because I erratically get emails asking about paper dolls of one of those three groups and I thought the tag might help people find them, but I also feel rather uncomfortable applying racial labels to my paper dolls, especially with Marisole who only has two facial options to begin with.

So, I’m tossing this out to the peanut gallery: Asian paper doll, Black paper doll and Hispanic paper doll tags are useful or awkward or likely to offend people? Thoughts?

Magnetic Marisole… A New Layout for New Year

Everything about the magnetic paper dolls is getting revamped this year.

The old Magnetic Paper Doll Index has now been replaced with a new version that resembles the Printable Paper Doll Index much more closely. This is an attempt to streamline updating the magnetic paper dolls, allowing me to do more single sheet updates, like I do with the other printable paper dolls on the site, but it is still a work in progress.

Magnetic paper or adhesive sheets are more expensive than printer paper (as I am sure anyone who has ever printed them out has learned) and so I have re-organized the Marisole Magnetic Paper Dolls to have the shoes on the same sheet as the paper dolls. This means that they are now three dolls per sheet with four pairs of shoes and required re-doing the layouts on all of the magnetic sheets.

I just finished that, so I am posting them today instead of a traditional Marisole Monday update. You can see them here.

 

The Magnetic Marisole Printable Paper Dolls

{ Directions for Making Printable Magnetic Paper Dolls }

 

 

The Dolls

 

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Contemporary Clothing Sets

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Fantasy Clothing Sets

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Historical Clothing Sets

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Everything here has been adapted from paper version of the printable Marisole posts, except for the shoes and the magnetic dolls, many of which have been re-colored to provide for the six different skin tones. If anyone has requests for skin tones which don’t appear here, please let me know. I try to have as much diversity in skin tone as is possible.

Thoughts? Feel free to comment. I know I don’t always answer every one, but I do read them all.

Shadow & Light… Steampunk Paper Doll

Here we are at nearly the end of December and here is another Shadow and Light paper dolls. Today’s paper doll is a bit steampunk-ish (though lacks the gears and goggles that seem to be required), still I hope no one will hold that against her. Truth be told, I can’t draw a gear to save my life, though I have tried on occasion to mixed success.

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I forgot, living in Alabama, how pretty the snow is, but I also forgot how annoying it is to sweep off your car in the morning in the cold wearing black ankle boots. Toes freezing and fingers freezing and snow sticking to eyelashes under a grey sky with lights from the buildings flickering through, there’s nothing like winter in Southeast Alaska.

It’s a beautiful place up here.

Oh and by the way, there’s a poll on the sidebar. Please fill it out. I do actually pay attention to what people vote for and I use it to decide what I will do in the coming year. If there’s something you’d like to see and it’s not on the list, please comment.

Marisole Monday: Fruity Autumn in Color

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I’ve mentioned before my “skintones make shoes a pain” thing, and so I wanted to give this Marisole a skintone that was shared by another doll so that she could share shoes. I chose Candy Coated Couture, but I don’t think the skintones are actually the same. In fact, a quick check with photoshop’s eyedrop tool tells me they aren’t. This has something to do, I think, with how Photoshop saves things for the web.

So, I did a little internet research and found a lovely article

I am going to try a few other methods and see if they help. It’s a strange problem indeed.

Since it’s Christmas Eve, I wanted to wish a everyone a lovely Christmas. Be safe and be merry. I am back in Alaska with my family celebrating.

Flock’s of the Future…

It’s all Flock stuff today in the preview department.

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I’ve been working on a set of Flock’s based on the classic “warrior, thief, wizard, cleric” thing from epic fantasy novels (also Dungeons and Dragons, but I was trying to avoid admitting that). These pieces are part of the “cleric” set which is inspired by the cliche oracle who sends hero on their missions.

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I generally don’t think a lot about children, but I wanted to work on a set of pieces that would be easy for kids to manipulate. That’s why I created these fantasy dresses in one piece rather than layering the elements like I did for the Oracle above.

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To go with my Little Red Ridinghood, this is a different set of fairytale clothing. I think the story is obvious, but I was told by others it wasn’t. Anyone care to guess?

Marisole Monday: Fruity Autumn

I don’t think I’m that great of an artist. This isn’t a plea to be reassured or an attempt to fish for compliments, I’m just being honest. And I say this because what I draw rarely looks like I wanted it to look in my head. I’m often satisfied with my work, but I rarely look at it and think, “Yeah, that came out just like I wanted it too.”

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Marisole’s hair today is a rare case where I can say that it came out just like I wanted it too. It looks natural, bouncy and cute. I am quite pleased.

There were originally a few more pieces on this set, but than there was a tragic run in with a glass of egg nog and well… now there are a few fewer pieces on this set.

Opps.

Oh well… I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season.

By the way, this is the 100th Marisole paper doll post… though not the 100th Marisole design, since she has been posting in both black and white lately… still, not a bad achievement.

Meet Octavia- A New Printable Paper Doll In Black and White

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{Link to a printable PDF of the Octavia paper doll}

I have to confess that this was a paper doll of contrasts. I like certain parts (her hair and her shoes) and I dislike other parts, but I think all in all, it came out well enough for me to post it. I wasn’t totally pleased with her mouth, so that got changed a bit with Photoshop to make her look less angry. Her hair style is based on one a student in one of my graduate courses wore her hair in. I always thought it was neat and I loved how huge the side buns were with her hair teased out a bit.

Somehow, she made it look sophisticated rather than absurd.

Enjoy the paper doll. There will be another one up on Monday.

In a fairly unrelated note, check out these beautiful kimono’s made from African fabrics. I am totally in love with these, but then I am obsessed with anything which mixes cultural garments.

Marisole Monday: In Space! In Color!

I thought really hard about the color scheme here. I thought originally, I was going to go the usual neon and black route like I did for my Cybergoth paper doll, but I decided something else might be more fun.

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My only regret is that I didn’t use enough shiny in these costumes. I really should have done more of that. Oh well… Also, I think I went a little crazy for the pale green.

By the way, I wanted to mention that I’m rebuilding/editing the Magnetic Paper Doll Index at the moment, so it might be looking a little weird while I get it rewritten. I’m also seriously considering a new blog layout/theme for next year, so things might be a little janky around here while I do all of that.

Puck as a Super Hero… In Full Color

I’ve never really gotten into superhero comics unless you count Deadpool or watching the Batman cartoon when I was a kid. When I do read comics, I stick to the compilations and some of my favorites have been Lucifer and Hellblazer, and of course, Sandman, but then, who doesn’t like Sandman?

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So, for the coloring of my superheros, I decided to go with simple primary and secondary colors without a lot of complicated depth. I wanted to reproduce a little of the feel of the old fifties comics, before computer printing made a lot of depth possible. I think I will always think of comics as being bright flat color, even though I know there are some wonderful and skilled artists who bring so much more to the genre. I’m sensitive enough to color that badly colored or art I don’t like, can ruin a comic for me.

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Needless to say, I really enjoyed drawing this set and I hope I will get to draw more sets like it in the future.

After I finished it, I did a little digging looking for other paper dolls aimed at boys and I found this nice list of free paper dolls for boys. And though it’s not a paper doll, I think one of my favorites was this paper city of paris. As I have mentioned before, I am a sucker for unusual and interesting paper toys of all kinds, paper dolls are just my favorites.