Peter Pan Collars in Yellow and Green Paper Doll Dresses

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These guys feel totally Easter like to me… I think it’s the spring green and the yellow.

I can’t shake the feeling I did a set for “peter pan collars” before, but maybe I just thought I did, because I couldn’t find it when I did a prowl of the archives. (I decided “Prowling” through the archives sounded better than “staggering” which might be more accurate.)

Speaking of archives, (see what I did there? I’m proud of me), I am nearing my 350 posts mark which I think is entirely more exciting than it really aught to be.

It’s the second week of classes at the University where I work and it’s been hectic. I adore the students and I’m glad they’re back, but it makes my life quite crazy. I hope things settle down soon. 🙂

I really like clothes more than dolls when it comes to paper dolls, but I have gotten curious how other people feel. Hence… A POLL!

Roccoco Fantasy: Paper Doll in Black and White

marisole-printable-paper-doll-fantasy-9-3-12{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for the rest of this series}

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?

The Best Friends… A Bunch of Printable Paper Dolls

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{Click Here to Download for a PDF of all pages of this paper doll to Print}
So, this is going to be a Big Image, Small Post sorta day.

Here are the eight pages which make up the Best Friends paper doll set. (Yeah, I need better names for these things… I’m not good with names…)

My goal with this set of paper dolls was to experiment with slightly different body builds and poses while maintaining a similar enough over all style that the paper dolls would seem cohesive. I’ve never tried to draw this way before. I think I succeeded, but only because I drew them all at once. I can’t imagine trying to do this any other way.

Eventually, this set might get a sequel, but probably not for a little while.

I was going to wait until Monday to have my first paper doll post since I went on haitus, but I felt like people waited for two months and the least I could do was give some rapid paper doll gratification.

I hope everyone in the United States is having a fantastic Labor Day weekend. I have spent mine getting caught up with some work things, eating delightful barbecue and tomorrow I might do something radical and go see a movie. Mostly, I’m enjoying getting the time off work to get a little more settled here in Alabama.

I’m Back! Also… News about Changes to PTP

Thank you all for being patient with me while I got settled in here in Alabama. I won’t say that I’m completely settled (there are still a few boxes to go through), but I am pretty settled all things considered.

At least the important things like books and art supplies are unpacked.

So, there are a few announcements.

I’m throwing out the schedule.

This is something I’ve been contemplating for a few months and I was going to make a poll of it, but then I decided I was going to do it anyway… so I might as well just announce it.

There will continue to be a Marisole update each Monday with the first one being a black and white version with the full color version following. I was able to spend a fair bit of my time off working on getting some post backlog set up, so I can confidently say there will be Marisole’s for the next few weeks at least.

I will try to get another paper doll posted each week, along with the Marisole. So, you can expect two paper dolls per week.

While this does mean fewer paper dolls over all, it will open up the styles and allow me some flexibility which I want, allowing me to devote more time to The Flock and also, hopefully, let me draw some more detailed and difficult things.

I’ve also begun work on a joint project between myself, Boots of 19th Century Paper Dolls and Toria over at A Paper Closet. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am for this project. It will debut at the end of October, if everything goes as planned.

I will also be posting some older work, both from my days in college and from when I was in high school and middle school. I can’t wait to share some of these really early paper dolls, but I have to say, I had very odd ideas about proportions as a young person.

Though looking at my paper dolls now, you could say I still have some odd ideas about proportion… but I digress…

By the way, I noticed embarrassingly late that there was a slight problem with some of the feet/shoes on the latest set of Flock Magnetic Paper Dolls- Modern Girl. It’s been fixed, so now all the shoes should work properly. It took me cutting them out and playing with them to notice my error… Actually, I didn’t notice, but my friend did. Opps… So glad that’s fixed.

Also, I had some complaints about my RSS feed. I think I also got that fixed. Let me know if I haven’t.

Anyway, I am really excited to be back. There will be a paper doll up tomorrow and on Monday, so everyone can get their fix. If you have any questions, thoughts or ideas for what I should do in the future, please feel free to comment. I love hearing from readers.

Haitus… for a bit I think…

downloadAs those of you who read this blog regularly might have figured out, I am going home to Alaska for two weeks, then moving to Alabama and starting a new job about which I am totally excited, but… the combination is a little… crazy.

As a result, and after considerable thought, I have decided that the blog will be on hiatus for the month of July and, perhaps, the month of August. My life is just too insane right now to support this wonderful addiction to little paper people that I have and I don’t want to just drop off the face of the Earth without notice.

So… I am leaving for a bit, but will return.

There will be when I return, I think, some changes to things here in on PTP… I haven’t decide what exactly yet, but I think things will be changing… so while I’m gone you might notice links are shifting around, pages are disappearing or other changes to the site. Fear not… it just means I’m futzing with things.

I shall try to reply to comments and emails when I can and I will certainly be drawing while I am away.

See you all in a few weeks.

– Rachel

Update: Looks like things should be back, though slightly changed, on September 1st. Got safely to Alabama and am settling in here. 🙂 – Rachel

On the Board Walk in Color: A Neo-Victorian Paper Doll Set

It is rare that I have the plan for a color scheme in mind before I start drawing, but I knew I wanted this set of paper dolls to be done in a red white and blue color scheme with a nautical twist.

I was playing around with my Photoshop settings on this one and I am not totally pleased with how the line-work came out on the color version. I shall have to look into what I did and think about it a bit more. I didn’t notice it as much on my smaller laptop screen, but working on it on a larger screen it has become very obvious.

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{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for the rest of this series}

So, I think it’s now question time…

Gillian asked: when did you start drawing paper dolls? and how did you learn to draw?

Well…. I started drawing paper dolls… I don’t even remember when I started drawing paper dolls. My mother used to draw dolls for me and my sister when we were kids. She’d draw the doll as a bribe to get us to clean our rooms or do the dishes and then we would have to draw the clothing. So, that’s when the paper doll thing got started.

I learned to draw mostly by doing a lot of it. I took art classes in high school and middle school, but mostly I am self taught. I’d love to have some time in the future to take some figure drawing classes. I don’t think I do a very good job on my figures. I nearly always draw from a reference image. I don’t really have the ability to draw well without one.

I hope that answers your question Gillian.

By the way, I was trying to do a darker, maybe Latino skin tone here, but I think she came out looking sickly. Too much yellow in the skin, perhaps.

Paper doll blogging: Setting the bar low…

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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….

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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.

Flock Modern Girl: Magnetic Paper Dolls

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So, I know I said these would be up last week (or maybe the week before that), but some things came up and I didn’t get around to it. The irony is that I drew this set last year and it’s been sitting on my desktop waiting to be finished for a while.

I tried to make sure each page of this set was a consistent color scheme, so that each page can be printed and played with alone, along with combining with the other pieces in the set. I walso wanted to play a little with the options of a magnetic set of paper dolls which are different than the options for a non-magnetic set of paper doll. I think magnetic paper dolls have interesting options, but are not the same as paper paper dolls for various reasons.

The Modern Girl Set PDF Downloads
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Dove PDF Download Oriole PDF DownloadPhoebe PDF Download
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Robin PDF DownloadStarling PDF DownloadWren PDF Download
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Clothing Set 1
PDF Download		Clothing Set 2 PDF DownloadClothing Set 3 PDF Download
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Clothing Set 4
PDF Download		Clothing Set 5 PDF DownloadClothing Set 6 PDF Download
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Clothing Set 7
PDF Download		Clothing Set 8 PDF Download

Marisole Monday: On the Boardwalk in Black and White

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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{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for the rest of this series}

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. 🙂

Short shorts and Some Questionable Sleeves… A Black and White Paper Doll

So, I went out to the movies tonight and saw “Snow White and the Huntsman” with some friends. I concluded that the Twilight Chick (whose name I had to look up on IMBD) can’t act, that I rather liked Charlize Theron when she’s evil and that the movie was better than Mirror Mirror, but I’ll take the Disney version over either any day. The costumes were pretty beautiful, especially the Evil Queens, but there’s apart where Snow White rides into battle not wearing a helmet- apparently being a princess means you’re immune to concussive head injuries.

 

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So, before I crawl into bed, I should answer a question.

Monica asked: Do you prefer online paper doll research, or real book research? Internet or Library? =]

Well, that’s a kinda complicated question. The answer is: It depends on what I am researching and why.

If I want inspiration for a modern or a fantasy set, than I usually stick to the internet. I use it for looking at clothing websites or checking out the latest designer shows a Style.com. It’s really useful.

If I want historical costume, I usually go to books. I own about a dozen different costume books in my own collection, plus I regularly have at least a dozen checked out from the library. The exception to this are the websites of museums and libraries, which often contain digitized primary source documents or photos of items in their collections. Books are great for context. The internet is great for pictures. Some of my favorite internet resources are linked on my Research Resources page which I just finished updating, though I have some more to add later.

The truth is that I don’t really like staring at a computer while trying to draw and I would much rather have a book open in front of me than a computer screen. Though I usually draw from drafted tumbnails, so even with fantasy costumes, I rarely have a computer open when I am actually drawing.

I hope that answers your question, Monica.

So, has anyone else seen either of the new Snow White movies and what do they think of them? Should I do so a Snow White paper doll? Or an Evil Queen?

Dictionary Girls Go all Neo-Victorian…

Today’s Dictionary girl is a take on neo-Victorian things. I’m not entirely pleased with the drape on the skirt… but I decided to go for it. I do really like the hair and the boots. I think I’ve mentioned I have a thing for boots.

So, onto the drawing… The random number generator informed me the winner of my drawing was number four- D Garrett who has her own wonderful blog on black doll collecting. Email me, please, at paperthinpersonas (at) gmail (dot) com and let me know what sort of paper doll you would like. 🙂

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{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG to Print} {Click Here for The Rest of this Series} {Click Here for the Dolls to Dress}

Since she won, it seems only fitting to answer her question.

D. Garrett asked, Have you determined if any one of your paper dolls is more popular than the others?

Yes, I have. My most popular paper doll is Marisole Boldly Going which has had nearly four times the number of hits of any other paper doll I’ve ever drawn. Closely following Marisole Boldly Going is my first Marisole in black and white Modern Girl in Black and White which I drew in response to requests for a black and white Marisole paper doll. In general, Marisole is my most popular paper doll.

I don’t really know why she’s so appealing to people. I find her pose a little problematic unless you slit up along the side of her body to free her right arm from her side and I confess that when I see her a part of me sees a style of paper doll I wouldn’t draw today. I may have to redraw her face one day… her faceted eyes kinda freak me out. (They didn’t when I drew her, but now…)

That’s all neither here nor there.

I hope that answers your question, dgb. Let me know what sorta paper doll you’d like. 🙂