Pixie & Puck: Robynn, a Huntress

robynn-fantasy-pixie-paper-doll

{Click Here for a PDF of Robynn in Color} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Robynn in Color}

Every paper doll I do is a little different. Today’s Pixie Paper Doll has a few things that are different from normal. I’ve been experimenting with how I draw the Pixie faces, so you might notice her lips are distinctly different from the other Pixies. I’m not sure how I feel about this new style, I think I’ll stick with it for the next few (since I already have their heads drawn this way) and see how I feel. Feedback, as always, is enjoyed and very useful.

robynn-fantasy-pixie-paper-doll-bw

{Click Here for a PDF of Robynn in Black and White} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Robynn in Black and White} {Click Here for More Pixie Paper Dolls}

So, I got an email a few weeks ago from a nice young lady name Megan who asked for:

Pale
Blue eyes
ginger
Female

Style:
Commando
Outdoors
midevil

And, debates of the spelling of Medieval aside, I was intrigued. What was a Medieval outdoors commando? I wondered and how would one dress, anyway? And so, mostly to forefill my own fascination at the concept, I drew this Pixie set. Free advice to people who make requests, the weirder the request, the more likely I am to take it on.

A couple things that are different about this Pixie than what was asked for. I did not give the doll blue eyes (mostly because I forgot) and the set is only medieval in the vaguest of senses. Still, I think she came out pretty cute. I do rather wish I’d remembered to give her blue eyes, per Megan’s request, so I hope she will forgive me that oversight.

Robynn is named for Robin Hood, of course, who robbed from the rich, gave to the poor and was generally a cool dude, though did not, necessarily exist. I had a great love of Robin Hood stories when I was a child.

The Sketchbook Rises from the Depths…

I haven’t done one of these in forever, but since I just filled a sketchbook, I thought I should share some of it before I start on my new book. If anyone cares, I use Canson Universal Sketchbooks in nine by twelve inch size. Each book has a hundred pages, though I usually tear out a few and quite a few never get onto the blog, since I do some drawing that isn’t paper doll related. I like the Canson books, because they are fairly inexpensive and they take both ink and pencil well.

sketchbook-2013a
Some Pixie costumes in a Steampunk/Neo-Victorian style. The skirt was going to have a pattern on it, but I think I decided against it in the end.

sketchbook-2013b
Speaking of all things Neo-Victorian, here is a set for Marisole Monday and Friends in a similar theme. I’m not totally pleased with the trunk and it might not survive the coloring process. I hope to have this set up next week. I plan on making this set for Mia who I feel like doesn’t have enough sets.

sketchbook-2013c
Another Flock set, this one for Snow White and Rose Red. The idea is to have the two sets of clothes match with different color schemes. One in a blue and white scheme (Snow White) and the other in a red and white scheme (Rose Red), though I have begun coloring them and they’re not coming out terribly well. We’ll see how long I can keep up my theme ideas.

So, that’s all the previews for this sketchbook set.

Marisole Monday: Phoenix & Smoke in Color

marisole-monday-guy-pheonix-color

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

This is one of those sets where the yellow looks a lot more yellow than I had planned for it to look. Oh well…

I spent most of this weekend trying to come up with something witty and funny to do for April Fools day, but… honestly… I got nothing. Therefore, we’re just going to keep puttering along here in paper doll land. Sorry guys, I’m just not that good at that sort of thing.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter or is still having a wonderful Passover, depending. I had a quiet day spent working on blog stuff and cleaning my apartment. I rather enjoyed myself, I confess.

I’m also not totally pleased with his face. I don’t think he looks as African-American as I had planned him to look, but I am trying my best. I think he’s okay, but I’m not totally pleased.

Pixie and Puck: Pirate Nammu in Black and White

nammu-bw

{Click Here for a PDF of Nammu Page 1} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Nammu Page 1}

I was asked by a reader to do my Nammu pirate paper doll in black and white. She was posted in full color back in November. So, it only took… um…. six months for me to get my act together. Seriously, it might have taken longer, but I was feeling guilty.

Normally, I save the paper dolls in a file with all the layers broken up. The color is on one layer and the line work is on another layer and than the heavy black borders, which I add last, are on a third layer. This time, I saved the file with those layers merged, so I didn’t have a separate line-work layer to work with. Since I didn’t want to redo a lot of work, I tried using Photoshop to remove the color from the paper doll set. I can sat with utter confidence that this worked better than expected, but not as well as I would have liked.

nammu-bw-2

{Click Here for a PDF of Nammu Page 2} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Nammu Page 2}

I will spare everyone a list of the things that I think didn’t turn out quite right, but the quality of the line work is not what I hoped it would be. Never the less, a black and white Nammu is better than no black and white Nammu, so hope whoever asked for it (and I honestly can’t remember who that was) is pleased with the outcome. And besides, once you color her, I don’t think my insecurities about the line work will be obvious.

Some people have expressed fear that the Mini-Maidens will replace Pixie and Puck in my heart and I hope that this Pixie paper doll reassures people that I still love the Pixie and Puck paper dolls.

Påklædningsdukker… or I just found out how to say Paper Doll in Danish…

paper_doll_around_the_webI recently received a very kind email from a reader letting me know that påklædningsdukker is Danish for paper doll. This, of course, caused a flurry of Google searching to track down paper dolls I might have missed around the web since many non-English sites never get indexed if you don’t know the right language keywords. (I’d insert a rant here about imperialism, the roman alphabet, the English language, and the internet, but really… I don’t think anyone cares…)

While I was searching Karen’s Blog came up often. I’ve linked to her blog on my Links page for a while, but for those of you who haven’t visited, I recommend her site very highly. Karen’s paper dolls are beautifully drawn in black and white or color and her stuffed animals and horses are some of my favorites.

A collection of paper dolls from what looks like the Danish version of Women’s Day.

Vintage paper doll post cards from the 1950s, I think.

Princess Razibor and her son I am also thinking from the fifties. The mild nudity (and I do mean mild) is interesting for me when I think about how nervous we are in the United States about any nudity at all.

A collection of mother and baby (or Nanny and baby) paper dolls, the different styles through time are quite illustrative of artistic movements. There’s more of the collection if you click on the left side bar links.

A cute paper doll named Liv (I think?), I couldn’t find the source site.

I hope everyone enjoys the paper dolls in Danish. I certainly had fun tracking them down and learning a word in a new language.

Phoenix & Smoke: Male Printable Paper Doll in Black and White

Hey, It’s a MAN.

The most commonly requested thing for the blog, outside of sometimes asking for more things in black and white, is for a boy for Marisole Monday. I know this has taken a long time to happen and I don’t regret that. I drew about seven versions of this pose before I finally had one that I felt didn’t look like he was HUGE next to Marisole and her friends or looked like he was creepily androgynous (not in metro-sexual way, but rather in a… disturbing alien sort of genderless way).

marisole-monday-guy-pheonix

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

So, today we have the first of the males of Marisol Monday. Since the girls are Marisole, Mia and Margot, it seems only fitting to give the first of the boys an M name as well. After some thought, I have settled on Marcus. Though I have been often asked for a boyfriend for Marisole, I am not defining Marcus’ role. He could be a friend, a brother, or a lover. There’s no reason to be hetronormative with Marisole Monday. I should also add that since the Marisole Monday family is growing, I’ve renamed the sets “Marisole Monday & Friends” and will probably be redesigning their logo in the future.

I am going to confess right now that I don’t know how many Marcus’ dolls I will do. I have two other sets in the works, but as I have mentioned before, I find men’s clothing really dull for the last two hundred years or so. I work on a college campus and so I get a fairly good look at what young men wear these days and well… I just can’t imagine drawing hoodies and jeans for the rest of my life. I’m not say there won’t be other boys in the Marisole Monday world, but they probably won’t be too common.

This is Greta: A New Black & White Printable Paper Doll

Okay, so news: After some deliberation I settled on Natalie’s suggestion for a name “Mini Maidens”, though I have to mention that DotRot’s suggestion of “Faye and the Holidaze” was probably the one that made me laugh the hardest. I have a soft spot in my heart for alliteration. I want to thank everyone for entering, since I hate naming things.

mini-maiden-greta-printable

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for the Rest of the Series}

Greta is the new Mini Maiden and she shares a face with the Valentine’s day doll. I’ve made a new category for the Mini-Maidens with separate subcategories for Faye and Greta, since those are the two members at the moment. Passover in on the horizon, but I don’t think I’ll be doing a Passover paper doll. Though a mini-bowl of matzo ball soup might be worth it…

Anyway, I hope everyone likes the Mini Maidens and their new place among the serial dolls on the site. They aren’t on the Index page yet. With one thing and another last night, I forgot to make them an icon, but they’ll be added soon.

Hey! I’m on Youtube…

So, Light Messages Publishing recently used a few of my sets to create a really neat video trailer for their book Can’t Buy Me Love by Summer Kinard who blogs at Write Like a Mother.

I confess that I haven’t read the book (its not out yet), but I’m flattered and excited to see my work used in such a fun and creative fashion. It’s hard to say no to a book about love and lucha libre.

Plus the video is really cute. Bonus points to anyone who can name the different sets used.

P.S. I am embarrassed that I had to look up both “freegan” and “yarn bombing”, clearly I am out of the loop on such things.

Maurader Princess Paper Doll in Color

marisole-marauder-princess-color

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

Margot, Maurader Princess has returned.

And this time, it’s personal…

Okay, so it’s no more personal than last time, but I was trying to be dramatic.

Whenever a friend of my comments to me in the real world about my blog updates, I am sort of shocked. I forget that people you know.. read this and they also, you know, know me and they might actually have opinions.

Not that I expect them to. Most of my friends are male and most of my male friends are probably just don’t really care about paper dolls to begin with, though they are supportive of my hobby and for that I am grateful.

So, I am running a contest to name the new paper doll series. You can enter until Friday when I’ll choose my favorite as a winner and the winner gets a custom paper doll, so that should be useful incentive. Plus you’ll receive highly limited fame amongst a small, but dedicated audience.

Meet Faye: A New Paper Doll Series is Born

Some of you probably remember my Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day Paper Dolls which I did last month. After I did them, I found myself drawing a lot more for this pose. So, I decided to actually name the first of the dolls. I have named her Faye, after a Chinese foreign exchange student I knew in graduate school. Her wardrobe, like that of my grad school friend, is girly and a hint of boho. I haven’t updated the Printable Paper Doll Index with her yet, but I will be soon. Probably this weekend.

paper-doll-faye

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for the Rest of the Series}

By the way, the new series needs a name. So, I am asking for recommendations for a good name for these little paper dolls. I’ll select my favorite from the comments in a week (Friday the 22nd) and the winner will get a custom paper doll set of their choice.

It’s been a while since I did a contest and so the rules are as follows:

    1. 1. You can enter up to three names.

 

    1. 2. You can only win one contest a year.

 

    1. 3. I will announce the winner on the blog on the day the contest ends. I will also email the winner at their email address attached to the comment. If I do not hear back from the winner within a week, I will use a random number generator to select the next

winner

    1. .

 

    4. The winner will receive a one page custom paper doll based on one of my paper doll series within a month of the end of the contest. Sometimes life gets in the way of this goal, but I will email the winner if that is the case and we can make other arrangements.

So, enter your paper doll series names and we’ll see what we’re going to call this new set of paper dolls.