Marisole Monday: Yellow Princess

When I was a child, I always wanted one of those cakes which had a doll inside of it, but I didn’t like Barbie dolls, so I don’t know what I would have done with one if I had gotten it. I was reminded of them as I worked on this set of paper dolls. Marisole doesn’t have a lot of huge skirted dresses. I think because I more often take my inspiration from the Regency then from the Antebellum eras of costume. Never the less, I knew I wanted to draw some things that were utterly over the top and I think these qualify.

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I don’t usually start knowing a color scheme, but in the case of these dresses I was pretty sure I wanted them to be yellow from the beginning. Because the dresses were going to be yellow, I chose a warm pale brown color for Marisole’s skintone and a dark color for her hair. I was really concerned with her skin clashing with her costumes. I don’t think it does, but I was worried it might.

I have, as I sometimes do, left this to the last minute. So, now that its posted, I am going to crawl into bed and sleep for I have work and homework to finish in the morning.

Edit 8/10/2013: There is now a a black and white version of this paper doll for coloring.

At Hogwarts: Harry Potter Paper Doll

I’ve been thinking about doing Harry Potter paper dolls for a while, but have be resisting the urge because I always felt like Marisole looked as though she was too old and so did the other paper dolls on the site. To me, Marisole will always be in her early-20’s and that means dressing her up as a student takes on kinky connotations. Not a place I wanted to go with my paper dolls. While I’ve always thought of Marisole as an adult, I’ve always thought of Pixie as a teenager (late teens, but teens never the less). So, it made more sense in my head to do Pixie as a Hogwarts Student for my Harry Potter foray.

A Harry Potter inspired paper doll of a young Hogwarts Students with uniforms and accesories. Free from PaperThinPersonas.com

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Since I didn’t feel like drawing the same thing over and over again, I decided to do four different sweater and shirt combos- one for each house. The school uniform aspect of Hogwarts garb is a movie creation, since I don’t recall anything beyond a black robe ever being described in the books. Though most schools in the UK do have uniforms and, while I didn’t have a school uniform as a kid in the US, I did enjoy watching the kids stream out of school in their uniforms while I was living in England. It never ceased to amuse me.

Actually, the Hogwarts uniform have changed subtly with each movie, taking on a darker feel as the movies have gotten darker. Rather fascinating really, if you have more time then you know what to do with and you’re easily amused -or watching them in a row while drawing your Harry Potter paper doll.

Of the four sweater combos, I think I like the bronze and blue Ravenclaw one the best. I like the colors and I like how it came out. I should say that I didn’t really plan which sweater would be which house, it just sort of happened without me thinking much about it.

I think the doll looks either Latino or perhaps East Indian would be more fitting given that the school is in Scotland. Maybe a relative of the Patils… Hard to say.

Sketchbook Rides Again

I finally finished inking my latest sketchbook. I have started scanning the images from it. I hope to have the first set up Sunday since I don’t have anything ready yet for Sunday… Leaving things to the last minute is a bad habit of mine, I confess.

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I nearly always draw Pixie paper dolls in half page groups. That’s about how many items of clothing I can fit on a single set. The lower set of clothing is for a Harry Potter paper doll I’ve been planning for a while (though I haven’t seen the last film yet). I realized after I drew her that I needed another sweater for the fourth house, so I’ll have to do that. The upper set is just some normal clothing. I decided I needed more casual normal things for Pixie.

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Future Marisole post, I think. I can fit three long dresses easily on one Marisole post. Each Marisole post takes up a page and a bit in a sketch book. Oh, and I’m kinda on a “crown” kick, though I don’t really like either of those.

The last page here is two more Pixie post things. The top is bell dancer inspired clothing- has about as sketch-1cmuch in common with actual Middle Eastern dress as the Marisole fantasy dresses have in common with Western historical costume, which is to say very little. The bottom are some in-accurate but pretty 18th century inspired dresses.

Shadow & Light 2: Printable Paper Doll

I love contrast of heavy structured pieces with light draped pieces. So, I wanted to sort of play with that and draw nifty harness looking things. See… I was trying to justify my wacky-ness with some sort of artistic statement, but I don’t really take myself that seriously.

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On a semi-unrelated note, I’ve become rather obsessed with Blythe dolls lately. At first, I thought they were creepy- all big eyes and weird mouths, but lately I’ve come to actually think they are sort of cute. Mostly I like their little tiny clothing. Not surprising to anyone who knows me, I’ve always been more of a doll clothing, then a doll sort of person. The same is true for paper dolls. As a child, I was just as happy to have just one paper doll and lots of dresses (if not more happy) then to have a lot of dolls.

I’d like to do some sort of Blythe paper doll, but I’m still working on keeping up with what I’ve committed too and I don’t think I’m ready for that quite yet. If I do decide, it might not be serial which brings back the “What to do with non-serial” paper dolls problem.

On an utterly non-related note, I am now going to walk away from my laptop and curl up on my couch with fresh sweet corn and Harry Potter movies. Summer classes are over and life is good.

Curves 2.0 Meet Bianna

Today we have Alyssa’s partner in crime, Bianna. I spent a while debating if I should post clothing before I posted another doll, but in the end the other doll won out, mostly because I’m rather in love with her wigs and her lips.

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I promise next week there will be some clothing, so the poor girls aren’t running around in their girdles for too much longer. I’m having a lot of fun digging around the Vintage Pattern Wiki looking for dress ideas while fretting about how I don’t like their feet placement.

Oh, well, I don’t think I’ll ever have a perfect paper doll. 🙂

Bianna is not named after anything or anyone specific, except that her name starts with B and I liked how it sounded. Do cut along the dotted lines on her wigs and by her arm to help her wear her costumes. I’ve spent the last few days working hard to finish up assignments for my summer course work and I must confess I have little intelligent to say in this blog post, so enjoy the paper doll and, as always, I love to hear what people think.

Shadow and Light: Sci-Fi Printable Paper Doll

I did a few different things over the weekend and during the week of blog neglecting (actually, I wasn’t neglecting the blog, I was just busy with a lot of other things for the blog, that weren’t ready to be posted). So, I have a few things to talk about today. I have rewritten my FAQ. I’ve added a few more blogs, not paper doll specific, and removed a few dead links from the Links page. Obviously, the menus have been reorganized. One of these days I will over-haul the Gallery page. I don’t like it. I don’t know what to do with it. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I’m dissatisfied with it. I need to think about it.

I’d kill the Gallery if I knew what the heck to do with the content already posted there. Decisions decisions.

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So, I should say that this new paper doll series evolved out of the number of comments I had from people who really liked the shadowed style of paper dolls. I was surprised by the interest in them since I’d always thought I was the only one who liked those paper dolls. How wrong I was.

The truth is that I began this series a long time ago, but never posted it since I didn’t know how to fit it into the schedule and then recently when I looked at the bulging folder full of drawings and the ones in my sketchbook I was really quite proud of, I thought, “I’m bored with Flora. I avoid drawing for her. Just got for it.”

And here we are today with a new paper doll series. I’m excited and pleased (and have songs from the musical Into the Woods stuck in my head, but that’s got nothing to do with this post) and I’d love to hear what people think, as always.

Curves 2.0 The Beginning…

When I started this blog, the temptation was to name all of my paper dolls after Greek letters. So, there could be Alpha and Beta and Omega and others. However, I decided that they would end up sounding like some sort of strange paper doll SWAT team.

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On an only slightly less surreal note, I have decided to give each of the Curves 2.0 dolls a name based on a letter of the alphabet. So, today we have the first paper doll. Her name is Alyssa. She’s a redhead for I openly confess to having a soft spot for redheads. Her skin looks overly pale on some computers and normal on mine, so I can’t really say much about that. I’ve decided to call the paper dolls “Dictionary Girls” after the idea of “Calendar Girls” which dates from the tendency for there to be pin-ups on calendars.

The plan is to have another paper doll for next week and then some clothing for them the week after so that aren’t running around in their underwear, poor dears.

PS: To everyone who wanted these dolls to be done in the heavily shadowed style of the old Curves sets, there’s another new series starting Friday which will replace Flora and will be in that style.

Out of the Sketchbook

I’ve nearly filled up my sketchbook. So, I’m working on inking which is the last thing and then once I’ve inked a bunch I can buy a new one. I can’t buy a new one until the old one is full.

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Ever since I did this fourth of July post, I’ve been thinking a lot about Marisole and historical costumes. These are sketches of costumes from 1910. It was a strange era for women’s costume. I tend to like the costumes, but I love the hats.

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This is part of a new series of serial paper dolls which will debut Friday to replace Flora. I need to scan it, but for the time being its still in my sketch book. I love these costumes and am quite proud of them. I think I’ll probably split them up into two posts for the blog.

Marisole Monday: Empire Fantasy

It is entirely possible that my least favorite part of posting paper dolls is coming up with the title. (Adding tabs is a close second on the list of least favorite activities, I should just draw them rather then using Photoshop. I don’t know why I insist on Photoshop. It just makes things more annoying.) I think I might just start numbering the things. Or using some strange code…. Seriously….

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So it’s very late and it’s been over 90 here for the last week. I am hot. I am sweaty. I am dying from a combination of humidity and heat. We had a thunderstorm this morning which woke me up and dropped the temp, so that it was only 90 degrees today. How nice.

It’s times like this when I miss the cold damp climes of my Alaskan home.

Anyway, enough about the weather. There are paper dolls. They are wearing stylish fantasy dresses. These dresses were inspired by the Renaissance in the same way Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame was actually inspired by the novel, which is to say only in the smallest and slightest way. Truly, I don’t know what Disney was thinking turning a book in which all of the main characters die into a children’s film, though I recommend the novel to anyone who has a really long plane ride and doesn’t mind being depressed during it. Does it show that I’m not a huge Victor Hugo fan? In the novel’s defense I should say the language is beautiful, but the plot is rather depressing. I can’t fault Hugo’s skill as a novelist, but I’d rather read Dumas.

Hmmm… I think that’s enough literary criticism for one blog post. Enjoy the paper dolls. (You can decide if she should die in a mass grave while clutching the dead body of her love. I won’t judge.)

Twenty Minute Doodle

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Obviously, this is not a Flora post, but it was this or nothing and I figured something was better then nothing.

So, I’ve been trying to do these ten or twenty minute little doodles a few times a week to practice drawing. I thought if I posted one of them here then maybe I would be more motivated to do them. So, we shall see how well that works out. I tend to draw in stages and I often feel very stiff and worried about my work, I don’t tend to freehand anything- there’s always drafts and templates and futzing. I’m hoping by doing doodles like this my more formal paper doll doodles will become more relaxed.

I also wanted to post to assure people that I’m not dead. I’ve just been really busy. I got back from a wedding and then had class and somehow everything else had to come before paper dolls. I hope to have the blog back to normal next week complete with either a preview of the new Curves series or the actual first paper doll in the new Curves series. We shall see. I also have a new shadowed series in the works to replace Flora and a magnetic version of the Pixie paper dolls along with some stand alone paper dolls which I can’t wait to put in the Gallery. Such fun.

Until all that is finished… we have a doodle.