The Stylish July Round Up: All 31 Creations Together

The Paper Dolls

 I feel like starting the dolls, because well, you need a doll to wear the clothing, right? Right. I was very pleased with this doll and I still am. There’s a few things I would change now, but all in all, I’m quite happy with how she came out.

The Historical Clothing in Order of Historical Period

Originally, this project was going to be all 1910s clothing, but that didn’t last too long. I ended up with some 15th century stuff, some 1890s stuff, and some 1910s stuff. I’m particularly happy with how the folds came out in the 15th century gowns and I fretted for a long time over their headdresses.

The Sci-fi, Fantasy and Steampunk Clothing

I draw a lot of fantasy stuff. I like drawing it. It’s some of my favorite things to work on. I wanted to try out a bunch of different looks and see how I did using digital tools with them, rather than a pencil and pen. At times, I seriously missed my pen, but I can see ways in which I improved as the process went on.

The Contemporary Clothing

 

I didn’t do as many

A Few in Color….

One of the long terms goals of the July Project was to see if I could do a paper doll series similar to many of the ones on this site digitally. Part of that is finding a system, because I am system based soul. I played around a lot with different ways of doing shading and different ways of adding texture.

In the end, I decided I didn’t really love the shading, but I did enjoy trying out several different fun techniques here.

And that’s it! All of them in all of their glory here. If you missed one, you can grab it now and fill out your whole set.

Dark Victoriana Printable Paper Doll

A victorian fashion inspired printable paper doll coloring page with an 8 piece mix and match wardrobe.
A victorian fashion inspired printable paper doll with dark hair, fair skin and an 8 piece mix and match wardrobe.

Download Black and White PDF | Download Color PDF | More Paper Dolls from the Ensemble Eclectica Series

This weekend was Rosh Hashanah, so I spent some time in synagogue, made challah, heard the shofar, and ate apples and honey. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, so it is now the year 5784. I often get introspective this time of year, but I don’t know that I’m ready to share any of those thoughts.

I wanted to do something a little romantic and with a darker color scheme, but fairer skin, so I could see how the contrast worked with the dark linework and the added texture. I think it works well.

All this paper dolls clothing sort of reminds me of the clothing of Regina/Evil Queen in Once Upon a Time when not in the fairytale world. I never got through season 3 last time I watched this, so hopefully I’ll be more engaged this time. I honestly think the show works better when you can binge it and don’t so easily loose track of all the threads (there’s a lot of them.) I do really enjoy most of the costuming. Everytime I argue at the TV that there’s more ethical nuance than the show allows, my husband is like, “It’s fairy tales.”

And I am like, “Okay, fair.”

So, if you look closely at this set, you might notice one of the neat things about working digitally. Two of the blouses (the red sleeveless one and the purple button up) became the templates from which I drew the two other blouses- the cream and black one and the teal cropped one. This adaptation is much more possible, because of the digital nature of the art. It’s not something I’ll probably do all the time- because I honestly like drawing- but the possibility excites me.

Also, like how many ways are there to draw a pair of skinny jeans before it gets absurd? Really?

Oh, and I messed around a little with the layout to facilitate printing and getting more clothing onto the page. Not sure I love the thicker gray line, so that might change.

Let me know what you think in a comment! I love hearing from folks.

Vivian’s Ballgown & Afternoon Dress for September 2023

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A Colorful Tropical Beach Printable Paper Doll

A cute little asian paper doll with a ten part mix and match wardrobe of beach themed clothing options.
A cute little asian paper doll coloring page with a ten part mix and match wardrobe of beach themed clothing options.

Download Black and White PDF | Download Color PDF | More Paper Dolls from the Ensemble Eclectica Series

I rarely get a chance to do something that has this many different outfit possibilities while also being just a one page set. This has 19 different outfits while also being only 10 mix and match pieces. Could it be more? Yes, I did the math once and realized that the most outfits you could ever get from 10 pieces was 25. That would be 5 tops and 5 bottoms which gets you 25 different clothing options.

I have a whole post about calculating clothing options if you feel like having some fun with math. There’s a formula. My best friend in college went on to become a math teacher and while I never will be a big math person, whenever math comes up I think of her.

I got some great name suggestions, but ended up deciding on Ensemble Eclectica, after trying out a few different options including “Wardrobe Wonderland Wanderings” or “Fashion Fantasy Frolics”. I think those two were a little too long.

Anyway, for technical reasons (and because I had a fantasy dress that I could not fit on the page), I ended up resizing these dolls down a bit and redoing some of the formatting. So, the next few after this one will looking a wee bit different. I already updated the PDF files and things from last week’s version.

Pastel Winter Printable Paper Doll

Download Black and White PDF | Download Color PDF | More Paper Dolls from the Ensemble Eclectica Series

Something about winter and pastel colors makes me really happy. I think it might be that where I grew up in Alaska, there was a very long dusk, especially in winter. The sun would never get very high in the sky and so the snow on the mountains would turn the most brilliant pink color as it reflected the light.

Maybe that’s why I associate pastel colors with winter. They feel softer and somehow more mellow and quiet- all things I also associate with winter.

The truth is, if I maybe honest, I wanted to do this set in pastel, because I had this idea of experimenting with texture and I wanted to see how the texture would look on different color schemes. So, this is the first of several dolls I made for this purpose.

Now, since I don’t think I should call this series “Texture Experiment 2.0”, please let me know if you have a series name suggestion. There will be, at least, three of these ladies.

Edit: For a million reasons involving layout and dresses and other things, I ended up resizing and redoing the layout on these paper dolls, so I’ve updated the PDF files. – Rachel 9/12/2023

Vivian’s 18th Century Inspired Walking suit

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Galactic Fashions: Another Printable Paper Doll

Download 2 Page PDF | More July Project Paper Dolls

So, I wanted to experiment with texture and style. I wanted to see if I still liked the effect of noise texture if the style was less romantic and more something else.

And well, clearly, that something else should be space princesses.

I’m actually really happy with how it came out. I played around with the texture in a way that I think worked well- a larger scale noise effect in the background, but something more subtle for the doll herself. I’m actually very pleased with that part.

Something about this paper doll keeps making me think of 1980s and 1990s cartoons of my childhood like the X-Men and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and She-ra. I was a huge She-ra fan as a kid. One of my friends had a bunch of the She-ra action figures and we would play with them for hours in her bedroom and on her porch. I have a lot of fond memories of that.

All in all this was an successful experiment. I confess I’ve been frustrated a bit with working in Procreate lately (which I think is 100% normal when trying to learn a new skill), so we’ll see how I feel about everything in a few more days.

Yellow Rose Ballgown & Doll

Download the 2 page PDF | More of the July Project Paper Dolls

All right, so I spent sometime this week coloring my favorite of the July Project which was this rose ballgown.

One thing Procreate does really poorly is color management. It’s really frustrating. I keep thinking there’s a trick to it that I am missing, but after watching several tutorials and such, I am increasingly convinced that Procreate is just bad at color management. That’s it.

I’m still experimenting with texture as well and clearly experimenting with shadow, as well. My favorite artists don’t tend to do a lot with shadow… I dunno. I remain unconvinced that it works. More experimenting is clearly needed. But you don’t know if you don’t try, I always say, so trying matters.

Long story short: I’m not in love with Procreate for coloring things. I’m pretty happy with how this turned out, but I think I want more texture or maybe slightly different texture or something.

Work In Progress Update… Rose Ballgown and Halloween Paper Dolls in Progress

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A Stylish Paper Doll July: A Gown with Pleats and Ruffled Rossettes

Download Black and White PDF | More July Project Paper Dolls

And this is the last of the Stylish July project- 31 pieces in 31 days. Wow.

And if you’re wondering, I have no idea what I am going to do next.

For this gown, I wanted to play around with drawing pleats. Pleats are something I love drawing with pen and ink, but try as I might, I can’t seem to get pleats quite right in Procreate. I think they worked really well on this dress, but somehow they feel too flat on today’s dress. Clearly, pleats are something I need to practice drawing more, which is fine. That’s the process, right?

I think some of this comes from the zooming capacity of Procreate. It is so easy to zoom in and then you lose the “shape” of the whole garment. This utterly fascinates me. I have always preferred working super zoomed in Photoshop for my clean up work, but that’s maybe not the best way for me to work in Procreate.

So, that maybe a habit I work to break or at least get better at zooming out on occasion.

I had this fantasy in my head that I’d get done with this project and then I would 100% know exactly what I wanted to do next. I would finish and then, clouds would part, and I would see a path clearly before me. Sort of like that moment in a musical when the heroine spins around and suddenly knows her destiny.

But as I do not live in a musical, there is not been a helpful personal epiphany. Clearly, my life needs a better script writer.

So, I’m going to take stock of things, maybe do a round-up post of all these pieces together just for fun, and then decide what to do with myself for August.