I draw a lot of paper dolls. Is that a shock to anyone? It really shouldn’t be.
Anyway, I inked a huge number of Marisole Monday & Friend’s sets a few weeks ago. They’ll start to go live starting next week, I think. Anyway, I wanted to share what I’ve been working on with people as a sneak peek at the future.
The first set here is Tudor era, specifically the mid-1500s in England. There’s two dresses, one set of underwear and two pairs of shoes, but I have the sinking feeling one of those pairs of shoes isn’t going to fit on the set when I do the layout. On the upside, I’ve gotten to practice drawing complicated patterns and I really love how the gowns both turned out. I think this is going to a dfun set, even though French hoods are hard to draw.
I did a 1920’s set years ago, but I love that era- also I own like five books about it in my own costume book collection and that means I don’t have to interlibrary loan reference books. Periods of fashion that don’t require extra work are my favorite periods of fashion. This clothes set is for Monica. It’s being colored as we speak.
Lastly, here’s a contemporary set borrowed from March’s deluge of fashion magazines. Color blocking seems to be the in thing. I really love the dress, but there are some inking errors that I’ll have to clean up with Photoshop later. I’ll be coloring this set based on Pantone’s color reports.
So, those are the future paper doll sets. I’ll show off some more next week. 🙂
This sorta accidentally went up on Monday, but the files weren’t actually loaded on my server, so the links were kinda problematic and it wasn’t actually supposed to go live yet. I took it down when I noticed it and fixed the PDF files. So here it is as an actual real proper post. 🙂
I went back and forth about the order in which to post these sets. Technically, I drew the clothing first and then drew the doll to go with it. Since I had things to say about her clothing, so the paper doll’s Lolita inspired clothing got to get posted first. Now, I can post the paper doll who I drew while thinking that she would wear this clothing. Now, that doesn’t mean she has to wear that clothing she does have other options.
Chloe has the same skintone as Stella, my other Asian Ms. Mannequin paper doll. I did that on purpose, so the two paper dolls could share shoes. The colors of the dolls bases will indicate which dolls can share shoes, so Chose’s base is purple- just like Stella’s base. I hope that makes sense. Chloe’s shoes were designed to match the country Lolita inspired paper doll clothes from last week. Stella’s shoes are a little more neutral, so the two dolls can share.
Eventually, I’d like to have two of each of the current Ms. Mannequin skin tones before I branch out into other skin tones, though I do have an alien Ms. Mannequin in the works and her skin is going to be pink skinned or something equally odd.
I choose not to give today’s paper doll an over the top Lolita hairstyle (here a bunch of links to Lolita hair tutorials to show off some of the styles), because I wanted her to be able to dress down or dress up. I think versitility is really important in paper dolls. The variety of stories they can tell is a crucial part of the pleasure children (and adults) get from the toys. At least, I think it is.
So, there will be a sketchbook preview later this week. I hope everyone had a great Easter, if they celebrate, or are having a great Passover. As always, comments are all read and emails are usually responded too eventually. (Mind you… eventually can be quite a few days later.)
Last week, I talked about where this paper doll set was inspired from. This week, I want to talk a bit about color choices.
Color scares a lot of people. It scares me too. Truthfully, I use a lot of tools to help me develop color schemes. Some are as simple as searching Colour Lovers for a theme, but other times I use tools from ColourLovers to calculate diferent types of color schemes. My other favorite color scheme website is Design Seeds.
Normally, I try to keep my color schemes to five or six colors. There just aren’t enough pieces in the average paper doll set to justify more colors then than that. Even today’s set with all the pattern has only seven different colors, not including the warm soft brown of her skin tone. Choosing a skintone color is actually just as important as selecting a color scheme, because depending on the surrounding colors, all colors look different. I tend to think of the skintone choice as part of the color scheme selection, just as much as I am picking out colors for clothing, but I do try to keep to my palette, except with Asian skintones that generally have a strong yellow undertone. That can be very hard to not look jaundiced, so there’s often trial and error when I am coloring those paper dolls.
In today’s paper doll, I knew I wanted a rainbow scheme and I wanted it to feel a little bit like candy- bright and sweet colors. Pink stands in for my red, but other then that I have a purple, a blue, a yellow, an orange and a green. White acts as a neutral, rather than black, and that keeps the set feeling light and bright. The only black appears as the soles of her boots. Her nails are multicolored as are her hair ties to keep the sense of mismatched style.
I really am quite pleased with how she turned out.
There’s something about Lolita style clothes that I find appealing. I think part of it is that I love the Victorian inspired details of the outfits, but I also think it’s fascinating to see how a non-Western culture like Japan interprets Western European and American Victorian children’s clothing into something for adults.
There is a tendency when we talk about cultural adaptations to speak strictly of Western nations adapting Asian clothing and there’s a lot of great research on that topic, but non-Western countries are also adapting Western dress and transforming the meaning into something entirely different for their cultural needs. I find this back and forth to be one of the more interesting aspects of cultural contact.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, the act of observation doesn’t just change the object being observed, it also can change the observer. (Soul Music I think… but maybe Reaper Man… Can’t recall which at the moment.)
Plus, you know, pretty clothes.
So, Lolita, like any good alt-fashion scene, has many sub-genres that are confusing to me, as an outsider. Never the less, I did some research and wanted to so something in the County Lolita sub-genre. If regular Lolita is all about puffy skirts and ruffles, Country Lolita seems to be all about puffy skirts and gingham. Here’s a blog devoted to the style called, Country Lolita and here’s a post about Country Lolita from F Yeah Lolita, a great Lolita blog. (There is not gingham here… I can’t draw it to save my life.)
I wanted to play with the style, but I wouldn’t say my interpretation is strictly accurate. It’s more about seeing what happens when I try something new and the excuse to draw some giant cherries.
Honestly, I think I had mixed success. The yellow skirt has a better shape than the blue skirt. Both the cherry and the apple pattern came out cute and feel bright and country to me, but border prints are super popular it sems and . I wish I had gone with a darker blue to balance out of the pale yellow, but I’m not sure about that. When I look at it, sometimes I like it and sometimes I don’t. I settled on knee socks rater then tights, because I thought they would fit better on the page. I do want to know how you all think I did, so there’s a poll…
[poll id=”6″]
By the way, there is a doll to go with this set. She’ll be up sometime next week.
The other three sets that were draw at the same time as Saucy and Sweet were, in no particular order, Southwest Boho (color and black and white), Simple Sophisticate (color and black and white) and A Bouquet of Florals (color and black and white). Unlike the other three sets, Sweet & Saucy didn’t come right out of the fashion magazines.
She was actually inspired by a Japanese steet fashion known as Decora or sometimes just Harajuku in the USA. Harajuku is actually an neghborhood where street fashion is pretty common, but the more accurate term for the look is, according to my reseach, Decora fashion. Truth be told, these outfits are pretty tame for Decora (examples here). I mean, I never thought I would say that they were tame, but they are.
She also is a nod to some paper dolls I drew in college who all seemed to have pigtails and platform boots. I have no idea why I was so obsessed with that look, but I clearly was. I never dressed that way… well, once, but nothing on this planet will make me tell that story.
Anyway, as far as my paper doll sets go, she’s got a lot of outfit options. With six tops and five bottoms, there’s over 30 outfit combos before the two pairs of shoes double it to sixty and the dress makes sixty two. (Though the sweater doesn’t layer great with the fluffy skirts, so that might be a problem.) Anyway, if you want to get the Decora fashion look than I recommend coloring her in the brightest colors you can find and going for it!
I love fairy tales. I have always loved fairy tales. I have fond memories of, far past the point of being able to read complicated books, sitting in the library reading picture books of fairy tales. I love the lavish illustrations, but I also like reading many different versions of the same story. These days I still like doing that, but now I like learning why and where the different varients of Cinderella or the Twelve Dancing Princesses come from.
Today’s paper doll set is an ode to one of my favorite fairy tales. The Frog Prince or The Princess and the Frog, depending on which version you read. A princess loses her beautiful golden ball down a well and a frog retrieves it for her only if she will marry him. She agrees and then backs out of her promise. The story goes from there.
In the end, I think the moral is supposed to be “keep your promises” or “don’t judge on appearances”, but it could also be, “don’t drop your precious golden ball down a well.”
Disney did an interesting adaption of the tale recently, but I will always picture the Princess how she was drawn by Walter Crane in the Frog Prince. Walter Crane is one of my favorite children’s illustrators. I was inspired by the pseudo-renaissance look for my own paper doll’s costume.
So, there is a frog, a golden ball, and a beautiful gown for the Princess. I am not much an animal artist, but I did my best to make my frog cute and palm sized. I always thought the Princess in the Frog Prince was a little spoiled, but then I suppose that’s just how fairy tales go sometimes.
The name of this paper doll set is “Country Time” and it might be a reference to the fact that her hair is the same color as Country Time lemonade. I hate coming up with titles and refuse to be shamed over where this one came from.
To be entirely honest, this week has been rough. I had to replace my computer’s RAM which was a good thing, since my computer is faster, but taking it into the shop always makes me nervous. I took my baby (aka MacbookPro) to a locally owned Apple place close to my work and, while I ate lunch at a nearby sandwich shop, they replaced my 4 gigs of RAM with a beautiful shiny new 8 gigs of RAM. It literally took less then 30 minutes and now Photoshop doesn’t hate me anymore.
Seriously, Photoshop is the canary in the coal mine of RAM problems.
So, if you were wondering why there wasn’t a Monday paper doll, the answer is “RAM issues”.
But we’re not hear to talk about my computer woes- We’re here to talk about a fabulous curvy, plus-sized paper doll from the Bodacious & Buxom collection.
Country Time is part of my B&B series of curvy paper dolls. Her mix and match wardrobe is designed for layering. The leggings are meant to be worn under the skirts or the dress, so there are about 10 outfit options (12 if you consider the leggings wearable without skirts, but I don’t like to wear leggings bare). I was thinking of woods and country and sort of sweet foresty things when I designed these dresses. I also wanted to stick to a pretty constrained wardrobe of neutral colors to play off her pink hair.
While pink hair was chosen to counter balance the brown and cream color scheme, I was divided between pink hair and pale blue hair, but in the end I decided I liked how the pink hair looked better. I do have a slight “thing” for pink and blue hair, so I have to fight my natural tendency to prefer those two choices over all other strange hair colors.
I really do hope to have another paper doll up this week, so I can keep up with my two paper dolls a week tendency even though I missed Monday.
Today’s Pixie is a fashion paper doll named Nicole with nine different clothing pieces. I created her, because of a reader request.
Back in November, I got a email from a reader who asked if I could name a paper doll either Lynn or Nicole for her. She wanted a paper doll named after herself. Now, originally, she asked for a Mini-Maiden or a Marisole Doll, but I have pretty strict naming patterns for those dolls.
I offered a Pixie instead and she said that she’d be cool with that option.
Today, I am pleased to present the result. A Pixie paper doll named Nicole with some layered tops (as requested). I was sort of obsessing over different bird illustrations for a while and so I decided to adapt some of them into a t-shirt design for Nicole. For those interested, her bird shirt was inspired by the work of Dante Terzigini, Inaluxe and Scott Partridge to name a few.
I love bright color schemes that feel a little unexpected. The orange red and very pale yellow are both acting as my neutrals in this set. She’s my first paper doll with glasses since April Showers in color & black and white back in May of 2014. That’s nearly a year. How embarrassing. I really do have to do more paper dolls with glasses.
Last, but certainly not least, I’d like to remind people that to dress Nicole, you’ll need to cut long her shoulders under her hair. There are cutting diagrams that you can refer to if there are any questions about how to cut out the paper dolls.
While Nicole is a Greek name, I was thinking of a Mexican guy I work with while designing her skintone and hair color.
I’ve been working on developing a backlog of paper doll sets. Lately, I’ve been drawing a lot of Mini-Maiden sets. You can expect to see more of them popping up around here soon.
So, the first set here is part of a series of contemporary fashion paper doll wardrobes I decided to draw. One of reach of the Mini-Maiden base paper dolls. This is Hazel’s “girly” set. Her ladylike style is going to include floral shorts and polkadots. I am very excited about the short choppy hair style.
Next, we have a set for Greta. Inspired by my Weekend Denim paper doll set. While I was working on that paper doll, I was struck by how I tend to lean more towards high fashion. I’m out of the age range where I really follow teen trends, but I’ve been seeing a lot of over sized sweaters and skinny jeans around campus. There are no skirts in this paper doll wardrobe, just like Weekend Denim
Last, but not least, here’s a preview of a paper doll warrior clothes set that I drew. I’ve not yet decided who gets this set. Probably not Faye, since she got to have Runic Adventures last year. I think this might be another Greta paper doll set. Secretly, Greta is my favorite of the Mini-Maidens, but don’t tell the others. They might get jealous.
Aren’t they fun? I am excited about all of them.
I also just finished penciling a set of tudor-era gowns for Marisole Monday & Friends. I’ll share those just as soon as they are inked. I am so excited by them, but I have to confess… 15th century clothing is hard to draw.
One of the fun things about doing contest paper dolls is that I really don’t know what people will ask for and I am often surprised. Truth be told, what I know about the Fallout the computer game is that it is a computer game and apparently there are vaults and radiation. That’s about it. Also jumpsuits.
Never the less, my last contest winner asked for a paper doll based on the Fallout games. Now, I have both ethical and legal concerns about violating other artists copyright, so I wanted to be careful how I borrowed from the source materials. Truthfully, more for ethical reasons than for legal ones.
She wanted her paper doll’s hair to be short and so I did my best to accomodate. I don’t do short hair styles very often, because I think I am not very good at them. Never the less, I wanted to do something fun and sort of spiky. The outfits are based on designs from the Fallout Three wiki. I did a jumpsuit, of course, some power armor and some leather armot at her request. I also did some goggles which, as always with goggles and me, might not stay on the paper doll’s head, so I also did some goggles attached to a scarf, wrap, head-covering thing.
I added a few other mix and match pieces. Quite a few pieces didn’t fit the page, so I had to cut them. They weren’t very exciting (a pair of pants and a shirt), so I don’t feel like it is a great loss. One of these days I may have to do a “bits and pieces” set of all the random stuff I have cut over the years. I just don’t think I have ever cut enough to fit a whole sheet. (I can usually tell early if I have “too much” and then don’t color the offending pieces.)
Jintka also asked for, “Purple hair (more on the bluish side), medium skin color, and bluish-gray eyes, please. :).”
So, the paper doll got that color and then I used mostly muted colors for the clothing. After going back and forth about what “medium” meant for skintone, I decided on using Hex #d4aa78 from my Skin Tone Palette. I liked the yellow undertone against the blue in the purple hair.
Lastly, I wanted to note that this base doll is the same as the base doll I used for my 1300s paper doll set. I remain undecided what I will name her, but here she is again. I think she came out very cute in this set and her short hair has inspired me to try out more short hair styles on my paper dolls.
That’s all the news for Monday! Lemme know what you think of the paper doll set or if you have a name suggestion for my still unnamed paper doll.
This is a totally random collection of stuff. Normally, I try to at least nominally theme these posts. There is no theme here except that htese are all sci-fi or fantasy sets.
This first one is going to be for the Ms. Mannequinn series. I’ve been watching a lot of 1980s sci-fi with my boyfreind lately, so I blame him for this set. Truth be told, I do have a place in my heart for cyberpunk, so this should be a lot of fun.
One of my contest winners from January, Kitrona, asked for a Fallout inspired post-apocolyptic set with some armors and things. Here she is. I have this set colored and should have it up Monday. I haven’t done layout and I suspect not every piece is going to fit on the page. We’ll see how it goes when I get there I suppose.
Last, but not least is this set of two sets of Pixie paper dolls. Both fantasy themed. One is pretty classic fantasy and the other based on Chinese dress of the Han Dynasty. How is that for random?
So, here’s a fun little poll for the weekend… [poll id=”5″]
Today’s printable paper doll is Hazel getting to rock some fantasy gowns. Sometimes I feel odd posting a lot of the same styles of things in a row, as I know I have readers who are into all sorts of different things, but I have certainly been on a fantasy gown drawing kick. Never fear, the March fashion magazines are out and Monday there will be something “completely different.”
That is to say, my other contest winner will get her paper doll set and it is not a fantasy set in the traditional sense.
I suppose in some senses every set is a little bit fantasy. I mean, most of these pieces of clothing, even my contemporary ones, don’t exist in real life. However, I think it is more useful to think in terms of fantasy as a genre. Since I think it helps people find what they might like around here.
Later this week, I’ll show off some of the stuff from my sketchbook (likely tomorrow or Friday) and then Monday there will be a Marisole Monday Post and then I’m not sure what’ll go up next. I have a few different things done.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
