asian paper dolls

Curves 2.0 Meet Chiharu

I debated long and hard what to name this paper doll. I had a friend in high-school who was Japanese American named Claire, and I almost named the paper doll (with whom she shares really no resemblance) Claire, but then I decided I wanted to actually try to find a name with Asian origins which started with C. I wanted it to be a fairly common name and I didn’t care if it was Chinese or Korean or Japanese or really from anywhere else.

Being as I know nothing about traditional naming practices of pretty much any Asian country and being as I didn’t really feel like learning them, I ended up pawing around baby name sites looking for something I could pronounce and which was not hyper unusual. I don’t know how common this name is, but based on the fact that several actresses in Hong Kong have it, I think it can’t be that unusual. (Thank you, Wikipedia.)

dictionary-girls-paper-dolls-chiharu {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 More Dolls to Dress}

There will be another paper doll next week and then some costumes to dress them both in. Once I have a few more dolls, I’ll do more clothing. I just wanted to have a range of different dolls for dressing up. I’ve written before about the large number of child development studies which have been done about the need for children to see themselves reflected in their toys. While I don’t usually think much about children when I’m working on paper dolls, I do try to have many different skin tones and hair colors and combinations, so that almost any child could be given a paper doll that looked like them. Plus it keeps me amused. I’m always divided between the desire to have a bunch of different skin tones and the practical need to create mix and match clothing options. The biggest issue is shoes which often show some skin and then can only be worn by paper dolls who have the same color skin as the skin shown in the shoes.

Some people worry about world hunger, I worry about paper doll shoes.

Pixie & Puck: Alexa

pixie-alexa

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I am crazy busy getting ready for classes. I have nothing intelligent to say about this paper doll. Enjoy her. Play with her. Cut her out. Get her married. Take her home to meet your Mother… (Okay, maybe not the meeting your Mother thing, cause that could be kinda creepy)

Anyway, the point is to enjoy her.

On a quasi related note, I really do like how her hair came out. I am less sure about her dresses, but I think the hair makes up for it. I’ve been wanting to do a darker skinned Asian doll for a while. Her coloring is based on a lovely visiting Chinese student who was in my courses with me last year. We did a project together during which we both brought food to group meetings. I brought oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and she brought the most wonderful meat filled dumplings. As I recall, she was somewhat suspicious of our insistence that we dip the cookies in milk. I guess it’s not something they do in China.

Pixie & Puck: Blossom and Pavall

Blossom is not named after the show from the 80’s, though after I mentioned what I was going to call the paper doll my friend commented about that and I almost renamed her. I can’t really say why I named her Blossom, except that she looked like a Blossom to me. I suppose that answer will have to do. Her costumes were inspired by anime costumes, more then anything else. Several of my good friends are heavily into anime, though I openly confess to not being much of a fan. I do like the outfits though.

blossom-asian-paper-doll

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I have been thinking a lot about process lately and about ways to make this blog about more then just the paper dolls I post every few days, so I thought I would also scan the thumbnail doodles that became these costumes. As you might notice, there are some differences between the finished product and the draft. PallavtheElfThat’s fairly common for me. I tend to change things as I am working on them. My only frustrating with this paper doll was the color schemes for the dresses. I went through several dozen and I am still not sure I like all of them. Maybe I’ll published a black and white version as well… Something to think about.

Also, I am very excited to present two paper dolls today. Along with Blossom, there is a version of the Puck paper doll done by Toni L.A. Cross, www.thinkinlikegavroche.wordpress.com, with a much different chin and a quirky expression. He’s an elf and his name is Pavell which is apparently Sanskrit and I think he’s wonderful and very inspired. I especially like what was done with his hand, so he could hold the bow. I want to thank Toni for kindly letting me share him with all of you. It was really fun for me to see what someone else had done based on my work and quite flattering.

Marisole Monday: Enchanting Evening

It’s 90 degrees here today and while I’m enjoying my day off, I do wish it wasn’t quite so hot. I spent most of the day roasting in my apartment debating turning on my air conditioner- I am glad I eventually did- and working on this post.

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I could have done it yesterday and had it up by midnight, but I decided to go to a friend’s house and play board games and eat burgers. I do not regret this decision. I did have my sketch book with me which caused the following conversation.

Random guy: What are you drawing?
Me: Paper dolls.
Random guy: Long awkward pause.

I love that pause. 🙂

In other news, Paper Doll Garden is a new paper doll blog I found (Okay, new to me, it’s actually been around for a while) and the art is very good, plus there are males. Males, I tell you. This is highly exciting to me. I do wish she’d post in larger images as well as PDFs since I don’t usually print out, I just like to look. Though there was a time when I only had PDFs on the site, so I won’t judge too loudly.

I love her watercolor based style and I wish her much luck with her blog. The more paper doll bloggers the better, I say. Speaking of paper doll bloggers, if you have a blog of any kind, paper doll or otherwise, please comment and let me know. I’m always looking for new paper doll or paper doll related blogs.

Also, I have a poll as many of you know. It can be found on the sidebar. Is sticking a poll about my blog schedule on a late post ironic or just amusing?

Edit (10/7/2013): I just posted this paper doll set in black and white, so if you want to color her- now you can!

Marisole Monday: Streets of China

So, I hope you’ll forgive me Monica for the tardiness of this post. Monica won my last contest/drawing and asked for a Chinese girl paper doll wearing street-fashion from China. This caused a fairly long series of internet searches during which I attempted to figure out what the heck Chinese street fashion looked like anyhow. I feel rather bad because Monica was kind enough to send me some more reference images after her first set, but by that time I had already scanned and colored this paper doll, so they will have to wait for a sequel.

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So, the inspirational images for this post included these. The fluffy green skirt was inspired by a picture of a pink one. More obviously, the red coat was based on this image. And then I decided to make some obnoxiously bright pants which came from another image from flicker. Of course, since I didn’t bookmark all the images I ended up using, I don’t have as many as I used, but those are a few of my inspirational shots. There are plenty of other Marisole posts which include items that could be added to this set to expand the paper dolls wardrobe. Sweater Style has some neat boots that would go well with today’s set and the sweet version of the retro pin-up set has some short white shorts that would layer well over the black leggings and pretty much all of Modern Girl would work as well, though it’s a little bright in some respects.

As I mentioned yesterday, the blog is obviously being reformatted as we speak. I just have to ask people to be patient while I get things looking at least decent and get everything relinked and some images which were lost when I lost my formatting reloaded. Be patient with me and promise I will get it all done eventually.

Edit: I just noticed that I used an apostrophe wrong and now I am entirely embarrassed. At some point, I will fix this.

Pixie & Puck: Delia

I wanted to do a set based on winter clothing, but I liked the idea of playing with color. Rather then doing the traditional color scheme, I wanted to do something in pastels and spring colors.

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It’s slowly becoming spring here in the mid-west. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the idea of seasonal change happening so rapidly. It seems like only a few days ago I needed my hat, gloves and boots to go out and now I can wander around in jeans and a sweater. It’s nice to be coat free, but I always liked the winter, so I shall miss it.

And since it’s supposed to snow tomorrow, I doubt I will miss it for long. 🙂

Puck: Jian

It’s a MAN! Well…sort of. The following conversation may have occurred.

Me: Look. I’m trying a guy paper doll.
My Male Friend: That’s a guy?
Me: Yes.
My Male Friend: He’s kinda girly.
Me glaring.
My Male Friend: But his clothing is cool…
Me: Uhuh… keep back peddling. Then we’ll talk.

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So, I redrew him, edited him and gave him manly strong man arms. He might not be like… the ultimate in masculinity, but considering I haven’t even tried to draw a guy paper doll in… um… seven years? Since high school anyway, I’m fairly okay with how he turned out. I agree his pose doesn’t scream MALE, but I wanted him to go with the Pixie dolls and match them to some degree. He’s like a male Pixie paper doll.

And my critical guy friend made up for his criticisms by suggesting the name Puck for the series.

This all began because I got a very sweet email asking for a paper doll for her son who wanted a boy paper doll. And since this year is about be trying new things with my paper dolls, I decided to go for it. My plan is to do one per month for the year, though I have to confess that most guys I know just wear jeans and t-shirts. It’s making for really boring paper doll clothing drawing, hence the steampunk paper doll.

Pixie: Belladonna

A gothic fairy paper doll with a 12 piece wardrobe from paperthinpersonas.com.

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Last year, one of my most common search terms was “Gothic Fairies” and I felt rather bad about this since I didn’t have any on the site. So, at least now there is a slightly gothic fairy paper doll available for anyone whose looking for a gothic fairy paper doll. Actually, I wasn’t totally sure what a Gothic fairy paper doll was, but my research (google image search) suggests layers of torn garments and pale skin seem to be requirements of the gothic fairy look. I rather think she needs wings, but I don’t know how to add them, so that might be a later addition to the set.

The paper doll is rather a companion to Flora (not to be confused with my wooden doll named Flora. Apparently, I like the name Flora…), who is my other fairy paper doll. I don’t usually draw fairies, but they were fun.

And there’s a poll.

Pixie: Zoe

It’s the New Year.

Time for changes, adventure, excitement and a brand new paper doll series. Yay.

pixie-paper-doll-zoe-150

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The Pixie paper dolls will go up every Sunday. They are, obviously, full color printable paper dolls inspired partly by Marisole and partly by the desire for another full color series. There will also be a few other major changes for the new year, but we’ll get to those as we do. I don’t want to say things and then have them not happen.

Unlike Marisole (whose hair is redrawn each time but nothing else is), the Pixie’s have their whole heads changed each time and this lets me play with characters and expressions and things in ways I can’t really with Marisole (well, I could, but I don’t cause it feels weird).

The first of the new paper doll series is Zoe. Zoe is named for a girl who I played with when I was in middle school. Since I live in graduate and international housing, the paper doll was also inspired by a Chinese girl who sat across from me in class for a semester. I really doubt she knew I was examining her face for future paper doll fodder or even noticed. The resulting doll looks nothing like her, but the early doodles did give me the confidence to try to draw epicanthic fold (I think it’s called) on a paper doll.

On Campus: Another Printable Paper Doll

Curves on Campus paper doll

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So, I’m kinda late here… okay… really late, but it’s still technically the third. As you might notice, I re-did the layout on the Curves dolls. I decided that I didn’t like how the layout looked and so I changed it. The old layout was too formal for how I thought of the Curves paper dolls. The paper dolls were inspired by people I knew who were unique funky and beautiful- but above all fun and interesting. The old layout too formal, so… I changed it.

And it make the paper dolls a little later then I had planned. I’m okay with this. The new Curves layout will be like this with a new doll for each set of paper dolls.

Unless I get really tried of drawing them… Cause you know, I am kinda fickle.