So, I know I said these would be up last week (or maybe the week before that), but some things came up and I didn’t get around to it. The irony is that I drew this set last year and it’s been sitting on my desktop waiting to be finished for a while.
I tried to make sure each page of this set was a consistent color scheme, so that each page can be printed and played with alone, along with combining with the other pieces in the set. I walso wanted to play a little with the options of a magnetic set of paper dolls which are different than the options for a non-magnetic set of paper doll. I think magnetic paper dolls have interesting options, but are not the same as paper paper dolls for various reasons.
Somehow, this Marisole paper doll reminded me of trips to the seashore. When I was a child, I remember my family went to Atlantic city for a few weeks one summer. My father’s family is from the East Coast, so the whole group met there. While I remember only vague things from the trip, I recall distinctly walking down the boardwalk with my father and eating black cherry frozen custard which my father would buy for me from a stand on the boardwalk. I still remember how the purple custard was rolled in rainbow sprinkles until they covered it completely.
Every time I eat frozen custard, I think of my father.
Ana asked “how many drafts of any one finished doll do you go through?”
The short answer is that it depends the doll. Dolls are drawn off templates which have seven to twelve drafts. Clothing is lightly penciled and than inked. I don’t usually draft the clothing full-size unless I am having trouble with something and then I do.
There’s also a more detailed long answer. If you want to read it, continue below.
Okay, so here is the detailed version:
I draw paper dolls in stages. The first stage is a doll template. Doll templates evolve over many drafts. Those drafts begin as very very rough and eventually become fairly smooth and detailed. When I was working on the Dictionary Girls, I posted a post where I showed bad scans of the stages of there development.
So, once I have a template, I trace the template and lightly draw it. Than I do a detailed pencil version over than a light penciled version and than I ink that. I took some photos of this a while ago with a set of dresses and you can see them here.
If I screw up a doll, and I often do, it’s in the inking stage usually. So I am always careful not to draw any clothing or anything else until I’ve inked the doll. I draw from templates, so that if I end up hating the doll, I can draw her over again without needed to redraw the body which is the hardest part for me. Plus I can fix things through the power of Photoshop.
So, I went out to the movies tonight and saw “Snow White and the Huntsman” with some friends. I concluded that the Twilight Chick (whose name I had to look up on IMBD) can’t act, that I rather liked Charlize Theron when she’s evil and that the movie was better than Mirror Mirror, but I’ll take the Disney version over either any day. The costumes were pretty beautiful, especially the Evil Queens, but there’s apart where Snow White rides into battle not wearing a helmet- apparently being a princess means you’re immune to concussive head injuries.
So, before I crawl into bed, I should answer a question.
Monica asked: Do you prefer online paper doll research, or real book research? Internet or Library? =]
Well, that’s a kinda complicated question. The answer is: It depends on what I am researching and why.
If I want inspiration for a modern or a fantasy set, than I usually stick to the internet. I use it for looking at clothing websites or checking out the latest designer shows a Style.com. It’s really useful.
If I want historical costume, I usually go to books. I own about a dozen different costume books in my own collection, plus I regularly have at least a dozen checked out from the library. The exception to this are the websites of museums and libraries, which often contain digitized primary source documents or photos of items in their collections. Books are great for context. The internet is great for pictures. Some of my favorite internet resources are linked on my Research Resources page which I just finished updating, though I have some more to add later.
The truth is that I don’t really like staring at a computer while trying to draw and I would much rather have a book open in front of me than a computer screen. Though I usually draw from drafted tumbnails, so even with fantasy costumes, I rarely have a computer open when I am actually drawing.
Today’s printable paper doll is so bright, you might find yourself thinking “Good god, it’s radioactive” and you wouldn’t be wrong. She’s extremely a little eye-watering, I confess, but I had a lot of fun. Like Kandi, I wanted to play with the contrast of bright color to dark skin. Also, once I colored all the clothing and I looked at my Marisole skin tone color palette, I realized that most of them clashed with that obnoxious delightful green color.
Seriously, if there was ever a good post to do in black and white and in color… this was it. I doubt I would have had the gumption to go this bright if I wasn’t going to also post her in black and white.
So, B asked: Are you going to make another set of Flock dolls? It’d be pretty cool to see fairy tales, or maybe cyberpunk!
The short answer is: Yes.
The longer answer is that the next set of Flock paper dolls will be modern and will consist of the six dolls and a over a hundred pieces of clothing. After that I want to do smaller sets, because seriously the whole “hundred” pieces of clothing was a bit much. I have a “noir punk” set in process and a sort of futuristic set as well. Neither is close to being done though and the casual set is very close. As in, I hoping sometime this week or next, close.
I have to say I love the idea of doing something fairy tale inspired… sort of a bad ass Red Ridinghood and Cinderella set… I shall have to think about that more.
Speaking of the Questions, Tuesday is the last day to enter my drawing. I know I said yesterday that I would draw a name on Tuesday, but I realized for it to be open for two weeks it was going to have to go until Tuesday until midnight. I’ll announce the winner Wednesday. Hopefully along with a Dictionary Girls update, but since I don’t have one yet… well… we’ll see.
I’ve been thinking about doing a series of posts about things I wish I knew about paper doll blogging back when I started paper doll blogging… is that something people would be interested in? I mean, it’s not terribly paper doll related.
So, my drawing is still open (will be until Next Tuesday, winner will be announced with the Dictionary Girls post of that week), but I wanted to start answering some of the excellent questions I was asked. Since one of the questions was about Marisole and here is Marisole, it seems fitting to answer that question now.
Dee asked: Where did the original idea [for Marisole] come from, was the first doll based on anyone special.
The answer is yes, she was. Well.. sort of. The first Marisole paper doll was drawn in 2009, according to the note I have scribbled on the original art work, but I never got around to posting her until the site crashed. As a result, she was posted for the new site version in January of 2010 and made her debut.
She is based, vaguely, on Halle Berry in the James Bond movie Die Another Day which is a pretty bad movie. Jinx Johnson, played by Halle, walks out of the water in a tiny orange bikini and a spiky hair cut. The hair was what made me think Marisole looked like Halle. The rest of the paper doll’s features owe their proportions to the Bratz dolls mostly.
Beyond the Jinx Johnson connection, I wanted to do a paper doll that wasn’t white. I’d noticed that there just aren’t a lot of brown skinned paper dolls out there on the internet. (My attempt to collect some African American paper doll printables taught me there still aren’t a lot of them.)
I went utterly cartoony with Marisole because I was self-conscious doing strongly ethnic features. The history of black paper dolls, especially, is full of some remarkably cruel depictions and I wanted to make sure Marisole wasn’t one of them.
It is possible she’s a cruel depiction of compound eyed, huge headed bug people… but that can’t be helped.
Also, making the paper doll cartoony meant she could be any skin tone or style I wanted which is part of why I still like drawing and coloring her after 2 and a-half years. She’s been dark, light, and dead.
Today’s incarnation of Marisole is a fairly standard pseudo-Victorian set whose pieces I couldn’t seem to arrange properly and so lose the title. Oh well… these things happen. I hate coming up with titles anyway. Tune in next week for the color version. It’s going to be… bright.
The thing about this blog is that writing is hard. Drawing is hard too, but somehow less hard then writing. I think it’s because I draw in stages- pencil and then ink and then shade and then scan and then re-size. Sometimes those events occur in a slightly different order, but I always have multiple pieces in multiple stages of work. Yet, writing I find I stare at a white screen and have to think of something to say.
Ideally, something intelligent and nuanced to say… Okay, maybe not nuanced, but at least intelligent. Or coherent. I think I at least get coherent. Usually.
Boots wrote a really wonderful post a few weeks ago about momentum and how hard it is to keep it up. She’s right. When I get into a groove I can prep several paper dolls in a row and schedule them all and feel like I’m getting somewhere and when I’m not in a groove… well… it all takes much longer. Enjoy this pastel spring like Marisole. This paper doll is also available in black and white which I posted last week.
Normally, I do my futuristic, cyber-punky sets in blacks with neons, but I wanted to play around with white as a base color, rather than black.
Since I was using white, the citrus candy colors seemed proper to accent the clothes and the candy colors gave this paper doll her name- Kandi. Her dark skin tone was chosen to contrast with the white and pink scheme. I’m mostly pleased with how she came out, though I have some mixed feelings about the hair. It was originally black with pink highlights and I wonder if perhaps I should have kept it that way.
In the end, I’m fairly pleased with how she turned out. I like her clothes and her hair is okay, though I’m not totally pleased with it.
In my head, Kandi is from the same world Thorne, the Cyborg, Jay and Vera, though perhaps a happier more brightly colored part of that world… maybe the tropics.
Today’s paper doll is new and in black and white. Next week, she’ll be in color. I just don’t have the colored version done yet and I thought I would post a black and white version first. These are all pieces of clothing I found while looking through magazines in the airport. I really love the full skirted dress with the buttons. I would wear it, but then I love those full skirted vintage looking dresses.
So, I disappeared there for a few days. I got busy and then I got overwhelmed and then I got lazy. But life has settled down a little, though I must confess not very much, and I am able to get some time in to work on feeding the blog. The truth is that while classes are over I have a few things to finish before I graduate and then, only then, can I consider myself done. Plus I am moving soon, so that’s another series of problems to worry about.
I saw the James Bond film Quantum of Solace tonight with friends and I had no idea what was going on for most of the film. I was rather disappointed. I really like James Bond, but…. I dunno. It was an odd film.
So… slightly slacker post from me today. I as out of town last week in Alabama and just got back. I prepped this while sitting in the Chicago airport waiting to get on a plane to go home. I posted Beneath the Waves in color last year in June. I found the file and decided to put it up in color. I have been getting more and more requests for paper dolls to color, so here is another one.
I love spring when the rains come and the paper doll blogs are in bloom. Actually, I joke, but I have stumbled across a few new blogs over the last few days. My latest find is called Miss Missy Paper Dolls, slightly unnerving for me since I have a good friend named Missy, never the less, I am enjoying the posts as I work my way through her archive. I recommend her blog to those of us who like such things (and if you don’t like such things, what the heck are you doing here anyhow?).
Happy Earth Day! There’s an Earth and we should be grateful or else we’d not exist. So, I’m glad for that. Beyond that, I try to avoid politics on this little corner of the web. There are other corners of the web for politics. Here is the corner of paper dolls.
Two of my favorite recent paper dolls are Constance and Prudence, who I’ve always thought of as best friends, and so today I present them both in black and white for coloring enjoyment. Each paper doll was meant to have a distinct casual and slightly indie style. Prudence is a little bit vintage and Constance is a little bit tomboy. The t-shirt styles for the Constance paper doll are based on mandala designs which are simplified for the small size.
So, today, I’d like to also call attention to a new blog with some delightful black and white paper dolls called Inflammation Of…, which is about both paper dolls and raising a child with chrons disease. I have had several thank yous sent to me over the years from parents with health issues in their families who like the paper dolls and I always feel very touched that my paper dolls can help in any small way for people in need. Plus there’s a whole set of clothes for her paper dolls inspired by Scoopy-Doo and who isn’t in favor of paper dolls inspired by Scooby-Doo? I loved Scooby-Doo when I was a kid.
(Actually, I still sorta love Scoopy-Doo, but I try to be more of an adult and not admit these things in public.)
