party dresses

Prudence: Paper Doll with an Afro

I really am quite pleased with my paper doll Prudence. Her skin tone, like Kadeem’s and Gabriel’s skin tones, was based on my recent searching around for skin tones on the web.

After a few weeks of looking and collecting, I have over 50 different swatches, but I am working on narrowing that down to a manageable number- probably 10 to 15. The truth is that a lot of them are so close in color, I don’t think there would be a visible difference once they were printed anyway.

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It’s rare I produce a paper doll that I can’t find anything wrong with, but Prudence is pretty close. I lover her glasses and her vintage wardrobe and the color scheme turned out better then I imagined it would. Her hair didn’t come out quite as I had planned it (afro’s are hard to draw), but I’m still pleased with how it looks.

Personally, I would pop her into her cream dress and put her on a date with Kadeem or Gabriel for a night on the town. Or maybe slip her into something more fancy and have her strut down the red carpet (I’m sure Roxanne or Yasmine would be happy to share). In fact, if you don’t like any of those options, there’s a black and white version of Roxanne and you can color any color dress for Prudence that you think she needs.

Curvy Printable Paper Doll Cocktail Dresses

This beautiful sent of cocktail dresses was meant to show off ruching which I have been practicing. I love the combination of the apple green and the strawberry pink, but also wanted to have a more sedate color scheme for the less adventurous among the Dictionary Girls. I am pleased with how both dresses came out, but I sometimes admire the work of other paper doll artists and know I need more practice.

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Lately, I have been very impressed by Siyi Lin an artist from Taiwan, I think. Her work is beautiful and often featured in Haute Doll Magazine. She has both a webpage and a Picasa album which I confess to staring at for far too long. I love her colors and her drape and her faces. I think her paper dolls are done with vectors and that is something I really want to learn how to do. Someday, I’ll have the time to take a class on vector drawing. Yes… I’ll fit that in between my classes, work and job hunting. Not any time soon, I fear, but someday.

But I’m really inspired by her paper dolls of Ann Estelle and Betsy Mccall and I wonder about doing a child paper doll. I’ve played around with them in the past. It would certainly be a paper doll of a doll rather then a real child.

But this brings up a deeper more complicated issue of what should I do with paper dolls that aren’t part of my standard series, and I don’t have an answer. I don’t like the Gallery, but I don’t know what to do with the content I have there and the Short Run dolls were fine, but I haven’t used them in a while. I need to somehow consolidate the paper dolls that are not part of a series under a sort of umbrella category somehow… What do people like more? A gallery approach or something else? Does anyone, but me care? Possibly not.

Roxanne and Irene 2 Paper Dolls in Black and White

I’ve never done a black and white Pixie paper doll before, that I recall and I must confess I’m only doing one now because I’m busy and I needed something to post. I felt a little guilty just posting paper dolls I had already posted in black and white, so I did two of them to make myself feel a little less guilty about recycling material. Besides, sometimes the choice is between something or nothing and I’d rather post something.

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I’ve been terribly busy this weekend prepping for classes that start next week and preparing to travel to Pennsylvania for a wedding. I’ll be out of town for a few days. The blog should post on it’s own without me (assuming I get done what I need to get done to make that happen), but there might be a slight hiatus while I travel.

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{Click Here for a PDF of Roxanne to Print} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Roxanne to Print} {Click Here for The Rest of this Series}

I enjoy weddings, though I was never one of those people who dreamed about my own wedding day. I never caught the “wedding fever” so common to young girls. I did have a wedding Barbie doll, as I recall, but I think she spent most of her time either fighting monsters or going to balls in her pretty white dress.

Pixie & Puck: Roxanne

The purple paper doll dress was based on Natalie Portman’s Oscar gown, though truth be told I don’t think I did a very good job on it. I was drawing it without reference images which always means I’m a little less accurate then I would like. Liana did a wonderful version during the night of the Oscars. I recommend it highly. It’s looks much better then mine.

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I’ve mentioned in the past that I can always tell when I’m drawing on auto-pilot and this is a set I drew when I wasn’t really prepped for. I didn’t have any reference images, or thumbnails, I was just kinda winging it. Personally, I think it’s weaker for the lack of prep work. I always draw better when I have something (thumbnail doodle or photo reference) to work from.

On a semi-unrelated note, I love paper dolls with fronts and backs like these ones from 1935. I wish I had the paper engineering skills to draw some of them on my own.

Also, I have a poll in the sidebar. The future of Curves 2.0 is in your hands.

Pixie: Valentina

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day when we celebrate the death of a saint, by buying chocolate and paper hearts. I’ve had a rather bad history of horrible Valentine’s days, but I am trying to not let that get me down this year. Here we have Valentina with her red, white and black attire.

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In other news, it seems like a contest would be a good idea, so I’ll have to think of something to do which is contest like. I have a few ideas. It will be something casual, believe me. I’m also excited to say there will be something totally new next Sunday and it’s very exciting.

Okay, well, I’m excited. It’s possible no one else cares.

In the mean time, enjoy Valentina and on Monday there will be a Valentines Day themed Marisole. Oh, the hearts and the pink and the bows…. (It’s nearly terrifying.)

Pixie: Yasmine

When I don’t know what to draw for printable paper dolls, I tend to draw formal dresses. I think because formal dresses take up space (I don’t need a lot of them) and I can just kinda be random (which is nice). So, here we have a formal gown sort of post.

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The name “Yasmine” is Arabic/Persian and was later adapted into Jasmine. I’ve always liked it. She’s kinda inspired by this Bollywood film Dil To Pagal Hai (The heart is Crazy) which stars the beautiful Karisma Kapoor who (like our paper doll) has the most amazing green eyes. That’s all I got about that. The only relation to the film, by the way, is that the paper doll and one of the actresses both have green eyes. Anything deeper is just… um… not there.

Modern Girl: Marisole Monday Printable Paper Doll

ne of the challenges of drawing clothing for the Marisole paper doll is to make sure things seem to fit together thematically. It’s easy to do when the theme is zombie or fantasy or steampunk, but it is harder when I’m dealing with contemporary clothing. So, I try to do it with color. By making sure I use a consistant set of colors throughout the paper doll, I can make it look like an actual set of clothing that a person might own… if, you know, they were the most color organized person on the planet.

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paperdoll-tailored-miniLiana has written before about how when she is paper dolling everything seems to fall into “paper doll” form. I find the same thing is true for me. When I am in the midst of thinking in terms of paper dolls clothing, everything I see becomes me wondering if I could draw it. I love the fall and spring when the big name fashion houses are putting out their new collections. Magazines are always full of clothing, so I can pick up one or two and sit on my couch looking for ideas.

As with last week’s Marisole paper doll, I ended up playing with the paper doll a little. I shouldn’t make a habit of it, because it just creates more work for me. And more work is not what I need when I’m trying to keep this site up and running. Still, it is fun to play when I have time. I’m fairly excited about this Marisole paper doll, because I think I finally got a caucasian skin tone I like which is fairly exciting. Skin tones are very difficult. I want them to be the same, so the dolls can share shoes among each other, but I also want to like the skin-tones.

Truly Trudy: A Comic Inspired Paper Doll Coloring Sheet

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Truly Trudy is based on the classic comic paper dolls of the fifties like this butterfly basedKaty Keene from Marge8’s Blog. Katy Keene had lots of friends who got paper dolls too. I never read the Katy Keene comics since they were a bit before my time, but I do remember reading Archie and Veronica on commercial fishing trips and trading the comics back and forth with my sister.

The Paper Collector also has a bunch of these old newspaper and comic paper dolls including Katy Keene And the newspaper paper dolls Mopsy Modes or Boots or Brenda Starr by Dale Messick who was the first women syndicated cartoonist.

Though I’m not totally pleased with everything about Trudy, I do think there are some strong points. Her pose is perfectly comic book, though I don’t know if she’s busty enough to really have that fifties pin up look. Her face I feel mixed about. I don’t really draw open mouths very often and this is really why. She was a bit of an experiment and is one I may come back too another time.

Jessica: City Girl The Sequel- Paper Doll Clothing to Print

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As sometimes happens, I can’t think of anything to really say about this paper doll. It’s the second page of the Jessica set and there will be one more. I’m fond of the teal dress, because I still like the bodice. Many of the pieces came directly from fashion magazines- the blue dress is one case- but some don’t and I think over all that weakens the paper doll. I wish I’d done either everything high fashion or kept it all more casual.