contemporary

Curves: Spots & Dots

When I don’t know what to draw, I tend to fall back on casual contemporary clothing. It’s easy. I usually have plenty of references by looking outside the window or drawing from fashion magazines. Since I didn’t know what to draw tonight, and I was tired after a long day at work, I decided to go with my casual fall back position.

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I have to confess to not being totally happy with them. There is an argument to be made for only ever putting out your very best work, but I’ve never believed it. Part of the point of this blog is to make myself drawn more, so if I only posted my best work, I wouldn’t be posting much. I’ve been drawing for Curves for over two years now and I wonder if perhaps I’m just becoming tired of them. I love the heavily shadowed style and I think its important to have fuller figured paper dolls on the blog, but I won’t deny that they frustrating at times.

Perhaps its time for a Curves version 2.0… I shall have to give it some thought.

Pixie & Puck: Gloria

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I was in middle school in the early 90’s and, being stuck in Alaska, I tended to believe the outside world really was like what I saw on Saved by the Bell (for those of you too young to remember Saved by the Bell, you have missed out on some classic high school tv soap action). Anyway, a big part of that was beach life and the belief, however grossly incorrect, that extremely tanned bleach blonds were both A: very beautiful and B: very common.

Since then, I have come to feel that very tan bleach blonds are A: Asking for skin cancer and B: kinda wonky looking.

Despite this, I felt a need to relive my childhood with this post. There is no better excuse.

On the upside there is a towel and a pink drink and lots of swimsuit pieces.

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.

Curves: Sleepy Time

Sometimes. I forget paper dolls are for children. I know that seems like a “duh” statement. Of course, you might say, paper dolls are for children. But sometimes, despite myself, I still forget. So when people post about how much their children love the paper dolls, it always makes me smile a little. I don’t draw specifically for children. I don’t think of children much, but when I discover some child has been made happy by my paper dolls, it sort of makes me happy.

Sort of happiness via proximity.

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Obviously, today’s Curves is based on my current sort of sleepy, mildly out of it state which seems to be rather par for the course lately. Somehow when I was applying for grad-school people failed to mention that balancing work, school and everything else might be rather hard while also looking for employment. Of course, I love my job (really, I have the best job on earth), I love my classes (mostly) and I don’t have much of a social life (seriously), but it’s all a little overwhelming at times.

So, to provide some distraction, at the moment I have a contest of sorts going on. It’s more like a drawing really.

The Contest

The question is: Which paper doll series on the blog is your favorite and what makes it your favorite? A one word answer will not count, the “why” is very important to me.

The Rules:
1) One answer per person.
2) Contest will run for this week.
3) At the end of the week, I will put the names of everyone who answered into a hat, draw one randomly, and announce the winner on next Monday with the Marisole post.

The Prize: A custom paper doll for a series of your choice- Curves, Marisole, Pixie & Puck or Flora (though Flora has to stay in the Regency Era).

Of course, if you already answered, your name has been added to my word file from which I will extract the winner via a complicated method of dice rolling or name from hat drawing.

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: Dillon

So, I got to have an epic adventure today. I tried to clean my scanner bed. Recently, I have been getting dust marks on my scans and since I’ve never actually cleaned the scanner bed, I decided I should do so.

This is what I learned: Cleaning a scanner bed is scary.

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Maybe I’m just a coward, but I’ve had the same scanner since freshman year of college and while I love my scanner, it’s fairly cranky. I could probably afford a new one by now, but since it still works I don’t see the point in replacing it. Anyway, I was scared of somehow damaging it. After reading all sorts of horror stories on the internet, I finally got up the nerve to spray a little cleaner on my rag and rub it on the bed and then let the bed dry.

Of course, nothing went wrong and the scans are coming out much clearer now. I wonder what I was so worried about. The mind can be a funny thing sometimes, I think.

Today’s paper doll is another Puck paper doll. Someone remarked that his arms are a bit long which is true or his legs are a bit short, I haven’t decided which yet. Now, of course, I must decide if I want to re-draw him and there fore render useless the several other Punk paper dolls I’ve already drawn and scanner for later use or maybe do some other male paper doll. I haven’t decided what to do yet with him.

Oh, and I have a poll.

Pixie: Amelia

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Of all of the Pixie paper dolls I have done over the last few weeks, this is perhaps my favorite. I love how her hair came out and I think she looks fun and cute and interesting. I also think her wardrobe is fairly versatile. All in all, I’m pretty proud of her.

I hate that I don’t have much else to say intelligently about this paper doll, but sometimes all I can offer up is a few sentences. Also, I have papers to write and a custom Marisole Monday to finished (which, though I am only halfway done, is coming out quite nicely I think.)

Marisole Monday: Autumn Chic

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Picking out color schemes is one of the hardest things I do for my paper dolls, but I think it’s very important to make sure each paper doll makes sense. I want it to be colored in such a way that you can combine as many pieces as possible for as many outfits as possible. After all, that is the point of a paper doll isn’t it? I use some tools like The Color Scheme Designer and the Color Schemer Gallery which provides all sorts of color scheme options. I love looking at different color ideas, but I find I come back to the blue, orange, purple schemes a lot. I wear all those colors fairly often in the real world.

So, I’ve also decided to have a contest. Answer the question right and you get a custom Marisole paper doll. Details below:

What is my favorite holiday?

The Rules:
1) One guess per person per day.
2) If no one guesses right by Monday, I’ll give a hint or pick the closest.
3) Anyone who knows me well enough to make a very informed guess, doesn’t get to enter. Sorry guys.

I think that’s everything. And lest you think this is completely random, I assure everyone that I have mentioned the holiday on the blog before, but not in a very obvious way. The prize is a custom Marisole paper doll, so you tell me the hair color, skin color, hair style and basic theme and I’ll draw the paper doll. Of course, it might take me a while since I’m often slow with finishing things.

Good luck 🙂

Edit: The Contest is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered.

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: Sweater Style

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Usually, I come up with a color scheme for a post and then work it into the costumes. There’s almost always something with a pattern which I can use multiple colors in. Addison (one of the Pixie paper dolls) and Marisole: Wings & Petals are both good examples of this principle at work. However, since there wasn’t any pattern on today’s Marisole and no ways I could imagine incorporating a coherent color scheme, I just sort of picked colors that reminded me of winter and went with them.

Winter always makes me happy, because I means I can break out my gray clothing and not feel guilty about it. Of all the neutral colors in the world, gray is my favorite. It has all the features I like about black, but it’s not black. It’s like a delightful lighter better black (which I rather suppose is the definition of gray).

Update 8/11/2014: This paper doll is now available in black and white for coloring. You can find her here.

A Black Paper Doll Named Addison

A black paper doll with a nine piece mix and match wardrobe. She's free to print from paperthinpersonas.com

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addison-exampleSometimes I don’t know what to say about a paper doll. I sort of started drawing Addison with the head- since each Pixie paper doll gets a new head, that’s often where I start- and I knew I wanted her to be a black paper doll with afro-puffs and big earrings. The paper doll’s wardrobe sort of evolved from there. The color palette for her clothing is distinctly fall and autumn oriented which seems fitting for this time of the year. I think it looks warm and cozy. Her striped shirt was confusing as far as which colors and in which order to put them in, but I think it turned out well, though I can’t shake the feeling I messed up the stripes of one of her sleeves.

I, obviously, got bored and ended up playing with her a little- you can see the results of my time wasting on the left with a dressed up version of this Addison paper doll.