Confession time: I think men’s clothing is boring.
I know I shouldn’t, but I do.
Historically speaking, there’s some neat stuff for men, but right now it’s all trousers and shirts and jeans and shirts and suits and maybe some swim trunks and really… that gets old.
Still, my poll in January (and I, like apparently the candidates for president, take polling seriously) said that what people wanted to see was male paper dolls.
Originally, Ethan here had a girlfriend or just a friend… I shouldn’t make assumptions about my paper doll’s sexual orientation. However, I thought she looked like she’d just been hit with a brick or something, so I decided not to post her or draw her any clothing. She won’t be returning to the blog unless I decide I really feel like it and I doubt it.
Instead, I gave him a some clothing (including a styling Star Trek uniform) and have posted him.
If this were a dating game show, I would describe Mara as a charming young woman with a love of flowers and long walks through the woods. Since this isn’t a dating game show, as far as I know, I think I’ll just stick with saying that Mara is a one page paper doll with a wardrobe of nine pieces that can be mix and matched to make up 18 different combinations.
In case you’re wondering how I got to that number, the calculation looks like this:
((Number of Tops * Number of Bottoms)+ Number of Dresses)*Number of Shoes= Outfit Combinations
It gets a little more complicated if you add in jackets and other layering pieces, but usually it works out well and, of course, it doesn’t consider things like how well the pieces match with each other. Yes, I might be a little OCD to have come up with a formula for calculating paper doll wardrobe options. (Only sort of math I can really imagine doing…)
Later or tomorrow, there will be something fun and new for the first day of Hanukkah (a holiday no one likes to try to spell) which starts tonight at Sunset.
I wanted to play around with bright colors and when I play with bright colors, I like to use a darker skintone on the paper doll. I think it looks lovely with the bright greens, blues, pinks, oranges and purples which make up this set. Colors inspired, I confess by those runt candies. Remember those? I loved Runts when I was a kid.
Candy Coated Couture’s skin tone is the same as Book Loving Princess, so they can share shoes- should you feel the need to give the princess some rocking multi-colored platforms. (Who doesn’t need rocking multi-colored platforms, I ask you?)
There probably won’t be a Dictionary Girls update this week, because I don’t have one ready and I’m traveling on Wednesday to visit family for the holidays, there will, however, be Shadow and Light up on Friday and a one-shot paper doll to make up for the lack of Dictionary Girls.
Technically, it’s just past midnight here in Illinois, but its still Monday in Alaska, so I think she still counts as on time.
When I was a child, the we’d go out for a few weeks each summer and commercially fish for salmon and halibut, so I wanted it to be accurate beyond my own memories. Commercial fishing is some of the most back breaking labor I have ever done. It’s hard work, but you can’t beat the views. When I was 16, I was offered the choice of working for the summer fishing or finding a job.
My mom actually requested this paper doll a few months ago and it took me a while to decide what exactly to include on the sheet (Hi mom!). So, we have Marisole, with coloring as close to a self portrait of me as you’ll ever get on this blog, and she has a wardrobe of proper fishing clothing from her heavy duty dark green rain gear (overalls and a jacket) to her bright orange rubber gloves for baiting hooks and cutting fish. She comes with a small Pacific Halibut (slime not included) and a King Salmon, though neither looks as good as I wanted it too. She also has a gaffhook, a gutting knife and a little green tin of bag balm to wear under her gloves.
The cold storage we sold our fish too was in Hoonah, Alaska and it gave away baseball caps. I still remember my father walking around in his jeans with his bright pink Hoonah Cold Storage cap on his head. I had one for years, but I don’t know what happened to it. So, Marisole has one of those too along with some t-shirts, jeans and long underwear. Most importantly, Marisole has her Xtratuff boots which are a required part of any fisherperson’s wardrobe.
Personally, I think she’s prepared for her adventure.
Edit 3/28/2016: There is now a black and white version of this paper doll. Find it here.
I had realized I hadn’t done a blond Marisole paper doll in a while, so I thought I would do so. I’ve also been working on a Marisole side project which made me realize how few pairs of pants I had ever drawn for the paper doll. To solve both these problems, I offer up and pants wearing blond paper doll. I never said my justifications were entirely logical, I just said they existed.
Maybe it’s because I am in library school, or perhaps simply because I tend to be analytical by nature, but I think a lot about what I could do to improve PTP. So, I made a list and my goal is to try to do these things over the next few weeks months.
1. Post more regularly. (I do think I am improving on this one.) 2. More process content. (Things like the post about inspiration for Curves that I did.) 3. Links to museums and libraries in an organized fashion or maybe posts about historical costume. Is that something people would enjoy? I’m not sure… 4. Tutorials (?) I don’t know what I would do tutorials about, which is part of the problem. 5. Additional access points to the site. I’d like to do some sort of theme and subject based indexing, but I’m not yet quite sure how. Thoughts are ongoing.
That’s my list of things I think the site could use. What would other people ask for if they could?
Update 8/11/2014: This paper doll is now available in black and white for coloring. You can find her here.
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.
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.
Obviously, today’s paper doll is partly named after the orange. One of the fun things about the Pixie paper dolls is picking out color schemes to work with for them. It’s always a blast. I enjoy that part of the creative process even though I don’t think I’m that good with color. I’m learning which I guess is the important thing.
As I suspected she would, Marisole won my poll by a wide margin, but I didn’t get a Curves up last week and I wonder if that skewed my results. I shall have to give it some thought. I was surprised by the large margin that she won by. Half the votes went to Marisole, which is a huge difference.
I wonder why… Anyone care to enlighten me?
Also, since today is Purim (well, technically it began at sunset yesterday, but that’s all right), I thought I would post a paper doll. I openly confess to not being an expert on Ancient Persian dress, though I found no one else seemed to be either. It was one of the most challenging research tasks ever. The result was a paper doll that I think looks pretty, but I don’t think is at all historically accurate. Mary Houston’s Ancient Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian costumes and decorations was published in 1920 and unfortunately doesn’t have much on women’s dress in Persia, but I used her illustrations of a crown for my purposes. I did find some wonderful pictures of Persian Statuary which I used and, of course, there is always Braun & Schneider’s The History of Costume which had several illustrations, unfortunately Braun & Schneider is not a very accurate source of a whole slew of reasons starting with its age (it was published from 1860 to 1880) and it’s target audience of the general public, not scholars. Still, one makes do with what one can find on short notice and I was not going to pull an Edwin Long and make Esther greek. You can, of course, get the printable version of Esther from the Printable paper doll index or here is a PDF of Esther to print.
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.)
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.
Sometimes 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.
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