Inspiration for today’s printable paper doll includes the Victorian era, gothic fashion, fantasy gowns, and playing with ruffles. I have been practicing my ruffle drawing skills lately and I think I am improving. Maintaining my gothic inspiration, I gave today’s Marisole paper doll piercings and some red hair to set off that purple. (I don’t know how I feel about the skintone though. I’m not totally keen on giving Marisole fair skin.)
There were a few more pieces of clothing for this printable paper doll then could be easily fit on the page, so I lost the title and just sort of went for it. I intended the white dress to be a slip to be worn underneath the other costumes, but, of course, it could also be a sun dress. I’m not totally pleased with how the ruching turned out on the hem of it, but what can you do?
This Marisole Paper Doll came out of the same doodle session as my Tokyo meets Georgia paper doll, though I finished the Tokyo meets Georgia one sooner. I tend to do a lot of thumbnail doodling and then those doodles become paper dolls, but sometimes not until weeks later. Paper doll creation is actually a very slow, multi-stepped process and I am nearly always working on several things at once. I mention all this, because sometimes I think people assume that it’s a “one set” at a time kinda gig when, in truth, I am usually working on five or seven or nine sets at one time and they get finished when I feel like it.
This is mostly because sometimes I feel like drawing, sometimes I feel like coloring and sometimes I feel like doing layout work. (Okay, I never “feel” like doing layout work, but it has gotta be done.)
Perhaps not a perfect system, but it works for me. 🙂
Today’s paper doll is a little gothic and a little steampunk. That’s okay right? It’s not like mixing oil and water or something.
Erin, who won my little Trivia contest from last Monday, wrote me the following description of what she wanted for her custom Marisole paper doll.
I know that I want my doll to be very pale with brown hair… As for style of clothes and what not, I know that I love Victorian and Steampunk style. Belts, buckles, zippers, lace, keys, and corsets. That kind of stuff. I have included a few links as inspiration I guess, but feel free to disregard them. I dislike the color yellow, LOVE red, black and purple, but other than that… I’m not overly picky.
I asked for a little clarification on shades of brown (she said red brown) and exactly what sort of colors for metals she liked and then set to work. Like a deadline, it was oddly liberating to be paper dolling based on someone else’s guidelines. I’ve done other steampunk sets, but this one quickly got a gothic steampunk paper doll flare- I think the color scheme is what pushed it into gothic territory for me. I’ll always think of those as a gothic colors. I do hope she’s pale enough, because outside of doing another vampire paper doll, I couldn’t imagine going paler than this color. I think it reads as “pale” rather than reading as “corpus.”
Since one of my favorite features of Victorian dresses was the fact that women got to wear all sorts of different clothing for different activities, I decided to treat the paper doll as though she was an actual Victorian lady- all be it in an alternative steampunk universe- in need of costumes for the range of standard Victorian lady activities.
Here we go.
The Morning Dress: Morning dresses were always more casual then other costumes. Erin sent me a reference link to this beautiful costume. I loved the colors and the drape. To make it a little more Victorian feeling, I added sleeves. Though technically a morning dress would never be worn outside the house, I added a hat since the reference costume featured one. Also, I like hats.
The Walking Costume: The other set of reference images I got was for a beautiful 1880’s reproduction bustled suit and I confess the early 1880’s when skirts were tight, before the huge bustle emerged is one of my favorite times in Victorian fashion. I made the suit purple (to match the purple/red color scheme), created a totally non-period hat and added some accents in silver and brass.
The Afternoon Dress: Mostly an excuse to draw a wild leather corset (well, I imagine its in leather, I suppose technically it could be any fabric you like), the afternoon dress was inspired by the corsets of 1910. The net/lace overlay was my attempt at lace, though I have mixed feelings about how it turned out. Afternoon dresses were also often visiting costumes, so she had to have a hat.
The Ball Gown: No costume set could be complete with out a ballgown and as I love drawing corsets, no ballgown couldn’t not have a corset top. The far left costume of this fashiion plate inspired the oddly bondage-esque skirt. I got a little carried away with my lock and key motif I think, but I had fun doing it.
As regular readers know, I’m a wee bit obsessed with Victorian inspired costumes. I’ve done two other steampunk/neo-Victorian Marisole paper dolls. There was the slightly candy like one (a lesson in how colors don’t look so bright before I process the images for Web and then seem to get brighter) and a more traditional color scheme.
I will probably do another trivia contest thing next week. So, keep your eyes open for that.
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.
Liana 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.
Today’s paper doll is named after a friend in middle school who always said she was going to leave Juneau and head off into the city down south (when you’re in Alaska, the habit is to call anything outside of the state “South”. It’s a matter of perspective I suppose). Eventually, I think she ended up at college in New York, so I suppose it worked out for her, though I lost track of her since then.
It’s funny how people we’re close with at one point in our lives drift away from us later. I hadn’t thought about Jessica until I was trying to name this paper doll and then for some reason she came back to me. Odd how the mind works.
Coloring the paper dolls is always a bit of a crap shoot. How they show up after converting them into PNG’s is always a bit of a shock. Colors are always more muted. Sometimes I like it, but it can play havoc on skin tone. I think I managed okay with Jessica’s coloring, but I wish the brightness of the coat had converted better. Oh well, I suppose I’ll just have to keep messing with formats.
She’s also the first paper doll to be posted in a vertical print format, not a landscape print format. Just something to remember when you’re printing out the PDF.
Unless, I am suffering from some sort of delusion (which is totally possible) I seem to recall someone asking for a redheaded Marisole. I originally just kept the dusky skin tone I usually use and gave her redhead, but it clashed and looked really bad, so I decided I better change her skintone too. I’ve had a thing for redheads ever sense I saw Anne of Green Gables on television.
Sometimes, I can’t think of anything funny, witting or really happy to write here. I’m having a rough month. Still, there are always pretty paper dolls.
Oh, and this is one of those paper dolls that the websave photoshop feature kinda messed up the color. I do recommend downloading the pdf to get the full bright tones. I need to figure out a way around that… But not tonight.
Edit 1/6/2014: Get a colorable version of this paper doll to print here.
So, I rambled on during the first post for this paper doll about the Pantone color trend books Spring 2010 and Spring 2009, so I will spare you that ramble. As I have said a lot of times, I have some trouble with colors. I think partly because I use the computer to color my dolls online, the colors tend to be hyper saturated and I don’t always like that, so getting to use the Pantone colors was a lot of fun.
Tomorrow, there shall either be steam or snow for Marisole… depending on which one I finish first, I think.
