December Angel Paper Doll - Day 8

Every December, I create a new paper doll series and one of the goals for that series is always innovation.  What can I learn, what can I do differently with an experimental set that I don't normally do in my "every day" paper dolls.

Today's post looks fairly simple but I tried to tackle some technical challenges.

Right-click to download and print

For today, I created an Egyptian inspired outfit. In part, it's also inspired by images of Isis where she's sometimes depicted with wings.  The dress itself is straightforward, but with the collar and hair I needed to try some new techniques.

In Illustrator, shapes are created using fills and strokes that utilize bezier curves.  I use the term shape to really mean any part of an image not just regular, geometric shapes.  Let's take a look at the collar: to create the collar image, I drew a curved line and applied 3 different stroke styles.  I played around with dashed lines until it looked right. I then expanded my lines and changed to fills of the resulting shapes.  It sounds more complicated than it was and I think it saved me some time overall.

The other thing I want to look at is the hair.  Braids are a pain in Illustrator.  I've followed tutorials for created braids, I've tried creating brushes for braids.  I feel like I've tried everything & I'm still not quite there yet.  For this hair, I wanted a stylized, boxy type of braid like you would see on Egyptian wigs.  I created a brush that worked fairly well.  I still have some kinks to work as as far as creating braids, but it's getting closer!!

Check in again tomorrow -- there's more coming up!