Studying the (Paper Doll) Masters - Fanny Gray in Color

 Last week I started a study of Fanny Gray, one of the earliest American paper dolls. I started with a pencil sketch, scanned it, and continued in Procreate from there.

The video above shows the 5 or so hours it took to line and color Fanny Gray in Procreate sped up to a 30 second video! One of the things I love about Procreate is that it automatically does this. I know how long I spend on a project and that's pretty great.

Here's the breakdown in photos.

The very first thing I did was distortion and proportion correction in Photoshop. There were a few stylistic changes that I made at this stage, like giving her a prettier face. I also find file setup up is easier in Photoshop. And then it was on to lines. Strong lines make it easier to cut out a paper doll. I also like to do any correcting at the line stage rather than tinkering with the final project. It's just easier. Here, I used a pencil brush to simulate the soft lines of the lithograph. I'll tell you right now, I didn't keep track of the brushes I used as well as I should have! 

I worked my way down the drawing at this point. I started with the hair, then the skin. Each section is on its own layer. For the face, I worked "back" to "front": first, the skin tone, then all of the features on top of that.  As for brushes, I tried to keep to dry media types - pencils, grainy brushes, etc. I really like the pencil and pastel brushes in this set from Design Cuts. (**That isn't an affiliate link or anything - I just really like this set**)
 

 

I continued down the drawing, working on the shawl and dress. I tried to pay attention to the colors and folds of the fabric. It's not obvious in the video, but I often look at my colors and adjust the saturation if the colors look too dull or flat. I did this quite a bit with the browns. Browns are the most difficult colors for me to work with digitally. 

The apron was tough. I'm not totally happy with the lines but it's ok. The basket was tough, too. I roughed in grass for the base instead of the very elaborate farm scene on the original. 

There are five outfits in the Fanny Gray set from 1854. It's a morality story and the clothing reflects this. The outfit with the cloak has Fanny barefoot, down on her luck, and selling matches. I didn't like that very much so in mine, she just gets a nice red cloak. It's all painted on one layer and I played with color and saturation a lot with this. The other outfit I drew has her holding a weird looking cat. Somehow, my cat is even weirder! I still may go back and work on that. As for the other two costumes, I haven't drawn them. Maybe I should! 

Because I needed to feel like this was "complete", I added tabs and laid it all out in Photoshop. This was a fun little exercise and I might try another one!

Studying the (Paper Doll) Masters - Fanny Gray

 I've been in a creative funk for a while. Getting the new office set up has helped a bit, but I'm still just not quite feeling it. It could be the time of year, it could be the chaos of parenting, or any of a zillion other things. 

And that's ok. Sometimes it comes easily, and sometimes it doesn't.  

One thing I've been doing lately is immersing myself in other people's art. I love learning about technique, both traditional and digital. I love watching an artist create something radically different than what I make. And I'm trying to get my spark back a bit, too.

This week, I watched a video by Scott Christian Sava (https://www.youtube.com/@ssavaart). He has such a terrific presentation style. I just love listening to him and watching what he makes! He gave himself a project - create 60 studies of the masters in 60 days. As I was watching it, I thought, I can do THAT! 

I'm going to riff on his idea and "Study the (Paper Doll) Masters)". I won't get to 60 but that's not the point! The point is to create a bunch and see what happens. In my head, I'm thinking 10 or 12 but I'm not sure yet. I'm open to suggestions!! 

Today, I'm sharing my study of Fanny Gray from 1854.

I wanted to start with Fanny Gray because it's an early American paper doll set. Some say it's the first American paper doll set, some disagree. I'm not wearing my Art Historian hat today so I'm not weighing in on that argument. If you want to read a terrific article about Fanny Gray, check out the "Regency Romance" issue of Paperdoll Review Magazine. 

Fanny Gray is a paper doll where you swap the head into each outfit. It's a boxed paper doll set that tells a morality story about a little girl who goes astray and finds her way back to righteousness. Very 19th century! It was created in Boston in 1854, published by Crosby, Nichols & Company. The doll itself is color lithography by Chandler, S. W. & Brother. You can really dig into color lithography here. It's essentially offset printing created by applying color to stone or metal plates and printing each color individually.   

So that's just a tiny bit about Fanny Gray. There's more, of course, but that'll be ok for now.

As for what a "study" is - it's just a fancy art word for "practice". Sometimes artists will create a study for a larger work. Or they'll create a study of another artist's work. It's not the same as copying or forgery or anything like that. A study is a tool for learning about art and applying it. That's my plan here.

 For my study, I started on paper. I was struggling with this, so I scrapped my first drawing and started over. I created a 1 inch grid on tracing paper and laid it over the Fanny Gray image in Paperdoll Review. That helped me sort out some of my proportion issues. In about an hour, I got a to a place where I thought the drawing was ok. It isn't perfect. My plan was to tweak it in Photoshop, mostly because I can. Could I keep drawing it over & over until I liked it? Totally. 

Here's my drawing along with a scan of my reference. I sketch rough and dark! I always have... I can see some obvious issues. First, my face is a little too big. Second, both arms are a little weird. To be fair, the arms on the reference are kind of odd anyway. Also, there's one foot I like and one foot that I don't.

And here are the minor adjustments that I made. I lengthened one arm, shifted the other, and made the face slightly smaller. I also duplicated the foot I liked and plopped it in place. The basket became totally skewed but that's ok. My plan is to take it into Procreate and refine it from there. 

Just as a bit of an aside - sketchbooks are meant to be messy. Not every idea that goes down on paper is perfect of precious. And that is ok. 

I took my sketch into Procreate and created linework. It's a little wonky so I'll likely work on it a little bit more before I add color. I ran out of time to color it but I'll work on that this weekend and post an update next week! 

Any paper doll masters I should put on my list? Feel free to share!

 

The Big Game

 Surprise! I had a few minutes today to create a paper doll set for The Big Game...you know, the one with the copyrighted name?! 

I'm not a big football fan but we'll be watching the game. My husband LOVES football so it'll be fun. Maybe I'll take a minute to cut these out, too. If you'd like different dolls, pick any of the fashion model series and it'll fit. Have fun!

My NEW Studio!!

 Initially, I wanted to post a new paper doll today. That did not happen.

Why?

Because I moved into my new studio!! 

My husband and I bought our house 12 years ago. It was a snowy February when we moved in with our oldest son. The house was built in 1960 and we've been working on it ever since. It had a three season porch off of the family room that got a ton of light but was in rough shape. So I managed with a basement studio that I used in between child care, elder care, etc. And then the pandemic hit. My husband took the basement - he needed it. I facilitated remote school for the kids, working wherever I could. Sometimes the couch, sometimes the kitchen counter. For the last year, I've been at a tiny antique desk. But after about three months, I have my shiny new studio! 

This is how it started. Thin windows with a thin carpet over cement with an ugly ceiling fan. It was not good. 

And this is what it looks like now!! Beautiful (and practical) laminate floor. A cozy chair that was EXACTLY in my budget and PERFECTLY fit in my car. The easel my father built me and the antique drafting table he restored for me. And bookshelves! 

My comfy chair, complete with sketchbook and the remote to my own personal heat pump for heat and air conditioning.

My easel with a long-unfinished painting. This bookshelf is mostly paper dolls and books about art technique. And dolls. I love dolls.

My chaotic workstation. I'm still trying to figure out how to set this up. I have a Surface computer, iPad Pro, an external hard drive, and extra monitor.

This bookshelf is mostly art history and art museum guides. And more dolls.

These are architectural flat files for storing art and prints. My color printer and scanner are on top.

It's really great to have my own space, exactly the way I want it. I've spent the last couple of weeks slowly moving things in from the various nooks & crannies around my house. I still need to put up art & pictures, etc.