Fashion Doll - Bold Florals for March, Page 3

Things are getting so much more spring-like here and I love it. The days are a bit longer, mornings are a bit brighter, and we're even getting some green shoots in the backyard. It's been a bit hectic this week - my husband is traveling for work so the kids & I are on our own. Having a second adult makes life SO much easier! I'll have to make sure to tell him that when he gets back....!

I'm keeping with the bold florals again this week and next week. I'm honestly not sure if I'll get anything together for April. I have some deadlines I need to hit and the Morgantown paper doll party is coming up. (Are you going? You can register here or print a form here. I'll be there!) 

I also just bought the newest version of Clip Studio Pro. I'd like to learn a few other programs besides the Adobe suite and share what I learn. I bought a version of Clip Studio Pro ages ago but never really played around with it enough. Gotta make some time to do that! 

Click on the image for full resolution. Feel free to download and print.

While working on this set, I tested the mix & match capabilities with the previous two sets and I'm pretty happy with it. The color scheme is an interesting mix and I like the bold flowers in a variety of shapes and sizes. You can grab the doll page here and the second page here. Let me know what you think of the series!

Updates to Josephine

I rarely go back and look at older work. Partly, it's the cringe factor and partly it's because any time I'm looking back, I'm not moving forward. I probably should once in a while just to make sure I am, in fact, moving forward! This time, I'm looking back through my Josephine files because of a special request to make them more printable.

First, it was fun to re-open all of those files and update the most egregious errors, mostly my terrible tabs! Second, I was working on a Surface Pro at the time, learning how to use that and Photoshop while now I mostly work on an iPad in Procreate. My skill level has definitely improved with more practice AND better equipment! And finally, skimming over the text of each blog post was a bit nostalgic. These were created in 2017, a year that began a really monumental shift in my life. I didn't know it then and that shows in the writing. I'm not sure why I stopped creating for Josephine. Likely the shift in my life or maybe I got bored. Or both. 

Each Josephine post now includes both the original art and the updated pages with a white background. If you'd like it in book form, it's available here with some outfits that are exclusive to the book.  I don't plan on going back through the 13 years of this blog and updating things - it's very time consuming!! Maybe once in a while but this was a very special project at a very interesting point in my life.

Josephine Page 1

Josephine Page 2

Josephine Page 3

Josephine Page 4

Josephine Page 5

Josephine Page 6

Josephine Page 7

Josephine Page 8

Josephine Page 9

Josephine Page 10

Josephine Page 11

Josephine Page 12

Josephine Special Edition

Josephine Page 13

Josephine Page 14

Josephine Page 15

Josephine Page 16

Josephine Page 17

Josephine Page 18

Josephine Page 19

 

 

Fashion Doll - Bold Florals for March, Page 2

I have another page of bold mix and match florals for today. This set is becoming sort of vaguely 60s-ish. That wasn't the intention - there was no real intention - but that's where it's heading. I'm hoping to keep this up for the rest of the month. Not sure what's next after this. You can grab the doll here and everything should mix and match perfectly!

Click on the image for full resolution. Feel free to download and print.

Sometimes I have a plan but I'm finding myself a little less organized lately. Maybe it's the spontaneity of the teens. Lots of last minute rides to outings and such. I do have things in the works: several book ideas, a couple of commissions, etc. I haven't made time for drawing workshops lately, either, because things have just been too hectic. I'm hoping to cook up a series of something for April. There are already jury duty dates and doctor's appointments on the books so we'll see.

 

I'm also getting organized for Morgantown in May! It should be a great time and I and very much looking forward to it.

Fashion Doll - Bold Florals for March

It is somehow the longest and fastest year ever simultaneously. Somehow, it's already March! I now have two teens in my house - my youngest son turned 13 over the weekend. I started this blog just a few months after he was born as a way to keep myself grounded in a sense of not-mom. Now, thirteen years later, I have two teens who are starting to have their own lives, leaving me with a whole different identity crisis! Who am I after kids? How do I fill this time that I suddenly have? Don't worry - I absolutely manage to fill it! 

One of my goals for this year is to post more sets on the blog. These one-page sets or short series help me practice and refine my technique. I have loads of programs I'd like to test out both on the iPad and on my desktop. I've also had questions about workflow and publishing: can I complete the whole process on an iPad, can I complete it all in Procreate, what other apps, etc... So I want to continue experimenting.

Can a paper doll be completed start to finish in Procreate? For me it's a no. I find the selection and move tools to be utterly useless in Procreate. The app simply isn't able to rotate without a serious loss of crispness. It's always pixelated and blurry when I try. I also used vector shapes to create tabs and I just don't think tabs would be as sharp in Procreate.

 

Click on the image for full resolution. Feel free to download and print.

 

Procreate automatically records a time-lapse unless it's toggled off and I thought it would be fun to include that here. My oldest son is taking film at the high school and he's teaching me how to use Premier Pro! In the video you'll see that I used a hair color chart. I grabbed that on Pinterest via DeviantArt.

I really liked the Jester paper doll from last week and I didn't feel like starting over completely. Instead, I changed a few things. I work in layers (a LOT of layers) and that makes changes easy. I kept the pose, the skin color, the shoes, and face pretty much the same. I drew new hair, made the base outfit a mini dress, and changed the eye color using the hue/saturation adjustment tool. All total, it took less than 4 hours to turn this whole doll around, from editing to sketching to coloring to layout. And that includes preparing the patterns in Photoshop for use in Procreate. 

The patterns are from Nadia Grapes and the now defunct Design Cuts site. I think of patterns like this like fabric - sure I COULD design it myself but there are so many beautiful patterns out by artists with much stronger skills than mine for me to buy. And I have TONS and TONS of patterns and brushes and fonts just sitting on my hard drive, begging to be used. 

For the clothing, I let the patterns sort of inform the design. I did, however, come across this fabulous sewing pattern cover and LOVED the pants and short sleeved blouse. 

Anyway, my plan for this month it to add a sheet each week to go with this set. I couldn't come up with a clever title. Maybe you have one to share! Look for another page next week!

Jester Paper Doll in Color

 This is going live a bit later than I would like. My week has been filled to the brim with kid stuff! Initially, I wanted to take about my layer management and how I use that to color, what my workflow is, etc, etc. Yeah, that didn't happen. In fact, I finished coloring and laying this out on Friday morning when I had every intention of having it ready to go last night. 

Having said all of that, it's finished and I wouldn't miss the "kid stuff" for the world!

 Feel free to expand this image to full resolution, right-click to save and print.

I like the doll here quite a bit. Her face is slightly too wide and her eyes might be slightly too big but I can live with both of those things. I think I might just reuse the doll for a new page next week, maybe begin a series! That would be fun...

The colors overall look more dull than I would like. I'd like to go in and push up the saturation a bit to make it all more vivid. The dress is ok. Both the dress and the collar have a tentacle look to them - I need to figure out how to make pointy drapery thingies better. I had the same issue with my 2023 holiday card. Also, I completely hate the shorts. I didn't like them as I was drawing them, then I thought I could save them with some coloring trickery. Nope. Still hate. And that's ok. The beautiful thing about these one-page sets is that I can practice! Practice and failure are the keys to learning and growing.  I am, however, happy with the accidental movement in the torso of the doll due to my poorly drawn pattern! It gives her pose a twist. I do love a happy accident. 

If you have any random themes you'd like to see, just send them my way!

 

Using Paper Doll Templates

 In the post last week, I shared some paper doll templates I'm working on. It's something I've wanted to do for a while. Blank canvases and pages scare me a lot more than they used to and these seemed like a fun way to tackle that. 

This week, I put them to use! One I'm using for a project that isn't quite ready yet. The other is the paper doll at the end of the post. 

After sketching out all of the pose parts, I went into Procreate and lined each part individually. Each arm, leg, etc, was lined and placed on its own layer. It was tedious but didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. Everything needed to align correctly so that I'd have a closed shape at the end of it. Once I lined the sketches, I popped them into Photoshop. 

I'm not a fan of Procreate's selection, move, and rotate tools. No matter what setting I use, the image ends up blurry. If I need to do any of that I either plan on re-drawing it or do it in Photoshop. That's what I did here - instead of re-drawing each arm, I flipped and aligned them in Photoshop.

 

Here are all of the various layer groups, named in a way that made sense to me. I ended up with 27 possible poses because the downward arm has two hand options. 

On the left, all of my layers turned on. On the right, lines are colored to show the separate layers.

I really, really wanted to draw a doll for this week but I had NO inspiration! I've been playing a lot of video games lately (mostly Animal Crossing). My husband just started playing a card game called Balatro and it looked kinda fun so I grabbed the mobile version for me and the kids to try on our phones.  

We're all addicted now. We talk about it at dinner. We discuss runs and strategies. It's an obsession! 

 These are my sons, sitting head to head playing and comparing strategies! 

And it occurred to me that jesters and jokers would make for a fun paper doll. I don't think I've done anything like that before! 

Here's my jester! As always, click on it for full resolution and right-click to save and print. Everything will layer over the dress except for the shorts. I'm not sure I'm crazy about those and may rework that before I color it.

Let me know what you think! I'm hoping to have the color version of this ready for next week...if I can pull myself away from the game....

Paper Doll Templates

I didn't get a chance to post last week. There were quite a few things on my desk that I needed to wrap up and appointments, etc. Life happens! Some of what I worked on was for the upcoming ballet issue of Paperdoll Review. I wasn't sure if I'd pull something together but I did and I'm rather happy with it. Look for it soon if you're a subscriber (and if you aren't, you can check that out here). 

Part of what I want to do this year is draw more. I often find myself paralyzed by the blank page! Starting can be a challenge. I'm fine once I get going but starting...well, it's not always easy. So I decided to look through my Pinterest and how-to books for some inspiration. I love paper doll how-to books! It's a quirky little subsection of my small (but growing!) collection of paper dolls.

One of those how-to books is Pat Stall's "Paper Doll Design". I've seen this in bits and pieces online and was THRILLED to get a copy! There are loads of black & white paper doll examples as well as lessons for creating paper dolls.

I'll dive more into this book at some point but there's one page I really want to look at - the Lazy Designer's Doll.   

I love the multiple pose possibilities and the great faces! This alone is a wonderful jumping off point for anyone who wants to try drawing paper dolls. I wanted something a bit more fashion model, however, so I kept searching.

This is more what I was thinking about. I grabbed this off of Pinterest - there are loads and loads of similar illustrations for inspiration.  

At this point, I grabbed my sketchbook at started drawing. Normally, I like to work from reference but this time, I just drew straight onto the page, partly to see if I still COULD!!

First, I drew a base doll. It's not overly complicated or detailed. This took maybe ten minutes.

 

Next, I placed tracing paper over the base doll and drew a second set of arms along with two more sets of legs. The trick with legs is that one is weight-bearing and the other is not. The weight-bearing leg (in this case, the one on the left/back on the base doll) needs to be fairly straight to indicate support. The other leg can be more flexible. 

I scanned in both my base doll and my tracing paper, then assembled them in Photoshop. If you don't have a scanner, a phone camera should work but there might be a bit of distortion. You could also do all of this on tracing paper or with a light table. If you choose to work these up digitally, pretty much any program would work. I have Photoshop so I used it.

With two sets of arms and three sets of legs, I made six different poses.

If I separate out the arms, I could have even more poses! 

 

I used one sheet of paper, one sheet of tracing paper, a pencil, scanner, and Photoshop to create 12 poses in less than an hour. The actual drawing time was maybe ten or fifteen minutes! Now, instead of having blank page panic, I have 12 poses to start from! There are many more possibilities, too, with more arm and leg poses, different hand positions, faces, etc. 

From here, I'll pop these into Procreate and see what I can come up with for dolls. Check in next week to see the refined templates!