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!

 

Fan Art Paper Doll

For this last day of January, I have a fan art paper doll to share! I don't create a lot of fan art. Part of that is because I enjoy making my own things. That's not a judgement thing - make whatever resonates with you - but it's just not for me. Second, I'm not a huge pop culture person. I'm just not. I'd be perfectly fine never turning on a TV or attending a movie ever again. My musical taste stalled out around 1998 and very little has been added since then. If not for my kids & husband, I would have no clue about current culture. 

I do, however, like video games.

I'm more of a cozy/exploring and retro kind of gamer. I resisted Minecraft for a long time but my boys dragged me into it. And it's so fun! I often play in peaceful mode because I like exploring, gathering, and building without having a creeper blow me up in a deep dark mine. I have young parents so we had a couple of Atari systems growing up. Also, I've been a Nintendo fan since I first tried it in the late 80s. Super Mario 3 is easily my favorite game ever. I like fun games, not "slaughter monsters" kind of games. All of the men in my house enjoy those and that's fine. Just not for me.

My current cozy go-to game is Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Now before you all come here and tell me that I'm a little late to the party, I know. 2020 was a BIG year for Animal Crossing. My 2020 was a bit busy and I posted literally nothing here in 2021. Life happens. 

Anyway...I asked for a Nintendo Switch Lite for my birthday last year. I was tired of sharing with the kids and I wanted to spend less time on my phone. Sometimes I get stuck in the mud of the internet. It's a problem. In keeping with my goal of being a bit more 1995 and a little less 2025, I've been playing my Nintendo a lot. Like A LOT. Most of it in Animal Crossing.

 That's me! That's my character! AND those are all clothing items from my in-game wardrobe. It's fan art so feel free to print it and play with it but it's for personal use only. If you want to see other fan art from over the years, I have Mabel from Gravity Falls here and here as well as Fiona from Adventure Time. 

Because transparency is really important to me, I want to share how I made this paper doll. I tried drawing this one free-hand but I just could not get it. The sketch is so truly bad that I just cannot share it. It's so far outside of my style that I just couldn't crack it. This was meant to be a fun personal project, not a stressful experience. So I traced parts of this and improvised other parts. I learned so much about how these characters are constructed that I would not have learned without tracing it. Tracing is a tool for learning so that's what I did. I learned. AND I had fun. Honestly, I think I might make it a point to trace other things that are way outside of my style so that I can learn different approaches. 

And that's ok. 

One of my favorite social media personalities right now is Scott Christian Sava. If you aren't familiar with him, go to his YouTube. I also follow him on Instagram. Everything about him is an inspiration but what I love most is that he shares his deepest thoughts about art and the art making process. He's shared videos about how he traces to learn even after decades of making amazing art. Check him out because he's excellent!

Let me know what you think of my fan art Animal Crossing gal! I have loads of fun in-game outfits that would make an excellent second page at some point. And if YOU happen to play Animal Crossing, let's connect! I still need cherries and oranges for my island. My current goal is to get all of the fruits.

  

Goals for 2025

I'm not a New Year's resolution kind of person. In January, I look back at the previous year and come up with some very loose goals. In September, at the beginning of the school year (because some habits NEVER go away...), I reassess. This all makes me sound far more organized than I am! Really, it's just that I need the motivation. Seeing a body of work motivates me to keep working, keep practicing. 

2024 was all about practicing. I'd like to continue with that into 2025. So here are some goal-type aspirations for this year, with scribbles that I made in 2024.

Try Something New

This is a really quick, rough sketch from an image I found at Sketch Daily.

There are so many things I want to try! 

• Urban sketching. I need to get out of my house once in a while! I also want to be the person who does these amazing ten minute sketches while on vacation. Right now, I'm not that at all! 
• New programs and apps. At the end of last year, I started tinkering with InDesign. I pay for that whole stupid and expensive suite of programs so I might as well learn how to use them. I'd also like to look into free or cheap programs because cost should not be a barrier to creativity. Also, paper and pencil is just about as affordable as you can get and I'd like to revisit simple techniques.
• Paper doll how-to books. These have become an odd focus of my very small collection of paper dolls. I love how-to books, tutorials, etc, and I'd like to work through some of those.
• Sewing, maybe. I have some non-standard dolls in my collection and I'd like to learn how to sew for them. I also have all of my grandmother's cross stitching supplies. I'd like to use some of that.

Which brings me to my next goal...

Use It Up

Another quick sketch, based on a sewing pattern cover design

I have SO MANY THINGS! I bet you do, too. I have oil paints, watercolors, gouache paints, brushes, panels, sketchbooks, sheets of watercolor paper, mat board, scrapbook paper, embroidery floss and fabric, apps I've never opened, books I've never read....the list goes on! So before I seek out the dopamine hit of buying new art supplies, I'm going to use them up. I want to stretch this goal out to everything. Do I need a new t-shirt just because I like the graphic? Do I need a new book? What does "need" even mean anymore???

And that ties into my third goal...

Spend Mindfully

Faces I drew from the Sketch Daily site

I like the idea of spending money with intention. I really want to think before I buy something. Maybe it's better to buy a higher quality item that will last longer rather than something quick & cheap. And support creative people! Buy things from small businesses and artisans and creative folks. It's good for them, it's good for me, and we can all feel awesome about it.

Pay It Forward

Close-up of a sketch, also from Sketch Daily

 

I'm incredibly lucky! I get to do what I love every day. I've been able to stay home with my kids and create. It's something I am deeply aware of and I want to share it. My plan is to write more tutorials. My work has improved incredibly since I started this little blog almost thirteen years ago. And it's had its ups and downs! But I'm at a place where the teens need me less and I need to channel that time into something productive.

 

And finally...

 

Create More

An art history book I'm very eager to read!

 

Drawing, painting, and such are definitely on my to-do list. I want to make more beautiful things. More paper dolls, paper doll books, paintings, writing, etc. But I also want to make more time. I want to take the time to hang out with the teens. My oldest is a freshman in high school and my youngest is in 7th grade. They have their own lives but they're still here and I want to hang out with them. My husband and I can finally get out once in a while and I want to make time for that, too. And reading! Yes, I read a lot, but most of it is sci-fi for fun and not anything with substance. I have loads of art history books I've never read. There needs to be time for that, too. 

 

Another sort of miscellaneous goal is to spend more time offline. Social media, doom scrolling, online shopping - it's all been a bit much lately. It's making me feel unproductive and triggers my depression. I'd like 2025 to be more like 1995, where I walked everywhere, always had a book and a sketchbook handy, and had to actually CALL or SEE people.

That's all of it. Five very vague ideas for what I'd like to do in 2025. I know everyone talks about SMART goals - that is WAY more organized than I can handle. Maybe these resonate with you, too. Feel free to share your goals and aspirations!

Wrap-up 2024: Life Drawings

I don't think I've shared any of my life drawings on here before. In April of 2023, I decided to jump back into more "real life" drawing. I'm pretty confident with my digital art and my ability to draw paper dolls has improved a lot, but I really missed drawing from life. 

If you're looking for a paper doll, this post is not it. If you're looking for my art story and the work that goes into my craft, stick around! 

My Bachelor's degree is in Art History, NOT Fine Arts. I studied art in high school and was accepted to an art school. I didn't go. I was more interested in an academic path - what I really wanted was to study art itself and Art History was a natural fit. Art was something I could always make, regardless of my professional path. So I went away to a women's college, studied Art History, and took the occasional art class when it fit in my schedule. 

Until I dropped out at 20.

Sometimes life happens. I left the school I loved, took a couple of years off, and went back to the state university. As much as I loved Art History, I just couldn't devote a huge chunk of time to pursuing my PhD the way I wanted to. I was 25 when I finished my BA and felt like I had to choose between becoming an academic and having a life. While finishing my BA, I started taking art classes again. My professors encouraged my to apply for the MFA. I didn't. I should have. 

Fast forward almost twenty years and two kids later, I decided I wanted more. Sure, the paper dolls are great and that's not going anywhere, but I needed to find out if I could still DRAW. There's a local arts group that is very active, with workshops twice a month including a still life and a clothed model. In 2023, I finally got up the nerve to go.

It's been great! 

There's a mentor there as a guide. He's terrific! The whole community has been so nice and so welcoming. I try to go to every session, but that doesn't always happen. In 2024, I went January through July. With the August convention, my family vacation, other emergencies/obligations, holidays, etc, I just didn't make it there. I managed to go once in November.

Here are some of the things I drew in my workshops. And if you're local to northeastern Massachusetts, check it out. 

 First up are the still life images, from my 9 by 12 sketchbook. My youngest son went to quite a few sessions with me and we drew together so it was easier to work on the still life. This one is oil cans.

Coffee grinder and mug. Not one of my more successful drawings. Lots of issues!

A Chinese horse sculpture and a clay pot. Again, quite a few issues with this one.

This one is ok. Still some wobbly lines and bad measurements but ok. I forget what the fruit was...lemons? And maybe an orange?

Peppers! I got some really great blacks in this one, so much so that there's glare. This one was a lot of fun to work on.

Teapot and egg cup. Kinda meh but I liked drawing the folded fabric. 

Plate, mug, and lemons. I really like how the mug came out here. I should have pushed my values a little bit more but not bad overall.

Tea kettle, lemon, and a plate. This is the same plate as the image above, but it's much more successful. I tried to spread out the values, too, so there are more darks and lights.

  

This was the last session I made it to in November. I really liked the still life setup so I drew it twice. I'm not sure which one I like better. I really went for the darks! 

I didn't draw a lot from the model this year. I prefer to draw female models simply because that's what I want to improve on for my paper dolls. It's not to say that I don't draw men - I do, and it IS helpful - but it doesn't always hold my interest. All of these are pencil on toned paper, and maybe a bit of white charcoal.

I drew this from a distance after I had completed a still life drawing. I couldn't see a lot of detail so I could draw a lot of detail! This is one of my favorite drawings from all of the workshops!

This is another instance of drawing the still life, then jumping into drawing the model. Normally I pack a portable easel and stand up to draw. I just like that method better than looking down at my drawing, then looking up at the model. I didn't come to this session prepared to draw from the model, but she had such a wonderful look that I HAD to get something on paper! 

My favorite model drawing of the year! It isn't perfect but I like the lights and darks, the way the hair falls, the nose is pretty good...there's a lot that went right here. I'm not a strong portrait artist and I'd like to improve. I'll keep working at it until I get there!

Wrap-Up 2024: My Projects

My inspiration this year came in fits & spurts. I didn't have a plan for the blog or a long-term project. I tried to focus on doing things I loved instead of "feeding the blog" - a phrase I'm borrowing from Rachel! If you haven't seen it yet, Rachel has a terrific coloring book available. I grabbed a digital copy and it's full of fun themes. Check it out! 

2024 was a busy year for me but that's not obvious if you only follow the blog. I use my personal Instagram and Facebook to share my art, too, because for me, it's all the same thing. Especially now that the kiddos are teens, I always share my intentions with them and never post something they don't approve. Feel free to follow along on social media if you'd like but be warned, it's family stuff AND art! 

I spent a large part of 2023 attending a local art workshop and that continued in 2024. I just recently realized that I've shared very little of that here so that will be a separate post in the future.

On to the paper dolls! 

2024 started with a wrap-up of 2023 so nothing new there.

In February, I created a Leap Day paper doll.

I've been digging into vintage paper dolls for pose inspiration. This one is based on a Skipper doll from the late 60s. Frogs just seemed like a natural fit for Leap Day. It was mostly created in Procreate with layout, tabs, and text in Photoshop.

The next personal project I tackled was a solar eclipse paper doll.

The total solar eclipse in April covered a large swath of the US. We were outside of totality but it was such a rare & interesting topic that I wanted to commemorate it. This doll was also mostly Procreate with layout, tabs, and text in Photoshop. You can print this or order a print from Paperdoll Review.

Also in April, I came across a paper doll from the early 1900s. I loved the pose. Even though the image I had was very low resolution, it was enough for me to figure out a pose.

Here's an early sketch with the reference image. I love how the hands came together! Hands are tricky!

I don't think I ever actually shared this book on the blog! This was created completely in Procreate and Photoshop. It's one of the few projects where I didn't start with a sketch on paper. Initially, I started this as a fun little experiment one morning while everyone in my house was occupied. My goal was to demonstrate best practices when using references but I got carried away. By the end of the day, I had every page roughed out! It felt so good to be so focused. I threw myself into it, completed it, and sent it over to Jenny. She was thrilled with it! It was the only book of my own that I fully illustrated in 2024. And that's ok. Timeless Beauty of the Teens is available at Paperdoll Review.

If you follow art trends on social media, you might be familiar with MerMay. I'll admit, I've seen the hashtags and art over the years but I didn't know where it started. If you're in the same boat (lol!!), you can find out more on the origins here. I've always wanted to jump in but never found the time. For 2024, I made the time and created a one-page mermaid.

I sketched this one out on paper in a tiny sketchbook. Initially, I thought about rendering it with watercolors but life just got in the way so I worked on it in Procreate. If I can get myself organized, maybe I'll play along with the official MerMay prompts.  

Around the same time, I was working on the Paper Doll Convention souvenirs. 

The theme for the convention was the 1920s. I agreed to work on something with a circus theme. In my research I discovered Lillian Leitzel, a German acrobat who met a tragic end. I came across a circus poster that became the inspiration for the whole set. I've been trying to become a bit more painterly and imperfect in my renderings so that they have a little more life to them. I feel like I'm getting there, especially with this set. The background is one of my favorites and I'm really happy with the layout.

I really try to submit something to Paperdoll Review for every issue. Some themes speak to me more than others. Issue 91with its Colonial theme was one of them! 

For the colonial theme, I knew I wanted something based on New England. It's my home. My family has been here for centuries, since the Colonial era. So I decided on a Pilgrim inspired by Plimouth Patuxet (formerly known as Plimouth Plantation), a living history museum in Massachusetts. It's a great place to visit if you get the opportunity and they've been actively growing their programs to include all perspectives of colonization, not just the English perspective. 

Starting in August, my life got hectic! My plan August was to attend the convention, send my kids ahead on our family vacation, fly home and leave the next day on a roadtrip with my husband to join my kids & my parents in Tennessee. I managed it but it was ROUGH. My plane home from the convention was delayed for hours. I landed at midnight, drove home, slept two hours, and drove 16 hours straight to Gatlinburg. I do not recommend this sort of silliness but if you try it, I hope your companion is as great as my husband was during this whole adventure.

 

When we returned, I decided I wanted to make a Halloween paper doll series. I LOVE Halloween but I didn't have a lot of time to pull this off. I took a black & white flapper that I created for the convention, colored it, and jumped into a vintage style Halloween set. You can check out the whole series here. There are four pages and one of my goals for 2025 is to complete this set and turn it into a book.  

Finally, I have one more project that I wasn't sure I'd pull off but I did! A couple of years ago, I took old art and turned it into a calendar. It was just a whim but folks really loved it. I wanted to make one for 2024 but never got to it. In October of 2024, I drew a doll for a Round Robin project inspired by Betsy McCall and I COULD NOT stop thinking about it! It took on a life of its own. What would a modern-day Betsy McCall be named? What would she wear? What would she do? And that became Emma McKay!

 Emma McKay Everyday is my 2025 calendar project! More than 70 mix-and-match pieces spread over twelve months each with a timely theme and little story. This only came together because Jenny mobilized her team to help me pull this off. Editing, rewriting, tweaking, etc, and it was all worth it. It's available here and will be available for most of the year. Lulu delists calendars automatically as the year comes to an end, so if you want one (or two!), now is the time.

Next week I'll share some of the IRL art I've been working on. It isn't paper dolls but all drawing helps me make better paper dolls!