Halloween ’10: High Priestess of Paperdoll Halloween (With Bonus Red Version)

Click for larger version (PNG): black, red; click for PDF version: black, red. Click here for the list of dolls.

I don’t know if the other paperdoll bloggers would agree, but to me, Halloween is the supreme paperdoll holiday, so much that the thought of a month of costumes can pull me out of the deepest slump. In my humdrum real life I don’t like to be scared, and I don’t usually even bother slapping together a costume, but for Sylvia, Grace and company I’ve done some of my best work: poison-green masquerade gowns, cute ladybugs, scarecrows with real, entirely fearless crows. So let us celebrate this month together: we’ll enjoy closets full of imaginary costumes and, I hope, a couple of good stories to go along with them. I shall be the High Priestess of Paperdoll Halloween, and sacrifice dozens of Prismacolors to the pencil sharpener! And here is what I might like to wear for such a job, had I but fabric enough and time.

I myself may be a capricious and unstable sort of high priestess, but the patience of the multitudes touches my heart, so I offer a psychedelic sort of red version of today’s outfit as well.

Colors used: black, warm grey 10%, 50%, 70% and 90%, dark umber, sunburst yellow, goldenrod and pumpkin orange.


Blue Empire-Waist Gown

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

Taylor posted that she thought that the purple gown I put up recently seemed to her to represent “air,” with the other aimless color-centric gowns I’ve been doing recently representing other elements. I looked at the comment, then looked back at the dress, and somehow felt anxious: if that’s air, it’s certainly not a windstorm I want to be stuck in. If it is representing an elemental, I suppose it might be Shade from the Mana series… Really I had no such intentions from the start, so I’m not saying this is meant to be air, just as the others weren’t particularly meant to be earth, water, fire and so on (the orange one’s name was purely descriptive); I drew it without a narrative beyond “It’s gonna be blue. Blue, and light, and pretty.” But it is a pleasant idea that these aimless gowns have an underlying theme, unseen to me.

When I look at the five gowns of this type I’ve done, I like them well enough, but they seem to me to reveal a sort of lightly troubled unsettledness, all rough lines and emotions transferred to color. My normal focus is taking its sweet time returning to my fingers, and in the meantime I just get guilty when it’s late and I haven’t done or planned anything, so I just draw whatever comes to mind. It’s reassuring that people seem to like them anyways…

I’m happy, though. It’s good to be here. I’ve written a long post about the move, but not only does it feel more personal than what I usually write for this blog, I also don’t know what kind of paperdoll outfit should go with it. So you may or may not see that, depending on whether or not my normal creativity comes through for me!


Black and White Regency Gown with Flower Lace

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

This is my second black and white regency gown, I know, but I only had an hour between activities to get something drawn and scanned. Regency gowns are so cute, fun to design, easy to draw and popular that they’re like the potato chips of the paperdoll universe. I could do a whole blog of just regency gowns, and it would likely be more popular in certain quarters than my current hodgepodge of video game dresses, random bits of pop culture and mermaids. Oh well, if my aim was only to become popular, I suppose it’s more likely I’d do nothing but dresses inspired by Twilight and Taylor Swift, as the wedding dress and the Love Story dress are currently the two most popular ones I’ve drawn. But that would be quite a different blog, and I would have to be a rather different person, I suppose.

Anyways! I think next week I may very well focus on wedding dresses. I’ll be starting off with a red mermaid wedding gown (which barely won in the poll, with 52% of the vote at the moment — don’t worry, the week after I will return to the sea), so the timing is good. If you have any suggestions for favorite time periods, really interesting wedding dresses for me to look at and so on, feel free to post them in the comments. This poll may or may not influence what I wind up drawing; mostly it’s just because I’m curious.


June Birthday Dress with Rose Lace and Red Underskirt with Pearls

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

My mom’s birthday is today, and if I didn’t do a June birthday dress, well…

June’s flower is the rose, and one of the birthstones is the pearl. It was hard deciding what color of rose to base it on, but in the end I did yellow, pink and white dresses pretty recently.

Sorry for the brief post, I’ve been looking at a computer a little too long today!

The total number of visits my site got between April 1 and 30th was 19,629. That makes Dani’s guess of 19,632 the closest! Congratulations Dani, pick your dress and your colors and let me know your decision!