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.


January Birthday Dress with Red Arabeque Patterned Tunic and Long-Sleeved Underdress with Snowdrops

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

And, for my last post of June, we have… the January birthday dress. Did I ever mention how lucky I am anyone still bothers reading this site? I’m sorry, January birthday people, although you do technically have one January dress for Sylvia. I never liked that one, though. You see the big white band on the red overskirt? There was supposed to be a snowdrop pattern there. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it for some reason. I don’t know if I like this one either, but that’s because the original is so much better than the scan… Oh well. Anyways, all I have to do is April now, and then I can catch up on the rest of the months as they come.

Prismacolors used: French Grey family (dress), Cool Grey family (snowdrops), Black, Kelly Green, Poppy Red, Crimson Red, Crimson Lake, Tuscan Red, Colorless Blender.


Black and White Medieval Gown with Flower Garlands

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

I wanted to play with long sleeves a little more, so that’s where this dress came from. You would have to cut the edge of the sleeve for the hand to fit, but I have confidence my readers or their adult paperdoll providers can figure it out.

I said there was a special contest coming up, and here it is! I use last.fm, a site that provides music recommendations, Internet radio and so on, mostly because I always listen to the radio while I’m working, but also partially because I’m a sucker for little graphs based on what I listen to. I was thinking it would be fun to do some paperdolls based on the music I like listening to, but there’s so much I couldn’t decide what to try.

That’s where you come in! To enter, take a look through my last.fm profile, choose any artist I’ve ever listened to, and post it as a comment. On the 28th, I’ll use a random number generator to pick five comments, and then draw something based in some way on those artists. For example, if one of the winners picked Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, I listen to the Scheherazade suite all the time, so perhaps I’d do something based off of the Arabian Nights, something from the ballet, or maybe something from 1888 when it was composed.

Here’s the rules:
1) Even if you’ve won one of my black-and-white contests, you can enter this one.
2) You can only make one guess, and it has to be on this post.
3) Entries will be accepted until 9 PM EST, June 28th.
4) Yes, Brian, even you can enter.
5) I’ll take suggestions, but I reserve the right to make the final decision on what exactly to draw.


February Birthday Dress with Purple Flower Patterned Tunic and White and Yellow Primroses

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

So this would be… four months late? Forgive me, Sage, EmilyRose, Celestina and the rest of you with birthdays in February. Or think of it this way: the presents are opened, the check from your grandma long since cashed, and yet there remained one unexpected gift!
… Yeah, maybe not. I’ll try to be a little more prompt next year… And I believe I still have January and April to catch up on, but technically Sylvia and Iris already got January and April dresses, so I thought that of the three choices, those months could wait. In any case, February’s birthstone is the amethyst and the birth flower is the primrose, so that led to today’s color choices. Also, trazy, I need to thank you for forcing me outside my comfort zone — that technique of light patterns on a dark background is not too hard (if the light part is done with a dark enough pencil that you can see it) and looks striking. Expect to see it show up a few more times until I get it out of my system!

Well, that was a short contest! To win the contest, someone had to guess one of the ten movies I rated the highest with movielens, and Sofia won already, with her guess of Casablanca. (The other nine: Whisper of the Heart, Vertigo, The Thin Man, Some Like It Hot, Robin Hood (Disney version), Porco Rosso, North by Northwest, Dr. Strangelove and All About Eve.) Congratulations Sofia!