The poll was messing up, so I changed the poll so people choose from a set, instead of writing in an answer. (If you want to write in, just choose the newest mermaid comment.)
Sorry about that to the two of you who already voted — revote, please, I included your answers!
(Brian, I’m not addressing you, just the other two people :P)
edit: forgot to change the link in the silver mermaid entry. Revote please!
Click for larger version; click for the list of dolls.
Before you go on, click here to vote in my new poll, or look underneath the ads on the left-hand side. Either way, VOTE!
Here we have the last of the shiny metal sisters — although I won’t rule out a platinum cousin just yet. (Here’s the copper-tailed sister, and here’s the sister with the golden tail. And don’t forget, you can just hit the “Mermaid Monday” category for all my mermaids.) This mermaid’s tail is silver, and she wears a top made with tattered fabric. You might expect to find more tattered fabric under the sea, but it is actually a design element these days, and not a consequence of water damage. The mermaids use the profits from pearls, coral, sharkskin and rayskin to buy most of their fabric from the elves, who specialize in the delicate, embroidered fabrics that the mermaids adore and have also mastered waterproofing techniques for cloth destined for the seas. The technique has evolved over the years, and now the best fabric treated in this way is still as light and delicate as untreated fabric. It is expensive, of course, but as far as mythological creatures go, mermaids are quite well off; with the exception of their natural predators, they rule the seas and command all the treasure underwater. They also have an amazing pearl-farming setup.
To the mermaid, intentionally tattered clothing such as the shirt the silver-tailed mermaid wears has a sort of romantic, yet melancholy feel. A mermaid waiting for her beloved so long her clothes disintegrate is a common motif, as are the tatters of the martial mermaid battling sharks, or the image of ancient generations of mermaids. This mermaid is part of her kingdom’s Anti-Shark Militia, and she loves to don her favorite frayed shirt for training, her silver tail glinting as she wields her trident.
Click for larger version; click for the list of dolls.
So, I follow For Better or for Worse, even though my husband says “If you don’t like it, why do you read it?” And I don’t know why. I don’t like Anthony. I don’t really like Liz all that much anymore. And when, in a piece of hamfisted foreshadowing, Dee found a boxed 1940s wedding dress found behind a rock in a crawlspace, I didn’t really like that either, especially because it was obvious it would clean up as good as new and that it would fit Liz perfectly. But what the heck, I can suspend emotion and reason to appreciate a good dress, and even if I, like srah, would just as soon see Liz run off at the altar, I can deal with seeing her married there if she is wearing a half-decent gown. And then we saw what that moldy old dress looked like.
I don’t like it. Just look at it, no way it’s a 1940s dress, not with the combination of the neckline and the transparent sleeves. That looks like 1970s to me. See, look at this 1975 pattern illustration. That middle dress looks just like it, with shorter sleeves. (And frankly, if her bridesmaids wore those middle dresses, that would redeem the WHOLE strip for me.) I don’t think it’s really flattering on her, either, I don’t like those sleeves or that huge bustle.
And as I was looking at 1940s and 1970s wedding dresses, I got even more disappointed that hers wasn’t a 1940s dress, and how much fun that would have been to draw, and so I thought, well, I’ll draw one anyways! I based it off of this pattern (and the crown off of this one) and actually, I chose it because I think it would have looked good on Liz — I think the neckline would have suited the way she wears her hair when it’s down, and I think its relative plainness and sleekness suit her better than the heavily beaded and gauzy dress she got. I don’t think she seems to be a very frou-frouy kind of person: she dresses pretty plainly, usually, and doesn’t seem to have a high-maintenance style, so I think that this design works as long as she has her hair down, to offset the straight lines of the dress. I actually did a sketch of her in this dress. I think it works on her pretty well, although if she was actually going out and buying a dress, it probably wouldn’t be this one. But then again, it wouldn’t be the one she got either.
And actually, some of those 1970s dresses are completely awesome, in a half-ironic half-awestruck way. I mean, even if they look dated and a little goofy, I still love the romantic style and ruffles more than I like everything being strapless and sleek these days. Just try and tell me this gal’s wedding wouldn’t have been an absolute delight.. And I rather like this one far on the right, with modified sleeves… and I totally feel like I shouldn’t love the middle one here but I do. I guess I could get behind Liz’s dress if it was her mom’s dress, but 1940s, yeah right.
Click for larger version; click for the list of dolls.
I drew this just to practice drawing lace. You see, my Anna Karenina gown is one of my favorite ever paperdoll outfits, and if Sylvia is ever to have a ballgown that she can wear beside Anna’s black lace gown with pride, I should make sure I can do lace. Sure, she has Margaret Hale’s, but I just didn’t see her as being the type of girl to wear a huge frothy concoction, and so that’s not what I drew for her. I actually forgot how I did Anna’s lace, so I kind of have to relearn it, but it should be easier to do lace well this time, because I bought a set of the Prismacolor Verithin pencils. You’ve been seeing them all over since I first got them: the gold on Ashe’s wedding dress owes a lot to the dark brown, the embroidery for the St. Patrick’s Day outfit is all Verithin, the blue details on the copper mermaid’s top are done with it as well. You wouldn’t really get intense colors with them like you do with the regular ones, but you can do details so much more easily… If I tried to do the black lace with the regular black, I’d have a black pencil about half an inch long left over, after sharpening it every half second. The only problem is that the only Verithin grey I have is warm grey 20%, and that’s too light on its own to do white lace– I need a 30%, or at least a darker one — and I don’t even know where I can buy them individually. So for today, I did black lace instead of white.
Since I couldn’t do white on white with colored ribbons quite the way I wanted it to work out (my original scheme) I wanted this dressing gown to be totally over the top and fabulous. If I was Scarlett O’Hara or Jennifer Lopez, I would buy this and swan around in it all day long. This is as close to “diva” as I really get!
Share
