Tutorial: Shading and Blending with Prismacolors

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls. I draw pretty much everything using Prismacolor pencils, and one thing I’ve intended to do for, well, longer than I might care to admit, is a basic tutorial on how I use them. Now that I’m feeling guilty about having neglected my page for half a year, I’m finally, finally going to show you how I shade my dresses! Let’s get a little music going, that’s crucial. If I get really into drawing I like something I can sing to while I work, but I’m interrupting my work to scan and write the tutorial, so today it’ll be Bound Together, a remix of music from the SNES game Earthbound. (If you want the full following along experience, here’s my favorite track: SnowBound.)

This turned out to be extremely long, so please click “read more” to see the rest!

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Help me search for art theft!

So I wrote earlier about how some instances of people stealing my art had made me feel unmotivated and unhappy, which contributed to my long absence. Most of those incidents are settled now, but there’s one site that so far hasn’t replied to my message about (I hate to drive traffic to them, but oh well) this Flash dress-up game which has uncredited, modified versions of four of my dresses. (Technically, one of them is ripped straight from Freyja’s colored version of a black-and-white dress I drew.) To my surprise, the very next one I clicked on also had uncredited and modified versions of seven of my dresses. (By “modified” I mean “given several sharp thwacks with the ugly stick.” Yes, if there’s one thing Holly’s pink and white gown needed, it was certainly big brown flowers.) It was even titled Original Princess Gowns, as if the creator had hoped to make it as grating as humanly possible.

I’ve looked through that site and the sites that both Flash games are from to see if any more of my art has been ripped off. So far I haven’t found anything but those two, but there are certainly an awful lot of those games. So, if you see anything like that, on that site or others, I would appreciate if you would use this form to tell me about it. (You could e-mail me, but it should be easier to keep track of things this way.)

Anyways, it’s kind of a shame, I like dress-up games like that and I’d like to be able to make them someday…

Update: The first one, Sweet Proposal, was removed from dressupgirl.net. I sent the e-mail about that yesterday, and the one about the “Original Princesses” one today, so we’ll see if they get around to that one too…


I like to share!

Hi everyone,
I released all of my artwork under a Creative Commons license! The upshot is that my drawings are free to share or copy in their original forms, but that they can’t be used by anyone else to make money or be modified in any way. For more information, please read my copyright and reuse page. There’s just been a couple of incidents where people have stolen my work, which makes me feel terrible. (And given that they were late last year, you see how it affects my motivation…)


May Birthday Dress in Green and White with Emerald Brooch and Lilies of the Valley

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

Now all of you born in different months are going to have some words for me, aren’t you? Or maybe some words with me. I don’t know which preposition makes it sound more severe. Well, green is a calming color, right? Look at the pretty green leaves, and the way the chartreuse fades into white on the edges of the fabric (a little more apparent in the original, sadly), and the wispy scroll pattern on the middle green layer. Don’t look, for my sake, at the long gap between this dress and the last one, or the missing blogroll that I never quite got around to putting back up after a server change, or the embarrassing state of my e-mail inbox, or all the increasingly heartwrenching comments on the last post. Green, right? Ooh, green.

Anyways, this is, of course, the May birthday dress… The May birthstone is emerald and the birth flower is lily of the valley, so I couldn’t resist. Plus, I guess I wanted to make something fairly ridiculous, since it’s been a while. I like to remind myself I haven’t forgotten how to use my colored pencils…

I took down the poll, because just thinking about it made me feel like a failure and a disappointment, both of which increase the odds that I’ll let the site go for another three months. I think I’ll probably be happier if I don’t revisit any of the things I never finished for a while. I’m sorry.