Holidays

Halloween ’10 Day 6: Blue and White Ghost Costume with Red Ribbon

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

For today, we just have a generic ghost costume. Although, to be sure, no ghost thinks of itself as generic, as you have to have a rather elevated opinion of your own unique grievances to bind yourself to the waking world in such a way. Sketch on a pair of wings, too, and throw away the red ribbon, and voilà! our ghostly friend gains redemption, and perhaps a second year of Halloween usage, as an angel costume.

Would you look at that? I do believe that’s a whole week of nicely colored costumes, plus the robes from the first. I think for now I can call my slump over, don’t you agree?

It is starting to look like we’ll be seeing an outfit from the Good Queen’s heyday, but I can’t help but be a little glad that at the moment fourteen percent of you are as morbid as I am…

poll by twiigs.com

Prismacolors used: French Grey 10%, 30%, 50%, 70%, 90%, Cloud Blue, Blue Violet Lake, Tuscan Red, Crimson Lake, Verithin Dark Brown, colorless blender

Halloween ’10 Day 5: Queen of the Seas

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

As you know I generally have a soft spot for anything flowing and cool-colored, so I wanted to do a generic Queen of the Seas costume this month. If you were wearing this to a party with no particularly picky mythology or history geeks in attendance, you could perhaps call yourself the Queen of Atlantis, but I can’t just go blithely saying something like that somehow.

Lindsey commented on my blue and gold princess gown and said that she’d seen a similar one on Zwinky, but I can’t check it out because I use a Mac; can someone take a screenshot of it and send it to me, please?

The verdict is still out on the Good Queen…

poll by twiigs.com

Prismacolors used: Cool Grey 30%, 70%, 90%, Black, White, Indigo Blue, Denim Blue, Light Cerulean Blue, Sky Blue Light, Marine Green, Jade Green, Tuscan Red, Poppy Red, Pale Vermillion; Verithin Black and Cool Grey 70%; Sakura Soufflé White.

Hallowen ’10 Day 4: White Ballerina Outfit with Pink Roses

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

Olly-olly-oxen-free! You can come out now, I’m not going to be creepy today. I need a dose of pretty after drawing the Twisted Queen’s gown, especially the little red tendril bits. (My husband still can’t quite look at that one — and he’s the one who kills the spiders and watches the scary movies in our household. He asked me while I was drawing this one, “What are you going to do to it today? Make snakes come out of it?” No — just roses. And they don’t even have thorns, much less poisoned ones. No worries.)

Now, mind you, my foray into ballet was long ago and of extremely short duration (I think I made it through one class?) and in any case, in my costumes I don’t strive for accuracy (I actually have a “no research” rule for Octobers, although I keep breaking it), so please forgive me if, as I suspect, the shoes and so on are all wrong.

A commenter asked recently for me to redraw the Good Queen’s blue and white gown without all of that pesky blood. That is a particularly good dress, I think, and I know it’s one of my mom’s favorites so perhaps I really should, but I don’t like redoing old things somehow. I’m certainly not averse to revisiting the Good Queen, though; given the choice I’d rather draw her a new outfit, but I could make an exception to the no-wallowing-in-the-past rule just this once. If I did, should I keep the colors as they are or draw the dress in the colors it was when she was alive? (For it wasn’t blue and white originally: the colors represent her ghostly nature.)

poll by twiigs.com

Prismacolors used: French Grey 10%, 30%, 50%, 70%, Blush Pink, Tuscan Red, Dark Umber, Olive Green, Pale Sage, colorless blender, Verithin Tuscan Red and Olive Green.

Halloween ‘10 Day 3: The Twisted Queen’s Black, Green and Red Gown

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

Now this is more like it, isn’t it, for proper life as an evil queen? This is the kind of thing our sorceress from yesterday generally prefers, so you can see why her inexplicable attachment to yesterday’s dress embarrasses her. (Well, it’s inexplicable to her: I know for a fact that her sister loved shiny ribbons and that particular neckline. But she doesn’t remember her sister anymore.)

She abandoned her flowery princess name shortly after awakening her powers, and she went by quite a few others over the years, but mostly she was called the Twisted Queen, even during the times she wasn’t really ruling much of anything. She liked that nickname, and although she made a point of removing the lips of anyone stupid enough to use it in front of her, she would reflect it in her gowns, her crown, her banner and so on. For it amused her to force the world to find patterns of entrails, of snakes, of ropes in the very hems of her skirts, and to cause every soul who saw her to recall her forbidden nickname.

She wore this gown to a summit held in a distant empire, but in truth she could have gone wearing a clown suit and it wouldn’t have harmed her reputation one bit, for things went wrong — as they so often do around her, on her most unstable days — and she was the only one to survive the meeting. But it’s a shame for no one to appreciate this dress, so she is graciously letting me share it with all of you. You may not actually appreciate it, and even for me, it is just a little too creepy to like… but if I was you I would at least nod and smile.

If you have been following me for a while, you might be wondering if the Twisted Queen was acquainted with the Good Queen. I wonder myself, come to think of it.

Prismacolors used: Black, French Grey 10%, 50%, 70%, 90%, Olive Green, Chartreuse, Yellow Chartreuse, Limepeel, Scarlet Lake, Sunburst Yellow, colorless blender. To be fair, French Grey was the entirely wrong color to use for the armband, and the color was corrected to be more similar to the crown in Photoshop.