Aelinora and Four Dresses, Free For Christmas!

Liana's Paper Dolls Christmas 2014 Aelinora -- download for free until December 28! An adult female elf paper doll with straight blonde hair and green eyes. She's wearing a light blue dress with a V neck and an empire waist. The sleeves are long and semi-transparent, with silver designs up and down the arms, and the overskirt is open in the front, showing a light blue underskirt bordered with silver scrolls.Merry Christmas, to those who celebrate it; happy end of 2014, to everyone else! I’ve prepared a Christmas paperdoll based on a paperdoll I drew ten years ago: Aelinora, an elvish princess who gets bored of traditional elven Christmas celebrations and sneaks off to work at Santa’s workshop. She has four outfits (the two old ones won’t fit, I’m afraid) plus a little poem. The color and black and white PDFs are available as downloads on Gumroad for $2. It’s thanks to my mom – revisiting Aelinora was her idea.

Aelinora will have a bonus dress and short story available for free — but neither are done yet, so watch this space and I will get them up soon.

I’m excited about 2015 and I hope it brings wonderful things for all of you!


Mouse’s Marriage (ネズミの嫁入り) and my New Year’s resolution

Click for larger version (PNG):page 1, page 2; click for PDF version: page 1, page 2. Click here for the list of dolls.

I drew this for my mom for Christmas, and she gave me permission to post it. I hope you all like it as much as she did! I’m still learning the ins and outs of kimono drawing, so please forgive any inaccuracies. The original Japanese story can be read here: ネズミの嫁入り (Mouse’s Marriage). I’ve been in contact with the maintainer of that site, actually, and she’s given me permission to translate the other stories there, so I plan to do a lot of those in 2011.

Speaking of 2011… Sometimes, people will e-mail me and ask how to draw dolls, and the advice I give is essentially just to keep practicing, using resources like SenshiStock and library books on figure drawing. That makes me feel like a fraud, because I myself am lousy at drawing humans, and it really shows in my dolls. (I’m happy with Ivy for now, but drawing her took days.) I look at the work of some of my internet buddies like Lys, who does this great daily fashion journal and Boots, who draws dolls in really natural, comfortable poses, and I think, wow, if I could draw dynamic poses like that, or if I could draw great faces like that, or if my hands had that much expression… But then, to borrow a phrase from Jane Austen, I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I will not take the trouble of practicing.

I don’t have a great track record with New Year’s resolutions, and I believe last year I had none at all (which, really, I rather enjoyed). But I’m going to try one this year. I resolve to spend 20 minutes each day – or, perhaps, each day I can, let us not raise the bar too high now – sketching people. I know this is one I can do, because actually I have already been doing it off and on for a few weeks now.

Two questions for you all. First, would you like me to post the results of my progress? It might help keep me on the straight and narrow to just scan my sketches and link to them at the end of posts, but I can’t imagine it would be very interesting. (Plus, the idea is slightly frightening – I do these sketches of hands that look more like dead sea anemones, and my pride tells me “better hide those, Liana.”) Second, since I’ll just be using freely available reference and stock images and possibly a book or two from the library, would anyone like to adopt my resolution and join me? I was thinking, if there’s interest from a couple other people, we might set up some sort of blog or forum, pick out the day’s pose, share our sketches and keep each other motivated. It’s just a thought, but if you’re interested, whatever your skill level is, e-mail me or post a comment.

My next post will be on the 4th. Happy New Year!


Regency Teddy Bear, Part 1, Drawn by RLC of Paper Thin Personas, Colored by Liana

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version.

RLC, who runs the awesome paper doll blog Paper Thin Personas, drew this Regency Teddy Bear set to prove that she could do cute. As for me, since I started paperdolling again I just can’t put down the Prismacolors, and I’ve been thinking it would be fun to color this one for some time. (I’ve also had my eye on the Lady of the Manor set…)

There’s a Part 2, as well, so look forward to that! Thanks so much to RLC for letting me post her!


Aelinora the elvish princess from the Paperdoll Blog, Christmas 2004

I drew this paperdoll, Aelinora, in 2004, but she doesn’t show up on the page with all of my old paperdolls because of a mix-up with the tags. That gives me, then, an excuse to post her again! She only has these two outfits, but she is one of my favorites.


Here is her story:

I don’t know too many elvish princesses who have part-time jobs during the holiday season; most of them prefer to do things like contemplate snowflakes, play elvish carols on absurdly delicate harps or linger poetically around frosty forests. Aelinora, it must be confessed, also has a weakness for picturesque frivolity, but more than anything she loves to bring joy to others. Every year since she was ten, she leaves her home somewhere around October and goes to apply for employment at Santa’s workshop. Naively believing she has concealed her identity well, she works feverishly alongside the others, making holiday toys for the world’s children. (Her specialty is designing patterns for stuffed animals; I myself own a stuffed dragon that she designed a few years ago which won her accolades from her peers.) She and the other elves work right up until Christmas Eve, but when it comes time for the pre-Christmas party, she is nowhere to be seen; she is already home, living the life of an elvish princess once more. One can’t miss out on all the snowflake contemplating, you know.

I am thinking about Aelinora because she has a cameo in the story I intended to post while I was on vacation, but I only finished two of the necessary dresses. So she, and that story, may yet show up again.

So, I’m back home, adjusting to Michigan time, and I will start posting new outfits for Sylvia and Iris tomorrow. Thank you for your patience during my vacation!