black

Fairy of Illness and Disease in Black and Vile Colors

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I’ve been sick with bronchitis and ear infections since the 13th. As it is now the 23rd, and I am just now getting to the point where I feel better, if I don’t stand up and move around too much, and I may have to go to the doctor again tomorrow if this annoying bubble in my ears doesn’t go away, well, I am a little grumpy about the whole thing. Brian (who caught it from me just in time for Startup Weekend, the poor thing) and I have gone through bottles and bottles of ginger ale and I am quite thoroughly sick of Amy’s no-chicken noodle soup. Worst of all, my classes got reorganized since I was out for so long. I feel depressed and adrift and desperately unhappy, which is hard enough to feel without adding congestion, a persistent cough, ear infections and fatigue.

For Anna I drew a couple of evil fairy outfits when I was feeling down about things, which turned out to be some of my favorites from that series, so I thought it would be therapeutic to draw one for this series too. This fairy spreads illness and disease, and as you can see she is rather less restrained by her clothes than malice or bad luck. She’s quite efficient, beautiful in that consumptive way, and very fond of hideous shades of green. She seems to visit me more often than I would like. Maybe if I picture her and put such energy in her beloved shades of puce and chartreuse it will appease her, and then I can wake up refreshed, breathe deeply and take a nice, long walk.

Marilyn Monroe’s Black Fringed Dress from Some Like It Hot

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So it turns out that Hulu has Some Like It Hot available for free, and I just had to watch it yesterday. Marilyn’s really good dresses have see-through parts, ruling them out for my paperdolls, but I liked this one that she wears near the beginning, even if I’m not quite sure I got the details right.

Iris, African-American Paperdoll with Lavender Wrap Dress

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So, I want to try to do more dolls, and here’s the first product of that! She doesn’t have a name yet, feel free to suggest one. (Edit: Thanks to everyone who suggested a name: I decided on one of Min’s suggestions, Iris.) Her hair is taken from one of Rihanna’s hairstyles, and she’s from the same base as Sylvia, of course, so she should fit most of the outfits I’ve already drawn — there may be some variations between the two, though, so let me know if anything using her REALLY doesn’t fit right.

As always, doing the people is always my weak point… I ought to practice more, I know…

White Dressing Gown with Black Lace and Black Ribbons

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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!