flowers

Grey Kimono with Floating White Camellia Pattern Inspired by Sanjuro, plus bonus Black and White Kimono

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Click for larger version (PNG):grey kimono, black and white kimono; click for PDF version: grey kimono, black and white kimono. Click here for the list of dolls.

Brian and I signed up for Netflix again recently. We had it a few years back, but canceled our subscription when we both went to grad school and then when he started his own business, leaving us little time to see each other let alone watch movies together. Now, with more reasonable work schedules, we’re merrily filling up our queues again — although I think I got up to around 300 movies in my queue last time, and I’m trying to be more restrained this time around.

The last movie I got was Sanjuro, a samurai movie directed by Akira Kurosawa, and I asked Brian if he wanted to watch it with me. “It’s not going to be like that other one, is it?” he replied. “That other one” would be Rashomon, which we went to see last year; Brian had never seen it before, so he went into it expecting some fun sword fights presented from different perspectives. After he crawled out of the theater, he was despondent about the human condition for a full week. “I don’t remember the description too well, but I think this one’s supposed to be funny,” I replied, a little hesitantly, thinking that I really shouldn’t be so impulsive with that shiny “Add” button.

Luckily, I was right: I think Sanjuro is the funniest samurai movie I’ve ever seen, although it’s hardly a comedy. Toshirō Mifune plays a wandering samurai who lends his expertise – less out of pity than from exasperation at their incompetence – to nine young samurai trying to save their clan leader from being framed for corruption. I don’t like to give too much away, so if you like samurai movies, see if you can find this one somewhere.

I’ve taken a stab at drawing a kimono here – my first one, and it sure does show, so if you know more about kimono than I do, please forgive me. I have a passing acquaintance with the various kimono rules and guidelines, but I’m no expert yet, so rather than a formal kimono I was aiming for a more casual and stylish look. (It might help to know I’m a big fan of CHOKOとチョコと, Mamechiyo — just try to tell me this isn’t awesome — and so on) The main design is a reference to the climactic scene in the movie, where the signal to attack is a mass of camellias floating down a stream. Now, camellias are apparently a rare design for kimonos, because the entire flower drops off the plant at once, instead of petal by petal; this was thought to be evocative of beheading, and therefore not the kind of imagery you wanted all over your sleeves. My design is intended to reference the movie, so I will not worry about emblematic misfortune. (But, should your doll accidentally get her head ripped off, she’s in a better position than a samurai — just print her out again.) Incidentally, the white thing on the obi (the sash around the waist) is the sail of a boat – I didn’t position it right, and it’s covered up by the obijime (the yellow cord). Since you can’t see the back of the obi, you have to imagine that the large, flat knot at the back has a pattern with two more boats on it, for a total of three boats. That would be a not-so-subtle reference to the actor Toshirō Mifune, whose family name 三船 literally means “three boats.”

Since I missed Saturday, I’m adding a bonus today, a black and white kimono. Kimono are all about the patterns and colors, so I thought it would be much easier to draw kimono if I could just have a coloring-book style page to test colors on. I’ve been reading about kimono for many months now: the problem is that I’m familiar enough with them to know all the many ways in which I could get things wrong. If I draw a French court gown in colors that weren’t popular back then, or a 1920s skirt with a hemline a couple inches off, it doesn’t bother me, but somehow kimono are really intimidating. But now I’ve gotten over this first hurdle, I’m going to try some more designs!

By the way, there are a couple new paper doll blogs for you to enjoy: …. Of Paper Dolls…. and Kat’s Paper Doll Emporium. Check them out and leave nice comments! Don’t miss the other delightful paper doll blogs, either – there’s a handy list of them to the right.

Prismacolors used: Cool Grey 10%, 20%, 30%, 50%, 70%, Sandbar Brown, Aquamarine, Light Aqua, Indigo Blue, Blue Lake, Powder Blue, Black, Sunburst Yellow, Goldenrod, Tuscan Red, Crimson Red, Dark Umber and Light Umber, Verithin Black, Sakura Souffle White Gel Pen

November Birthday Gown with Chrysanthemums and Topazes in Orange and White, and an announcement

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

If I get distracted and don’t update, eventually people start to worry if I’m ever coming back. This makes me smile. I call drawing paper dolls a “hobby,” but it seems to have more in common with a curse. When I’m on my deathbed, I’ll probably be drawing the outfit I’ll be buried in — or maybe the one I wish I was being buried in, which will have 90% more pearls.

That said, trying to post something almost every day has obviously come to be untenable. If I’m just coming up with an outfit, it takes from five minutes to an hour to decide what I want to draw and what it will look like, and if I’m researching something like a particular year’s fashions, it might take an hour or two to get a sense of what the styles were like, then that five minutes to an hour again to come up with an original drawing. The time I spend drawing has increased over the years, easily hitting three hours for something with a lot of detail, and then there’s the time involved in scanning, cleaning up and writing a post – an hour, maybe two depending on the post. My job is part-time and the hours vary wildly, so sometimes it’s actually not all that unreasonable for me to take that kind of time working on something, and then just as often I get scheduled for a lot of hours and feel busy again.

Besides the actual work involved, a lot of other factors come into play: do I have a great idea or am I feeling really uninspired? Is there something else I’m really involved in at the moment? Have I put off drawing until it’s fairly late? Would the thing I want to draw take a long time to research? If, after work and chores, I only have time for one interesting activity, do I really want it to be paperdolls? Are my Prismacolors organized, or are all my blues rolling around my desk drawer because I stole one of my plastic bags I use to sort them for a trip through airline security? Do I much feel like sharing myself with the world today, or am I content with keeping to myself, hermit-like? Do I have time to write a good blog post, as well, or will it just be a couple of sentences I pad out so that it doesn’t look so unbalanced next to the dress? What about all those things I said I’d do and didn’t? (If I never heard the phrase “twelve dancing princesses” again it would be way too soon.)

In short, I expect too much from myself, I don’t prepare myself well, then I psych myself out and end up using my time elsewhere or really phoning it in. It’s frustrating and unfulfilling, so I’m going to try a different tack. Here are my main goals:
1) To draw three days a week (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday)
2) To write blog posts that aren’t just afterthoughts
3) To integrate my drawing hobby with my interest in Japanese

The first two are pretty self-explanatory; the third one is something I’ve been thinking of for quite some time, and I think I’ve come up with some good ways to do it.

Well, we’ll see how I do. Wish me luck! And thank you, as always, for your patience. Sometimes I wonder if I unconsciously sabotage myself with unreliable behavior so that I can deflect notice, hoping to drive people away so I don’t have to add their expectations to the already ridiculous weight of my own. Whether it’s that or just plain old laziness, either way you all are much better readers than I deserve.

Today, a November birthday dress with chrysanthemums and topaz accents. How many more of these do I have to do? I know I’ve skipped rather a few…

White Natasha Liana Gown from Holy Clothing’s Design Contest with Flower Garlands

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

So last year I entered a contest run by my favorite clothing store, Holy Clothing. Rather than “favorite” it is probably more accurate to say that they are the only clothing store I have any regard for whatsoever! This might be a surprise, but I actually hate shopping for clothes: I just find it tedious and frustrating, I don’t like hardly any of what I find in stores, I’d rather spend money on other things and I don’t care for fashion in the least. Since I found Holy Clothing, one of their skirts paired with a plain white shirt has pretty much been my uniform.

They held a design contest late last year, promising to make the winner’s drawing into a real dress: I sent in three potential designs and one of them was chosen as one of four that were then voted on by the company’s Facebook fans. (I can’t find the link to the voting anymore, which is a shame, as all the sketches were very lovely.) I got $100 in store credit for winning, and the dress was supposed to be called the Liana Dress. It took longer than they expected to translate the sketch into a dress, though, and then they wanted to release it in the right season, so it just went on sale this month.

Here’s the original sketch, as well. This wasn’t my favorite of my three designs, and actually it’s not one I’d generally rush to buy myself because I wear my Holy Clothing stuff every day, so I don’t really have much interest in the garments that seem too costume-like or impractical. The reason I designed it is that a fair amount of people use Holy Clothing dresses as wedding dresses, and so I was thinking, what would my ideal Holy Clothing-style wedding gown look like? For this reason, I hope that the next run of the dresses comes in white as well, but in the meantime I drew my own white version for today, with two garlands to choose from. (I don’t own it yet, though, so I don’t know the details of the finished product; please don’t take my drawing as representative of the real thing.)

Unfortunately, by the time the dress came out (almost a year after the contest ended), it seems that some wires had gotten crossed and they neglected to name it after the winner, calling it Natasha instead. I had really been more excited about that than the $100 store credit, so I was disappointed and wrote about it, asking for the name to be changed; after Christmas, they did change the name to the Liana Dress! (Thank you to everyone who agreed it should be changed – I don’t know if it affected the decision, but personally I appreciated it!)

Well, in any case, if you want to wear something I designed, this may be as close as you’ll ever get! Check Holy Clothing out, as well as their very active Facebook fan page.

Green Evening Gown with Embroidered White Underskirt and Gold and Emerald Necklace

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

There really wasn’t much thought behind this one, so it is accordingly presented without much comment! I just have a feeling next week is not going to be simple, and I didn’t have a lot of time today to make something interesting (or a story that would render this dress interesting), so I wanted to play around with my colors a little bit.

Prismacolors used: French Grey family, Spring Green, Olive Green, Yellow Chartreuse, White, Goldenrod, Dark Umber, Light Umber, Sunburst Yellow, Colorless Blender