Disneybound Snow White Outfit with Yellow Tulle Skirt

A shimmery dark blue camisole with a scoop neck tucked into a knee-length golden yellow tulle skirt. There's a light blue bolero jacket over the shoulders with lightly puffed cap sleeves. Each sleeve is ringed with a red ribbon and a small red bow.I recently got a book about drawing Disney princesses, “Learn To Draw Disney’s Enchanted Princesses” and although it’s ostensibly for ages six and up, I pity the poor six-year old who gets it for her birthday, sits down with her brand new sketchbook and tries to draw her favorite princess. The very first exercise is how to draw Snow White’s head, and if you’re wondering how to draw her eyes, well, here’s step 1 and step 2…
A picture of an oval next to a picture of a fully drawn cartoon eye.Looks like they’re missing two or three steps there to me!

That’s to say nothing of the later exercises: once you get to Tiana, who’s near the end of the book, they don’t even pretend to be holding your hand anymore.
Step 1: A circle for the head and a long curved line indicating the way the body will move. Step 2: A simplified body and large bell-shaped skirt drawn over the previous image.

“How To Draw The Tick” was a joke, but the difference between steps 1 and 2 here is no joke at all. This book either should be a lot longer, or should focus on only two or three princesses; either way I think the steps should be broken down a bit more for the benefit of readers who might not have several years of drawing experience to back them up.

However, I’m glad I bought the book, because of the very complexity that makes it so frustrating. If you have patience and drawing skill, it teaches you how to draw the princesses — not simplified approximations, but the princesses everyone wants to see more of, princesses that will make you the Queen of Buzzfeed for a day if you master them and pick some pop culture reference or art style to mash them up with. All you need is to be stubborn enough to draw the same thing over and over and over. There’s a movie about a tour of the Disney studios, The Reluctant Dragon, in which the man taking the tour meets with animator Ward Kimball, who dashes off a sketch and, when praised, answers that the first 100,000 drawings are the hardest. Even if the book broke down every step properly, it can’t do those 100,000 drawings for you. I’m starting to feel like I really will need to do that many drawings just to produce a Snow White head that looks like Snow White, because the slightest mistake is so noticeable.

So I’ve been spending a lot of time with Snow White lately, and I’m not even particularly all that much of a fan of Snow White unless she’s the Snow White in Castle Waiting. As with so many other expressions of femininity, like ballet and applying natural makeup, it takes a lot of hard work to produce a princess face that looks natural, simple and attractive. Trying to draw Snow White reminded me of a blog post by Andreas Deja, who worked as an animator at Disney for 30 years, where he wrote about Cinderella that “if you are off by the width of a pencil line, this character would look like an alien from outer space.” In my quest to draw Snow White, I’ve fallen right into the uncanny valley several times, and you’ll note that I’m not posting any sketches here! (You can see some if you stalk my Twitter account, but I’m not helping you out with a direct link.) But hey, I’m much better at drawing Snow White now than when I first started.

Today’s outfit is inspired by Disneybounding, which is putting together casual outfits that are an allusion to a Disney character. Here’s an article about Disneybounding, the Disneybounding tumblr that started it all, and a cool Pinterest board with examples of real-life Disneybounding. For my take on a Snow-White themed outfit, I started with a trendy tulle skirt and added a subtly sparkly blue camisole and a blue bolero jacket. (In my imagination the bolero jacket belongs to a bridesmaid’s dress ensemble, and the wearer added the ribbons later.)

Next week… well, you may actually see that fourth doll, who’s coming along nicely! Until then, you can download combined color and black and white PDFs of all of my 2014 dolls and outfits for free! (I’ll add the 2015 ones soon…) Also follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest for sneak previews, fashion plates and malformed sketches of Snow White’s head. If you enjoy my work, I'd also appreciate your support through Patreon.


Shimmery Blue Princess Gown

An off-the shoulder gown with a tight bodice and a trumpet-shaped skirt. There are pearly white ruffles over the shoulders, while the bodice is light blue with a small swirl pattern and a silver pattern at the neckline. The ruffled overskirt is in three layers, which start near the hip and get increasingly longer until they touch the ground on the other side of the dress. The top one is light blue, the middle one is a deeper blue and the bottom one is a darker purple-blue. They all have a silver swirl pattern on the edges. They're over a pearly white full skirt with a subtle swirl pattern in white on it.Happy 2015! Coming a little late to the party, am I? Well, I’ve still got a large portion of the year to make up for it. And I think this is going to be a good year for paperdolls and, hopefully, for some stories to go with them.

This dress is a princess gown I designed when I was doing my other princess gown series, but just never got around to it. I wanted to give it the time it deserved, and I think it turned out pretty well!

Next week, I hope to have a new paperdoll, but they always take a little longer than I expect, so it may just be a dress. Until then, you can download combined color and black and white PDFs of all of my 2014 dolls and outfits for free! Also follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest for gorgeous African print skirts, grousing about working in 200 DPI and sneak previews. If you enjoy my work, I'd also appreciate your support through Patreon.


Masquerade Gown in White Lace and Blue Sequins with Light Blue Ruffles and Coral Ribbon

A masquerade gown with a bodice patterned with white lace. The neckline is off the shoulders and slightly V-shaped, and is trimmed with a line of sparkling blue ribbon. The sleeves are three-quarter, and their edges are trimmed with more sparkling blue ribbon. There are long ruffles attached to the edges of the sleeves, and they are colored in a gradient from dark blue to light blue, nearly white, at the edges. They are decorated with a light water pattern. The bodice extends over the top of the skirt and is gathered at one hip, decorated with a bright coral-colored bow. From the bow, four rows of ruffles fall towards the base of the skirt like a waterfall. Each one is colored from dark blue to light blue at the edge, and each one is decorated with a light water pattern. The skirt is royal blue, deeply pleated, and patterned with sequins, so that at the top of each pleat they catch the light and sparkle vividly. The skirt is long, and falls to the floor.Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

When I selected this gown and started working on it, the purple sparkly dress was ahead in the poll, so I thought, sure, I can take a hint. This week is now Sparkle Week, because I’d like to practice making things sparkle. I really like how the skirt turned out on this one, but hey, there’s always room for improvement. It is all a matter of getting the brushes right… I have a lot of sparkly brushes to play with thanks to Obsidian Dawn, and the lace pattern is also one of theirs.

Let’s have a new contest!
Milo has received so many beautiful, handmade blankets from family members and friends that I probably could have started a baby blanket shop. Recently, though, one of them has become the favorite blankie. He likes to have it in his crib with him at night, and he wraps it around his shoulders and walks around with it like he’s the emperor of the house. (Which he is, but…) It has three colors in it. What are those three colors? The winner gets to tell me how to color this week’s gown!
Hint: I’m not being picky about color names. It’s not like you have to say royal blue, crimson and lemon yellow (for example), I just want the basic color names here.
One entry per new post per day, please.
Update: Sarah guessed. I thought that would take longer than it did! It’s white, blue and green.

Also, I’ve set up a Facebook fan page and a separate Twitter account. I’ll use both of these for announcing new posts, but also I’ll try to put up some new content, like special recolored dresses and contests, and I’ll also post some links to paperdoll and fashion related things I like. So please like my page or follow me, depending on your choice of social media!


Blue Gown with Gold Trim

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

Hello! See, I promised I would stay alive long enough to start drawing again.

To those of you who are still checking in on this page, thank you for your patience! I’m not too sure what things are going to look like, so I’m not necessarily going to go back to the old schedule just yet, but I am going to try to get back into the drawing habit. Please don’t rush to suggest things that I should draw, it will tire me out ^^;;

For those of you who aren’t already reading it, I wanted to highlight the awesome paper doll blog Paper Thin Personas. RLC has been drawing some wonderful, varied sets lately, as well as showing us what her sketches look like, and seeing an update pop up in my RSS reader never fails to make me smile. (She’s also been posting regularly, I could stand to take some lessons!)

I’ll write more another day, but for now please enjoy this blue gown. I suppose it’s a little nightgown-ish, but at least it’s better than the previous dress I posted. (You can really tell when I’m well and truly sick of drawing, I’m afraid.)