rosettes

Tiny Tutorial #1: Draw Easy Rosettes

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Draw Easy Rosettes! A Tiny Tutorial from Liana's Paper Dolls. It just takes ten steps to draw a great border or pattern.

Welcome to my first Tiny Tutorial! In this series, I’ll show you some of the tricks and techniques I use to create my dolls and dresses. First, let’s draw some rosettes.

A very light ivory ballgown with an almost exaggeratedly large, floor length skirt. It is off the shoulder, with a line of pink rosettes across the top. The bodice is fitted and decorated with a pattern of white lines and dots arranged into a sunburst shape, with a polka dot and grid pattern covering the background. Both patterns are shaded to look as if they're white frosting on a white cake. The waist is V-shaped and is edged with a line of small silver balls. The overskirt is open at the front, showing a large part of the underskirt. The top half of the underskirt has a pattern of delicate white scrolls and the words "Treat Yourself!" written in loopy cursive in pink frosting. The bottom half consists of three large rows of rosettes, designed to look like they were made out of icing. The top rosette row is very pale pink, the second is a shade darker and the third is even more darker, creating an ombre effect. The overskirt is edged with lines of small silver balls and is decorated with sunburst-shaped patterns of lines and dots going up the front sides and a polka dot and grid pattern covering the background.First off, let’s revisit the Broken Age cake dress from last Friday. The rosettes on the bodice and hem were meant to look like they were piped on with frosting, in the style of popular ombre rosette cakes. If you use Pinterest, I am quite sure you have scrolled past these cakes several times! The one I referenced was this purple specimen. The technique for drawing rosettes can be adapted for other things: look at these quinceañera gowns and this pink gown, isn’t it basically just a similar idea? It also makes a good border, especially since you can draw it quickly. It won’t look like a row of roses, but it doesn’t have to.

I did this with an iPad program, Procreate, that allows layers, so the guidelines are on a different layer than the finished drawing, and once I’m done I just delete that layer. You could mimic this by putting down guidelines with pencil and the actual rosette with pen, or wing it without guidelines.

Three small circles and two large circles drawn on guidelines.To start, draw the guideline along which your rosettes will be placed, then decide on the size of your rosettes. For small ones, draw an olive: two circles, one smaller than the other. For large ones, draw a bullseye: three circles. Repeat the pattern so that the edges are just about touching. (Don’t worry about whether they overlap or not. These are just guidelines.)

The first step of the drawing, a small shell-like series of lines in the middle of the circle.Draw 5-6 curved lines within the smallest circle. Start the lines from a single point on the edge of the circle and end them on different parts of the edge of the circle. The finished lines will look like a seashell.

The next layer of lines, with arrows to show their direction.Starting with the inside line of the second circle, draw curved lines towards the outside of the circle. Unlike the previous rosette, you don’t want them to start on the same point: you might have two or three starting on the same point, but not all of them. You’ll want to draw the lines the opposite direction from the lines on the middle circle. They shouldn’t be all the same width, like a camera shutter.

The final layer of lines for the large rosettes.If you’re making a large rosette, then repeat the process for the large circle. Again, be sure to draw the lines going in the opposite direction from the previous level.

The rosette lines without the guidelines.Remove the guidelines, and you have what look like a row of starbursts.

Filling in the areas that were left blank when the guidelines were removedNow you’ll go in and connect the areas that were left blank when you took away the guidelines. Start with the middle circle. If you’re doing three-circle rosettes, draw in the missing lines in the second circle too.

The final lines of the rosette.Next, draw the outside lines. When doing the outside lines of a rosette, draw a gentle arch continuing the end of one line to the end of the next one to form the petals.

The finished rosettes.Clean up the lines and you have your rosettes!

If you try out this style of drawing rosettes, I’d love to see the results. By and by I’d like to do some more in-depth tutorials about how I color and so on, but tutorials like these, where I isolate one part of my technique, are easier to do. If you can think of a technique I’ve used in a previous dress that you’d like to know about, post a comment and I’ll add it to my list of tutorial ideas!

Tiny Tutorial #2 will show you how I created the diadem from the recent ancient Greek peplos. As always, you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for updates, paper doll related thoughts and pictures of 1910s gowns. If you enjoy my work, I’d also appreciate your support through Patreon.

White Cake Dress with Pink Ombre Rosettes for Broken Age

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A very light ivory ballgown with an almost exaggeratedly large, floor length skirt. It is off the shoulder, with a line of pink rosettes across the top. The bodice is fitted and decorated with a pattern of white lines and dots arranged into a sunburst shape, with a polka dot and grid pattern covering the background. Both patterns are shaded to look as if they're white frosting on a white cake. The waist is V-shaped and is edged with a line of small silver balls. The overskirt is open at the front, showing a large part of the underskirt. The top half of the underskirt has a pattern of delicate white scrolls and the words "Treat Yourself!" written in loopy cursive in pink frosting. The bottom half consists of three large rows of rosettes, designed to look like they were made out of icing. The top rosette row is very pale pink, the second is a shade darker and the third is even more darker, creating an ombre effect. The overskirt is edged with lines of small silver balls and is decorated with sunburst-shaped patterns of lines and dots going up the front sides and a polka dot and grid pattern covering the background.This ballgown was inspired by a recently released adventure game, Broken Age. Vella, our heroine and one of the two protagonists, is a young woman who lives in a town of bakers that is terrorized by a horrendous monster called Mog Chothra every 14 years. In a scene that you’ll always remember whenever you see a cake made to look like the skirt of a Barbie doll or a princess, our heroine, along with four other young women of the village, is offered to the monster as a human sacrifice at an event called the “Maidens Feast.” They are all embedded in gigantic cakes that look like skirts, which are gorgeously decorated with all the skill the villagers have and inscribed with tempting slogans like “Delish,” “Hot Stuff” and “Up For Grabs!” Each of the young women is hoping to protect her village and bring honor to her family by being selected (that is, eaten) by Mog Chothra… except for Vella. But how do you escape a floating monster the size of a mansion when you’re stuck in a cake, ready to be served up?

Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure game, notable for being one of the first Kickstarter successes. To put it simply, adventure games are rather out of fashion, but two years ago Tim Schafer, known for other classics like Grim Fandango, said to the Internet “We’ll make a new game if you give us money” and people got out their wallets, leading to this game’s release. In games like these, you solve puzzles by exploring, talking to people, finding objects and using them in the right place. Some were notorious for being unforgiving (looking at you, King’s Quest series), and some had goofy, implausible puzzles (like one where you had to disguise yourself by making a mustache from cat hair and syrup), but Broken Age is nicely designed: you can never get in a situation that you can’t get out of, and the puzzles are entertaining but not exasperating. The art is lovely, with a style that looks almost as if it was all painted, and the settings are all detailed and fun to explore. Vella is also a fun, capable heroine, who rejects her world’s passive acceptance of Mog Chothra and breaks free of the cake skirt to find a different way to protect her village. The other half of the game explores the story of a young man named Shay, whose world couldn’t be any more different from Vella’s…

Right now, only the first half of the game is out, with the second half to come later this year. I think it’s well worth the price, and if you check it out, please let me know what you think of it!

It looks our our Oscar night winner is Lupita Nyong’o’s blue Prada gown! I don’t know when I will have that up – I will try for before the end of the month, but it might be later. Also, a 1910s outfit will be our contest prize; it beat out a pirate outfit and an evening gown with over half the vote. I will do some research and some sketches, so come back next Friday for a contest and a Japanese fairytale! Until then, you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for site updates, sneak previews and ridiculous amounts of fashion plates. If you enjoy my work, I’d also appreciate your support through Patreon.