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1940s wedding dress (because I’m bitter about Liz Patterson)

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So, I follow For Better or for Worse, even though my husband says “If you don’t like it, why do you read it?” And I don’t know why. I don’t like Anthony. I don’t really like Liz all that much anymore. And when, in a piece of hamfisted foreshadowing, Dee found a boxed 1940s wedding dress found behind a rock in a crawlspace, I didn’t really like that either, especially because it was obvious it would clean up as good as new and that it would fit Liz perfectly. But what the heck, I can suspend emotion and reason to appreciate a good dress, and even if I, like srah, would just as soon see Liz run off at the altar, I can deal with seeing her married there if she is wearing a half-decent gown. And then we saw what that moldy old dress looked like.

I don’t like it. Just look at it, no way it’s a 1940s dress, not with the combination of the neckline and the transparent sleeves. That looks like 1970s to me. See, look at this 1975 pattern illustration. That middle dress looks just like it, with shorter sleeves. (And frankly, if her bridesmaids wore those middle dresses, that would redeem the WHOLE strip for me.) I don’t think it’s really flattering on her, either, I don’t like those sleeves or that huge bustle.

And as I was looking at 1940s and 1970s wedding dresses, I got even more disappointed that hers wasn’t a 1940s dress, and how much fun that would have been to draw, and so I thought, well, I’ll draw one anyways! I based it off of this pattern (and the crown off of this one) and actually, I chose it because I think it would have looked good on Liz — I think the neckline would have suited the way she wears her hair when it’s down, and I think its relative plainness and sleekness suit her better than the heavily beaded and gauzy dress she got. I don’t think she seems to be a very frou-frouy kind of person: she dresses pretty plainly, usually, and doesn’t seem to have a high-maintenance style, so I think that this design works as long as she has her hair down, to offset the straight lines of the dress. I actually did a sketch of her in this dress. I think it works on her pretty well, although if she was actually going out and buying a dress, it probably wouldn’t be this one. But then again, it wouldn’t be the one she got either.

And actually, some of those 1970s dresses are completely awesome, in a half-ironic half-awestruck way. I mean, even if they look dated and a little goofy, I still love the romantic style and ruffles more than I like everything being strapless and sleek these days. Just try and tell me this gal’s wedding wouldn’t have been an absolute delight.. And I rather like this one far on the right, with modified sleeves… and I totally feel like I shouldn’t love the middle one here but I do. I guess I could get behind Liz’s dress if it was her mom’s dress, but 1940s, yeah right.

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!

Mermaid Monday #2: Copper-Tailed Mermaid with White and Blue Silk Top

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This copper-tailed mermaid is sister to the golden-tailed mermaid we saw a few weeks back, and I suppose there must be a sister with a silver tail in the mix somewhere, because I can’t draw silver either and it’s high time I learned. Anyways, she is a little more fond of decoration than her sister, wearing fine silk and warm-colored precious stones daily. In truth, she is somewhat self-conscious about her tail, since she picked up the idea somewhere that copper is less precious than silver or gold, and she feels a need to compensate with expensive decorations. (Copper tails, actually, are slightly less common than either color, but somehow that doesn’t comfort her. And what’s the most uncommon color? Stay tuned and we will find out in a future Mermaid Monday.)

So I don’t forget, copper colors are, from darkest to lightest: dark umber, sienna brown, burnt ochre, pumpkin orange, mineral orange, peach, light peach and white. And of course, the colorless blender, which makes everything beautiful.

Ginger Rogers’ White Dress from Swing Time (Updated 2/28/09)

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Brian refused to watch Swing Time with me. More specifically, he said: “I don’t believe this is worth watching just because it’s on some 100 great films list. Do you know how many ‘hundred great films’ lists there are? Obviously someone mistakenly placed this movie on one.” Well, I don’t watch his creepy horror-sci-fi movies, so it works out. Most of our time, our Netflix queues co-exist happily, but on some things, we may never quite see eye-to-eye. (And he was right, he would have hated it. But the dancing was gorgeous…)

This is a dress Ginger Rogers wears towards the end of the movie, most prominent in “Never Gonna Dance.” As may be guessed from the general lameness of the bottom third of the dress, I wasn’t really happy with how it turned out, and I don’t know how the skirt works at all. But, oh well.

Edit (2/28/09): I didn’t like the way this version of the dress came out originally, so I redrew it. The neckline still isn’t quite right, but that’s because the doll’s underwear doesn’t work with the way the dress should be. You can click here for the old version of the dress, or if you want to see the original, you can see how it works on this video of Never Gonna Dance.