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The New Yorker Fashion issue arrived the other day, and I loved the cover, so I drew a dress based off of the pattern. I think it looks nice and springy, if a little busy…
I always enjoy the fashion issue, probably because I love clothes and I don’t have a particle of style myself!
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When I look at my site stats, the new blog’s most popular page (besides the doll) is consistently the mermaid one, and a lot of the search engine keywords are mermaid-related. Yes, that’s right, people aren’t searching for zombie paperdolls, they aren’t searching for cupcake aprons, but instead they are searching for mermaids. Now if they were searching overwhelmingly for zombie paperdolls, it’s still unlikely I would have Soulless Saturdays or Flesh-Eating Fridays, but I just love drawing my mermaids.
So, from now until I get bored of it, every Monday is Mermaid Monday! (Except for when it’s not. For example, St. Patrick’s Day next week will not feature a green mermaid, I’ve got plans for that day.) Mermaid Monday might mean old-school shimmery mermaid tails and all the accessories currently fashionable under the sea, or the kinds of things mermaids might wear, should they have to venture on the land for some reason — diplomatic errands, say, or to try capturing the heart of a human, or for just simple curiosity. (What, that just sounds like an excuse to draw pretty gowns in cool colors? I don’t know why you would think such a thing…)
Now, this mermaid, even among mermaids (not renowned for their modesty) is really quite vain. She looks down on those that drape themselves with pearls, jewels, chains and silky fabrics, because to her, all of that artificiality is unnecessary for one with such a shining golden tail. Adding more gold to gold would just be gilding the lily; one might even say “tacky,” and that is a sin with her set. So she goes for a more natural look, for a contrast.
Click for larger version; click for the list of dolls.
Now, this one requires some explanation. The Wikipedia page gives more information than most humans really want to know, but I’ll explain here, too… There’s a huge Japanese image board (like a message board, only based around images) called Futaba Channel, which has spawned a bunch of memes and original characters. XP-tan here is one of them, along with 2K-tan, OS X-tan, Linux-tan and so on… They’re all representations of operating systems. (Although it’s expanded since then…DS-tan is an example.) The “tan” is a corruption of “chan,” which is an affectionate, informal Japanese name suffix. XP-tan here is essentially pretty but useless…
I was thinking about XP-tan because I use Windows XP for my job, since it and Internet Explorer are required for the ETS test rater setup. Thanks to Brian setting up Bootcamp on my system, I can switch back and forth easily, and since I work at home, it helps with the feeling of being done with work for the day… to switch from annoying, ugly XP to my lovely Mac OS is like coming home. (I use the wrong keyboard commands for about an hour, though…) There are various Mac OS-tans, but I couldn’t find one with a design that was as well-recognized as the Windows-based ones, and I didn’t really like the green one that Wikipedia bases its image on…
Click for larger version; click for the list of dolls.
Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World claims in the introduction that “a surefire way to get people to look at your blog is by posting pictures of cupcakes.”
I wonder if paperdolls dressed in totally over-the-top fifties-style cupcake dresses and aprons might be similar enough to get some of the benefits?
(I must confess, that originally I was hoping to go for a cupcake-as-dress look. I had some wacky sketches of icing boas and cupcake wrappers done up as full skirts and frilly sleeves. In the end I couldn’t quite pull it off.)
I don’t eat cupcakes as often as I might like, but I do like flipping through my copy of VCTOTW and following Cupcakes Take The Cake… they’re just so cute, and often so inventive. I like the way this turned out, with the little cupcake pocket on the apron, although I almost scrapped the sketch because the skirt wasn’t quite poofy enough… maybe next time.
It’s probably really a stretch to tag this ‘historical,’ isn’t it?
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