Happy Holidays

From Alia, P1/Isabella, Tesla, Rani, and me: 

Happy Thanksgiving and Chanukah!

The Biggest Doll on Display!

"Petra" is finally finished and on display!

I finished coloring it all in a few nights ago and thought about sharing pictures then, but I was so disappointed in the way it turned out that I decided against it. So many things went wrong when I was coloring it that I thought it wasn't worth posting about, but the next day when I was preparing my display board I realized that I didn't hate it as much as I thought.

The coloring on her face and neck is certainly not my best, but I really like her hair. It's one of the few happy accidents of this piece, and it doesn't fully succumb to the "gradient everywhere" theme I seem to have adopted.

And here is the board on display! What do you think of the finished product?

GOTY 2014 Prototype 1

One of my favorite things about paper dolls is that you don't have to wait for the official release to get the doll you want. (Granted, it's not the actual physical doll, but for me it's good enough). When the photos of the 2014 Girl of the Year were leaked in October, I decided to try making my own version.

I don't know if I'm going to end up keeping her, because she's not based on the best-quality images, so I'm calling her Prototype 1 for now. 

L-R: Alia, P1, Tesla, Rani

A group shot with everyone minus Fiona and Aisling. Tesla's sweater is new - it's based on the sweater from the Liberty Jane outfit "Piccadilly".  Seen separately, the girls' faces seem pretty similar, but in group shots the differences are obvious. Their hair is different too, and not just in color variation; P1's hair is the only one done in colored pencil rather than marker. You can see how it adds some dimensionality to her face. Which is your favorite?

The gold shoes in the "meet" outfit look better with the dress than the gold boots that AG sells with the Sparkle set. As evidenced by the outfit she comes in, P1 looks good in pink sparkly clothes. She can wear pretty much anything and look all right, but I thought that the combination of gold sparkles on shoes and dress was fortuitous.

Winter hasn't officially arrived yet where I live, but it's certainly chilly enough to justify boots. The capelet was inspired by the one made by L'Atelier de Sitara, and it's a nice piece of outerwear in that it looks cozy but doesn't obscure the shirt beneath. And, of course, I had to include a photo with the puppy Lulu, who's only been on here once. I need to get a dog-walking photo series together at some point.

The most distinctive aspect of the 2014 Girl of the Year is her dyed hair. This isn't perfect, but isn't hideous, so I'm going to keep it as is until I can get better photos.

Have you made your own GOTY 2014 doll? How did she turn out?

The Biggest Doll

Thank you all so much for your kind comments! I really appreciate your good wishes, and will be sure to share the photos when I make my purchase.

Since I don't have a tutorial ready to go yet (though I can't wait until I can get back on that), I thought I'd share some pictures of my newest paper doll, the biggest one I've ever made.

Whereas on average, most of my dolls are three inches tall, this doll is a little over five times that. She's most likely not going to be a "play" doll, since she's so big - I made her for an art display at a library. The piece is tentatively named "Petra," so that's what I'm going to call her throughout this post.

Her face is based on the Ellowyne head sculpt. It isn't perfect, but I like it well enough. Drawing Ellowyne faces is insanely hard (at least for me), but drawing her face wasn't as difficult as drawing Juliet's. I wonder if it was because her face is so much larger?

You might recognize the bunny shirt on the left as one I made for the three-inch dolls. The shirt on the right is not nearly as good (I struggled for ages to come up with a design I didn't hate, and I still don't really like it), but it will do for now. Any ideas for a replacement?

By far my favorite part of the set is the arm tattoo. I'm not really into tattoos in general (just a personal preference), but I wanted to try something new and I'm really happy with the results.

Of course, this is still a work in progress - I still need to color everything in - but I thought you might like to see something a little different. What are your thoughts?