Tutorial: Shading and Blending with Prismacolors

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls. I draw pretty much everything using Prismacolor pencils, and one thing I’ve intended to do for, well, longer than I might care to admit, is a basic tutorial on how I use them. Now that I’m feeling guilty about having neglected my page for half a year, I’m finally, finally going to show you how I shade my dresses! Let’s get a little music going, that’s crucial. If I get really into drawing I like something I can sing to while I work, but I’m interrupting my work to scan and write the tutorial, so today it’ll be Bound Together, a remix of music from the SNES game Earthbound. (If you want the full following along experience, here’s my favorite track: SnowBound.)

This turned out to be extremely long, so please click “read more” to see the rest!

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Granmammare's Blue Gown from Ponyo

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Brian and I went to see Ponyo the other day. It was gorgeous and lushly animated, and for someone like me who loves the sea, the first sequence was just a delight, with the jellyfish and spider crabs and all. Just in terms of the setting and visuals, it’s easily my favorite Ghibli movie, and I’d love to see it again just for how pretty and filled with life everything was. I enjoyed the story, too: Ponyo and Sōsuke really seemed like actual kids and they were so much fun to watch, and if none of the characters were really tremendously deep, they were sympathetic and sweet. All the little details really made the movie special: the octopus trying to figure out a sliding glass door, the sprinkler system Fujimoto used on land, the way Lisa presented the ramen to the kids. The story is a loose adaptation of the Little Mermaid, and if you’re the kind of person who likes this paperdoll blog I bet you’ll enjoy the movie too, so go see it! For an actual review, try Ebert’s review of it or the Star Crossed Anime Blog review.

It reminded me most of Spirited Away, but somehow not as coherent: things that seemed to have a lot of significance were too casually introduced and dropped. Granmammare and Fujimoto were humans, then gods and protectors of the seas, and somehow produced thousands of magic goldfish children, the moon itself drops out of orbit and pulls all the water towards it, and a five-year old’s pledge of love is enough to set the world back right, despite the fact that the environmental changes must have caused horrendous damages and losses of life. (If the moon was essentially making the highest high tide ever, I couldn’t help but wonder what the low tide elsewhere was looking like…) These things felt to me like they were trying to cram some depth and mythology in; things like boys who are also both rivers and dragons worked in Spirited Away both because it was established as a whole different world and because it had a more mature feel to it, but Ponyo seemed to bounce between being light-hearted and solemn. It also seems to me that Ponyo herself is on track to becoming one of those tedious anime females who attaches herself like a millstone to the neck of the male lead character, happy to be entirely without her own goals or thoughts as long as he’s around. Ugh, about the only one of those I’ve ever liked is Misa from Death Note. Well, I like to think that it doesn’t happen quite that way and that she finds joy as a human in addition to Sōsuke’s existence… These are all really just minor quibbles, though — things that weren’t addressed in the movie that bugged me. I still loved it anyways!

This dress is an adaptation of Granmammare’s blue gown – it’s just flat blue in the movie, but of course that’s not quite so much fun for me. Anyways, it changes shape a few times in the movie, so I like to think it can be pretty much whatever she pleases.

I like all of the Ghibli movies, but in general I prefer the ones that skew a little bit older – Only Yesterday and Princess Mononoke over Ponyo and My Neighbor Totoro, for example. I can’t choose between Porco Rosso and and Whisper of the Heart, so they will both be my favorites.

Halloween Costume Series Day 8: Cleopatra White Linen Egyptian Dress with Blue Lotus Pattern, with Jeweled Collar and Red Sash

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I kind of broke my “no research all month” rule for this one, but it is not hard for me to find an excuse to look at ancient Egyptian clothes. This one is vaguely accurate, although I think the lotus pattern may be over the top, there’s no melting perfume cone and the clothes should be sheer anyways, for full royal style. That’s even further than today’s ’sexy Cleopatra’ revelers want to go… I used to want to be an Egyptologist, and I’ve even got a book or two on learning hieroglyphs in the other room. Then I discovered Japanese and kanji. No kidding.

If you’ve already taken my poll and answered “obscure costumes,” can you leave a comment and tell me what kinds of costumes you’re talking about? I’m very curious now, since that category’s done so well. I expected that sexy costumes would be low on the list for this crowd, but I wasn’t expecting that no one would choose ‘pop culture’ for a costume. What, no Jedis in this group? No Jokers? I thought everyone wanted to be the Joker this year…

Esmeralda’s Red Dancing Dress (Disney Princess Jewels Series Collection, Liana Remix)

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So Esmeralda got two votes from my call for non-Disney princess characters to draw in the “Jewels” collection style (and I’ve been convinced I must do something with Hyacinth Hippo, incidentally, but not today), so that makes her the winner. I decided that although I like her normal outfit, it was too practical to princessize, so I looked at the dress she wears to dance. In truth, my version is still not glitzed up enough to be a proper part of the Jewels line; if I was sewing a real dress, the proper next step would be to hand it to a team of 7-year-olds along with sequins, laces, a Bedazzler and ropes of pearls and let them go nuts. (I still can’t find any pictures online of the Jewels version of the Disney Princesses, so click here for a scan of my Kleenex box, showing Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Belle in full Jewels regalia, if a little water damaged. Now, you’ll see why I say mine is too plain — and why I think Sleeping Beauty is wearing a Venus fly-trap.)

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.

Crown Collection from Liana's Paperdoll Boutique

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My apologies, I was quite lazy today and so must resort to crawling through the “Misc” folder of the old Boutique for material. The Misc folder is easily the most interesting one, containing as it does movie replicas, concoctions colored on the computer, outfits other people sent to me and the pets. But I’d forgotten all about these crowns. They must be from later in the Boutique’s history, I think I see the influence of the colorless blender. I think they might work on Sylvia, too…

Oz's Female Form From The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

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After the eighteen hour exercise in class consciousness, eternally frustrated romance and parade of death that was North and South (I tease, I tease — actually I really enjoyed it, but it was somewhat hard to take at times), I thought that perhaps I would enjoy something lighter. So I’m now listening to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Of course I’ve seen the movie, but I’ve never read the book before. I wasn’t sure about the paperdolling opportunities — Dorothy is too young, the Good Witch of the book is Munchkin-sized — and thought that I might be doing a Wicked Witch of the West outfit from this one. (And I may yet do so…) But there’s a part where Oz appears to the Scarecrow as a beautiful fairy, and the description says that she “was dressed in green silk gauze and wore upon her flowing green locks a crown of jewels. Growing from her shoulders were wings, gorgeous in color and so light that they fluttered if the slightest breath of air reached them.”

Now, after years of paperdolling, I cannot possibly read a paragraph like that one without thinking “Bingo!”…

So here is my interpretation of Oz’s female representation. I must confess, too, that if this hadn’t shown up I’d be drawing one of the Emerald City court ladies. I haven’t drawn anything green for a while, and it’s my favorite color!

Flora's Red Gown from Professor Layton and the Curious Village

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I’ve been into Professor Layton and the Curious Village lately, playing it every chance I got – using my 15 minute breaks during work to ferry those miserable wolves and chickens across the river, and so on. You come across this dress early in the game, and I thought it was lovely, even if Flora is rather younger than Sylvia. I’m rather fond of Layton’s outfit, actually… who knew brown and orange worked together so well, or that a top hat can be pulled off in any way, shape or form. If I didn’t have so many other outfits I want, I’d so do a female version…

Incidentally, Flora in the Japanese version is named アロマ, or, rather literally romanized, “Aroma.” I can see it as being “Alma” if one slurs quickly over the vowel of the ‘ro’… or maybe it’s just meant to be Aroma. Who knows…

I’d like to do an Oscar dress this year, but I’m not really feeling any of them. Possibly the scaly mermaid one…