Bethany - Made for the Annual Paper Doll Convention 2014

I was asked to contribute a paper doll for the Raffle Room of the annual Paper Doll Convention - held this year in Richmond, Virginia (25-29 June).
If you want to read more about the convention this post  2014 Paper Doll Convention  by Anne K Donze provides an amazing amount of detail.

I sent in Bethany together with an accompanying sketch of the doll.

I also made another version of Alice to add to my donation as I felt one page with only one doll looked a bit paltry!  The original post and the background behind Alice can be found here (Introducing Alice) .

My original intention was to include a third doll and make a new version of Clarissa as well but I ran out of time!  I was going to call them my three little ABC girls but in the end I had to settle for just A & B !

I'm still hoping to find out who won my dolls and how well they did.  I believe they drew a fair amount of comment because they were sent in from Ireland!

All three dolls are based on the beautiful artwork of Janet & Anne Grahame Johnstone.

Introducing Alice

Made especially for Alice in Australia

Introducing Alice - I think my favourite of all the dolls I've painted so far - but Alice is also special for another reason - she is the first doll I've made for a real person.

Agman (Terence) at Aviator always leaves such nice comments for me whenever I post paper dolls and tells me how much his granddaughter Alice likes them - so I decided the next doll I made would be especially for her.  Alice I hope you like your namesake (Granddad as you probably already know has a full size scan of the doll for you).

I also sent a scan of Alice to OPDAG (the Original Paper Doll Artist Guild).  I knew that the doll did not qualify for any of their upcoming themes but Jenny from OPDAG has offered to include her in the Showcase section of the Studio magazine with a link back to this post - so that is quite an exciting prospect as well.
 

  

Alice - Original Sketch

 Alice is a companion doll for Clarissa and the second in a series of dolls I'm making based on the beautiful artwork of Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone.  I've wanted to try my hand at making dolls in slightly more unusual poses for ages and so a young girl sitting playing not only gave me a subject that was interesting to paint, it also meant I could fit three dresses onto a single page.

I based the doll on this illustration of Curly Locks taken from 'A Gift Book of Nursery Rhymes' - one of the loveliest figures in the book.   

 
Although I included the blue dress she is wearing as a separate outfit, designing the other dresses allowed me to play around with different fabric techniques.  As much as they are inspired by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone they also owe a huge debt to artists such as Ron Embleton and Jose Ortiz who feature regularly in my blog and whose work I've tried to emulate since childhood.

The most fun I had while making this doll was thinking up different objects for her to hold.  Part of the challenge of course was fitting the object to the shape!

It was very rewarding making and dedicating a doll in this way so I think it will be nice to continue the idea with the next doll in the series (I don't know how soon that is likely to be as I've had the advantage of being on holiday for the last week - giving me lots of lovely time to indulge in the things I enjoy!)

However - if anyone reading this would like me to dedicate a doll to a special little girl, let me know by leaving a comment (and obviously her name) at the end of this post.  

Meet Clarissa

I hope my friends in the blogging community will forgive me if I post something today but don't visit anyone in return. My PC will still not connect to the internet.  I've tried everything I can think of without success.  I'm borrowing my son's little netbook to do this - but have promised I will use if for just the time it takes to put up this post and not hog it completely!

The inspiration for Clarrisa

 This is the first of three paper dolls I am hoping to make based on the beautiful illustrations by Janet & Anne Grahame Johnstone.  I've decided to give my dolls names and chose Clarissa for this one.

  

 

The illustrations I've based her outfits on are all show here.  They are all taken from two books I've had since childhood - A Gift Book of Nursery Rhymes and A Gift Book of Enchanting Fairy Tales both illustrated by Janet & Anne Graham Johnstone.

Clarissa was my first submission to OPDAG (The Original Paper Doll Artists Guild).  The theme was Babies and Children.   At first I wasn't sure if it was OK to post dolls sent to OPDAG in my blog, but then I noticed Miss Missy had posted her lovely Heidi Fairy Tale Doll - one of my favourites from that issue of the magazine - so I felt it would be fine for me to do the same.

  

This is the version of the doll I submitted.  I realised afterwards it is a bit of a learning curve.  Because it was winter and just before Christmas I decided to experiment and use more wintery seasonal colours.  My sister and husband liked the finished effect, but I think for OPDAG it was a mistake and I should have stuck with the lighter more traditional colours like the alternate version shown at the start of this post.  In the magazine my dolls are allocated a quarter af an A4 page, so reduced down in size the darker colours meant a lot of the detail is lost.  

Still it was exciting seeing something I sent in printed in the issue!

If you want to colour in your own version here is the original pencil sketch.  (I actually always prefer the pencil drawings.) You will have to add tags to one of the dresses - apologies for that and I hadn't added the hat at the time I scanned it.

Maybe I should hold my own colouring competition with a prize for the best entry!
 

For this issue of the magazine members were also invited to send in outfits for a 'dress a doll' theme.  This one was called 'Dress the Kids'.  I sent in a selection of outfits for two of the dolls provided.  I won't be able to include the dolls here but you can see one of them on the cover of the magazine at the OPDAG Paper Doll Studio site.  Apparently there was an enormous response and although about 150 outfits were included in the magazine none of mine made the cut.  These are my dresses - I decided I'd put them up on my blog anyway as I was quite happy with them even though they were not selected. 
  

Putting a post together on this tiny little PC has been more tricky than I thought!  Hopefully I'll have something more permanent sorted out soon so I can get back to life in bloggyland properly.  I'm really missing the interaction with everyone!