Category: Fashion

Catwalk Couture: 2017’s First Disaster?

failI have eight plates of runway dolls and their clothes. I made dozens of mistakes with them: missteps, botched paint jobs, wildly off-model designs. Something about these dolls is cursed. 

It all began when I compromised on Ifu, model No. 1, who, if you’ve been following, was sort of a stand-in for Lupita Nyong’o. The doll I made wasn’t very statuesque, but I thought that would be all right: I have a typical body style and she fit it. Then I compromised on her face. I painted her lower cheek too dark and I painted her eyes wrong. The eyes I fixed in PhotoShop, but the darkness of her coloring could not be rectified. I should have taken all those little problems and stepped back from the project, but I kept barreling through, telling myself not to get hung up on niggling details.

But the mistakes kept coming. My Burberry lines ran all kinds of crooked, doll No. 2, Lonan, had to be reconstructed in PhotoShop due to hair problems, I failed to under-color doll No. 3, Xia. And then there was doll No. 4, Niall, who just…oh…there are no words, really. Niall is just an unfortunate thing.

Was I too ambitious? Was I lazy and inattentive? Did I just not have a coherent plan?

I didn’t really have a plan–that’s true. I went from one model to four overnight and my choices were not well thought-out. At the end of the day, I really like Lonan and Xia, but Ifu and Niall give me heartburn. It all came to a head last week when I thought: “I should make tuxedos for the men so that I can do red carpet gowns for the ladies” and it struck me how much I didn’t want to paint all-black suits. Sure, tuxedos come in other colors, but it was too late. I had already broken out into mental hives.

Ironically, an all-black suit is actually very easy to paint compared to other things. Which is my cue that it’s not the suits that put me off, it’s something much more serious. I wanted these dolls as fun, unstructured fashion models–and they became a nightmare of over-organized, rigidly plotted, time-sucking, eyeball-burning labor.

If it ain’t fun, don’t do it folks.

It’s a mantra I’ve seen in fellow artists’ blogs and when it comes to hobby art perhaps wiser words were never writ. Some of the pieces I’ve made for these dolls are quite lovely and it’s a shame to waste them, but I am so honestly not in love with the whole set. Bits might be salvageable, but I made bad choices on the models and bad choices on the clothes and bad choices on my templates. I could post the eight plates as a cautionary, but I’m not sure I want to. Fact is, I’m chucking any future plans for them and starting over. No comment on what that would look like at the moment.

I ain’t asking for advice or consolation. I’ve made up my mind and I’m already over it. emoji_winkBut I did want to post about it to share this unlovely part of the process and to say, well, I promised I would have runway dolls by the time the Oscars came around and, hey: I still have 44 days to go!

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Catwalk Couture: Paper Doll Research

lupita_01I started with a folder full of pictures of Lupita Nyong’o. The research branched out since then.

There are things for which I am a meticulous researcher. Paper dolls is not one of them. I make paper dolls for my own amusement–mindless relief from stress and a break from my other great love: writing. In writing I insist on impeccable historical detail, even knowing most of it never makes it into the narrative. With paper dolls, verisimilitude is sufficient. If I get hung up on details, I’d never get anything done. Also, without being able to study garments up close or have a record of their construction, it’s impossible to know whether you are doing them right. The best you can hope is that your image resembles what you’re copying.

And I’m just plain lazy. As I trawl through Google, I skip over cool things because of the daunting detail involved. Some patterns are too much for me since I do everything by hand. I know some of my limits. I have considered digitally managing it, but that’s stressful and therefore antithetical to the whole exercise

Picked out a handful of designers when I started but it’s exploded as I learn about the vast landscape of the fashion world: names I never heard of, styles I’ve never seen. There’s a wonderful variety of everyday wear, fancy party stuff, and that theatrical-grade haute couture in which no one is ever really seen out and about. I like it all and want to make sure I include a mix.

Me personally? I’m not a clothes-horse. My wardrobe is almost entirely black so I don’t have to think about what I put on. I like things I can’t afford but I don’t look at the labels and usually shop cheaply. I bought a silk Anne Klein scarf with my very first real-job paycheck when I was 17. It cost $45 (an outrageous sum almost twenty-five years ago). I still have the scarf and it’s still beautiful.

As I Google various designer’s names, I attach the word “runway” to the search since many look books show models sitting or turning in ways that make it hard to see the clothing. There’s no dearth of material to browse, so the hardest part is narrowing down selections (it’s easy to want to do everything!).

purple_thingFinding cool stuff for the men is harder than expected. Runway men are either dull (I see Rachel‘s point about how disinteresting men’s clothes can be), or too silly to take seriously (that purple business featured here: case in point).

Someone like Tom Tierney could reproduce unconventional male attire as a matter of historical record, but I want my guys to look good! I’m okay with challenging myself a little on color. And styles that aren’t my idea of flattering. I’ve given each doll a personality and one of my men will wear the kinds of clothes that others think are fashionable even if they make me shudder. But I’m drawing a line at making my men look like idiots. By my biases, that means you will not be seeing them in raging pinks or baby doll dresses because I just don’t find those things attractive. On men or women!

As I search, my eyes immediately go to stuff that’s black. I might have to do a whole black & white regular feature to indulge that, but I want to really work more uncommon colors and styles into my mix.  Even (faith forfend) pastels.

I mix almost all of my own paint colors. So color itself is already challenging. My perception especially of reds and purples is very poor and in the past I have had to adjust saturation and tone levels in PhotoShop when I’ve failed to mix a color properly (I had to do it on one set of my Burberry pieces already). It’s one of the things I want to get better at through this process. But more on that aspect later.

To start with I’ve picked four relatively well-known designers. Are you ready? I’m ready!

 

Catwalk Couture: Paper Dolls in Progress

painting_01I love being a fly on the wall to observe others’ processes. Whether it’s art or writing or any kind of planning, really, I just enjoy seeing how people go about creating. I like my own process too, but I am abysmal at documenting it. I get caught up in the doing, and forget to visualize an audience, even when I’m mindful of it.

This is my way of saying I utterly failed to capture my work from conception to completion on the catwalk models even though it was my intention to provide a blow by blow. And perhaps that’s not terribly interesting to some of you anyway. There are many ways to skin a cat, but not everyone wants to watch it happen.

But I will at least give some specs: these will be Holbein and Winsor & Newton watercolor/gouache on hot press 100% cotton (ooo fancy!). With a little bit of Sharpie marker, a bit of Copic marker, and lots of small touch-ups in Photoshop. I’ve been using the same paint and paper for at least ten years and more. Some of my gouache I inherited from a painter back in Texas more than 20 years ago. Which is awesome because Winsor & Newton cadmium red in particular is insanely expensive and I have enough to probably last a lifetime.

I tend to use cheap brushes since my method of painting (which is more like pushing pigment around on the paper until it goes where I want), is hell on fine brushes. I am well aware that my tools and methods probably make the process more work than it needs to be. There are habits at this point that I can’t seem to break.

My dolls are typically about nine inches tall (I reproduce them at actual size in the downloadable plates). It makes doing little accessories a challenge and some of the detail work is very fine. That little face in the image above is about an inch and a quarter. Without the hair, it’s about the size of an actual quarter, in fact. I have thought of going larger to make it easier, but I am very bad at achieving solid color coverage (even in small scale), so this size feels ideal for me. Can still manage the little details, but I don’t get overwhelmed by large areas to paint. I have an insurmountable tentativeness about painting due to a traumatic event in my childhood involving colored paper that scarred me for life (you don’t want to hear about it–ha!).

burberryOnce I finished the models, I decided I wanted to plate them with some foundation pieces. I didn’t want to just post a bunch of half-naked bodies. My friend who asked me for a General Hux paper doll is (as you can imagine) a huge fan of Domhnall Gleeson. We were talking about that Burberry commercial he recently made. So I thought: why not start with Burberry?

Here’s why: I can’t draw a straight line to save my life. Burberry is all about lines!

But I decided not to let it stop me. If I quit every time I paint a lopsided line, I’ll never get anything done. And I want to learn from this process. Learn how to use and coordinate colors (even if I’m copying), how to paint patterns, how to reproduce styles and folds I don’t typically draw. So much to learn! Working on Cookie’s outfits for Empire showed me that I’m up for the challenge (more on that later).

The models are more or less done (two men, two women). And their handful of Burberry bits are done (thank you Lord). I’m still working on the plating. Then I’ll start to select wardrobes for them (not Burberry). I’ll try to capture that process as I go. I expect to start posting finished plates the first week of January, 2017!

 

The Catwalk is Coming!

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For a long time I have wanted to create some runway models for contemporary fashions and red carpet gowns. Drawing stick models is not my style, though, so I kept kicking that project down the lane. Recently I was looking at pictures of Lupita Nyong’o and thinking to myself: “dang, that woman makes everything look good!” I was going to make a Lupita Nyong’o paper doll, but then I realized this was my opportunity to expand that ambition.

Runway couture can be kind of silly. Sometimes it’s more about putting on a show and creating a buzz for an aesthetic rather than trotting out practical wearable garments. I love costuming, so both the fanciful and the practical are interesting to me. Also, my taste for clothing leans (if not falls over completely) for rather baroque influences. I like embroidery. I like velvet. I like heavy decoration.

This past weekend I knocked out my first two runway models (I’m thinking of doing four). I think I’m happy with them and I’ll introduce them to you shortly. And yes, one of them is definitely inspired by Lupita Nyong’o.

I have a couple of designers in mind that I’m going to start with, but if you have favorites, let me know!  I’m hoping to have these dolls and their fashions up and running in time for Oscar season!