Tag: Judy

Today we begin a new volume for Judy Tuesday!

Volume 25 takes us back a year to 1879 and features more “sedate” costuming than the later volumes. Even so, here are some fancy hats and fans to start with. If there’s symbolism in the carafe and the eye on the fan, I have no idea what it might be. But I do love the butterfly-looking fascinator.

No clue whatsoever how the other one represents a “mid-summer” costume, but again, the costumes seem to get more literal later on the years. These early ones sometimes just seem to reflect fashionable (and/or laughable) trends in dress.

[Click on this link or the image to download a printable .pdf of this plate]

Note: I know I said I was going to post something about Star Wars last week (and a related paper doll on Sunday), but things got weird and I mothballed my original plan (it’s a long story). So now I’m in the process of rethinking what to do with it.

I’ll post more on that tomorrow.

We conclude Volume No. 27 of the Judy series with this pair of December outfits. One of them is sporty, but the other is sorta in the spirit of the holidays now behind us: a little last-minute bling as we bring in the New Year, I guess.

I just finished Volume No. 25 while on holiday and it strikes me as even a little less imaginative than this volume, but hopefully it will still be interesting. It’s fun for me watching Chasemore (the artist) sort of make this minor feature into a thing of its own through the years. I have the advantage of seeing the breadth of the series all in one go, and I continue to be excited about fun things ahead.

But I’m trying to be methodical and not skip around so much, so we’re going to go backwards to pick up Vol. No. 25 over the next five weeks, and in February we’ll boldly go forward into new territory.

[Click on this link or the image to download a printable .pdf of this plate]

Today for Judy Tuesday we have a couple of nice winter-themed costumes that go well with the season.

I think the November costume might be intended to look like fallen leaves, but I’m totally speculating. The hat with the funny flaps standing up makes it look like a jester’s outfit. Even so, when I imagine this in color, I’m thinking of sunset colors (like turning leaves), but that may be because I lack imagination.

The December costume is more traditional winter wear trimmed with ermine and a fairly conservative hat with a nice plume. I like the muff and the extra long dark gloves. It feels like it has a slight Renaissance influence to it. If I were to pick a color for it, I think I would go with royal blue.

One more plate from Volume 27 next Tuesday, and then there will be all new stuff from an all new volume for the all new year!

[Click on this link or the image to download a printable .pdf of this plate]

Judy goes fishing in this week’s plate from Vol. 27, and wears a fish on her head. Also, believe it or not, I had to tone down the hat for the Guy Costume because the one in the journal was ridiculously huge with feathers that stretched across the page. I knew I would never be able to fit that on a plate, so I scaled it back a bit.

We’re in the early volumes of when these thematic costumes were just starting to become a “thing”. I tend to skip the more moderate ones, but soon the costume feature really takes off and things get occasionally super-wacky. So consider the fish a preview of weird stuff to come in future volumes. Not this one, alas. It’s going to go out on a nice, almost reasonable note.

We’ve got two more plates for Vol. 27, and then we’re going to go backwards for a wee bit so I can do some catch-up with Vol. 25. These Judy plates are so easy to make, I really have no excuse whatsoever not to have one every Tuesday from now until the volumes run out (and that will be a good long while!).

[Click on this link or the image to download a printable .pdf of this plate]

Somehow I managed to miss posting for Judy Tuesday. This is the problem with not having a regular work-week: I’m never entirely certain what day it is!

But all is well in the world because even though it’s Wednesday, we’ll celebrate it like it’s Tuesday with this new plate from Vol. 27. These two costumes are from September and October and sport a great tam and fez. Sometimes even when the dresses are sort of ordinary, the hats are absurd. This plate probably has two of the most even-handed designs in the series.

The costumes get even wackier through the years, so if you think they are a little weird now, wait until we get into the later volumes. It’ll be a while, though. I found Vol. 25, which means we’ll be regressing for the next outing (but just briefly), then we’ll move forward with Vol. 29 as previously planned. I’m hoping to work on Judy a lot over the Christmas holiday since I’m traveling and it’s the most portable of my projects (all I need is three Sharpies of varying widths, cardstock, and my iPad to thumb through the reference material). For all the complexity of my other projects, it’s always nice to work on Judy for the sheer simplicity.

[Click this link or the image to download a printable .pdf of these costumes]

For the month of December, we’re celebrating Judy Tuesdays, with a new plate of Judy costumes every second day of the work week in addition to whatever else I’ve got going on (haven’t quite figured it all out).

This week’s plate includes costumes from August, but we’ll be coordinated with the season by month-end. I really wanted to do an advent-type costume-a-day thing but I’m nowhere near prepared for something like that, so it’ll have to wait for next year (hopefully!).

I love drawing the Judy series because it’s easy and always full of fun weird things. The reference pictures are simple to render because they are already black and white line work and so I’m not struck in a morass of attempting to figure out complex patterns, brands, colors, etc. Much as I love doing the TV stuff, I definitely have moments where I just fudge it because I can’t be hacked to study some article of inscrutable clothing. Shoes are especially death because we don’t typically look at people’s feet much in television.

I hope you enjoy these costumes from Volume 27. I’m missing Vol. 28, so we’ll be skipping to Vol. 29 next. That will, again, put us out of sync with the season, but I’m not going to worry about it going forward.

[Click this link or the image to download a printable .pdf of these costumes]

Taking a break from The Walking Dead as I promised I would have new Judy dolls going forward and here they are. These dolls are the same size as the Judy I made for Volume 30, but they can’t share costumes. They will, however, be the regular on-going dolls for the remainder of this series. This is why I wanted two models; to keep a little variety in the mix.

Plates will be numbered sequentially, but I’ll likely skip around a bit. I like to try to match up the season with the outfits and sometimes that doesn’t quite make sense with the way the serial originally ran.

I’m stepping back to pick up Vol. 27 to begin with, and then will just work through the 10 volumes that I have available. It’s a lot of costumes and it should be a lot of fun.

Of all the dolls I am working on currently, these are the easiest for me to render, so I might actually set aside a special day just to post Judy plates in addition to whatever I’m posting on Thursdays. We’ll see how far ahead of the game I can get in the coming weeks.

[Click this link or the image to download a printable .pdf of these dolls]

Also:

Happy Thanksgiving all! Thank you for your kindness, consideration, and comments!

Another volume of Judy, the London serio-comic journal. This is Volume 30 from 1882 and includes an additional plate not originally posted to 19th Century Paper Dolls (yay, something new!).

Note: for reasons I can’t explain (nor comprehend, frankly), I reduced the size of the first Judy doll and clothes when I plated them, so even though this one is drawn exactly the same size, the two aren’t compatible. Sorry, I’ll be more mindful going forward.

Volume 30 of the Judy serial has some very strange things in it, but I tried to pick out a balance of costumes that caught my fancy (like the foresty-looking dress) or challenged my ability to reproduce patterns and textures.

Chasemore, the original artist, not only had a vivid imagination, but an true gift for inking. Sometimes his costumes are weird, but mostly they’re a joy to behold and even more fun to render. I can’t do all his designs justice, but the Judy series is fun to work on.

As mentioned previously, I’ll be posting all-new Judy dolls around Thanksgiving. There’s plenty more where these came from!

[Click to download a complete printable .pdf of this doll (6 pages)]

In an effort to collect my work here, I am reposting some dolls from from my previous sites. I want all my Judys in one place, so this is the first from that series. I’ll post the second one next week (probably on Tuesday), and I have an all-new series coming that should be ready around Thanksgiving.

And don’t worry: I’ll still post an all-new doll tomorrow, as per the schedule.

About Judy: Judy; or the London Serio-comic Journal was a weekly periodical published from 1867 to 1907 as a competitor to the much more popular Punch. One of its regular artists was A. Chasemore (possibly a pseudonym), who drew the “Fashion for the week”. These illustrations were fantasy concoctions; nothing anyone would have worn except in a theatrical or masquerade ball. The costumes were allegorical, sometimes political, and mostly whimsical. And since they were published in black & white, the sky’s the limit on as far as color interpretations!

The model for the outfits was a nameless and idealized “everywoman” but I have taken the liberty of calling her Judy after the publication. There actually was a character named Judy associated in the paper, but she was a comical, unglamorous frau.

These costumes are from Volume 26 of the series, published in 1880.

[Click to download a complete printable .pdf of this doll (6 pages)]