With caveats: I have not tested the printing on it to make sure it will come out okay. But it will definitely download a nice .pdf at the moment, so feel free to clicky click! All of these plates will eventually be posted in the Gallery. And while I am quibbling: the .pdf text refers to the website at Lookingland.com, but I confess it's still not pulled together at the moment. In fact, I figure you who are visiting here and seeing this work are actually getting to see it before it's officially posted (which is great for you since I don't think I am officially posting anything over there until the start of the new year!).

But anyway, here are the characters in their "official" scaling (unless the printing test goes horridly wrong). They are reduced about 25% of their original size, but I don't think they are too small to enjoy.

I also gotta say: no matter how much I love Photoshop and think it's the most amazing thing ever, I also can hate it sometimes. Putting the dolls on their bases and getting all this laid out was practically painful. I sure hope it gets easier now that I have a template. I'll try to post the download for the second plate (with all the clothes) this weekend. And then: new stuff!

UPDATE: The print test was a success on my end. Yay!

Went out of town through this past weekend, which really put me behind in the posting. I'll be leaving again first week of November, so I wanted to make sure I posted some eye-candy for the interim and I should also be posting more stuff this coming weekend. Been working on trying to get the download-able .pdfs completed (and fighting with the format).

Until I can post those and get some new material up, you will just have to enjoy this gorgeous Worth gown from 1893. I don't love the 90s because of the crazy leg-o-mutton sleeves, but some of the dresses are still quite beautiful.

As promised, here are Olivia's accessories: practical work shoes (brown, but probably blacked for mourning, though the dye is fading), a black silk kerchief in lieu of a veil, and a lace bib/collar for Sundays. It's likely she wore a black collar for the first year of her mourning. Also, an apron. She's carrying a bottle of medicine concocted primarily of digitalis and a spoon. The medicine is for Emmaline Hunter, who has a damaged heart. Digitalis was one of very few medicines available on the cusp of huge medical breakthroughs due to the vast sea of misery caused by the imminent war.

We won't see Olivia again for a while, so this is it for her for the time being, but she will have new outfits when we return to her in the story.

It occurs to me that until I get the gallery in order (hopefully this weekend), I should link back to the paper dolls so that they can be easily found (especially since they are falling off this front page at this point and since not all of them will have tags at the side to narrow down the search).  So, to find the Olivia paper doll, click here!

Olivia's dress is kinda drab for several reasons: she's poor, she has to wear something she can work in, and she is in mourning for both her husband who was killed in a glass factory explosion, and her infant son who died from a fever. So no frills for her during this period. It's been over a year since the deaths, so the muted purple is socially acceptable, but she still has not begun to incorporate any trims or visible buttons into the mix.

The dress is also shorter length than a woman of leisure would don for anything other than picnicking. Again, that's because these are work clothes, so they have to be a little practical. She would wear petticoats (at least one) under this. I didn't make her a petticoat. Maybe I will later on.

Tomorrow I will post the rest of her accessories including her shoes, her kerchief, a lace collar, and her work apron.

As promised, here is the outfit James is wearing under his smoking robe from yesterday's post. It's pretty typical day wear: a plain white cotton pleated-front shirt, dun-colored trousers, and a print cotton vest. I wish I could say that I copied an actual Victorian fabric design for the vest, but what's here is actually a variation on a 19th century fabric design ~ so modified, we'll have to call it "inspired by" rather than based on. I will try to be a little more faithful to the period in the future, but while there are some artists who have done amazing work reproducing museum pieces as paper dolls, I may be too lazy for that amount of commitment. Besides which, the characters are made up, so why not their clothes as well?

For the record, I created the detail on the vest with watercolor pencils (Faber-Castell's Albrecht Drurer). I am just learning how to use them, so as an initial experiment I am pleased with the effect. They go on amazing when the paper is wet, but I let the under-paint on the vest dry first, so the effect is drier here than I wanted.

Lastly, he has no shoes here because he's wearing this outfit with the slippers I posted on Monday.

And I am posting here as well, the full set of items (except the nightshirt) assembled for your amusement. I am pretty pleased with how James came out. I think I mentioned elsewhere that he's always been a pain in all my other many incarnations of these dolls, but I am very happy with this particular rendition and am having fun with him. This is a good indicator that I will continue working and not let things slough off as I have in the past.  Yay!

I am currently working on Olivia's clothes and hope to post them soon. Then I have additional clothing for James and Emmaline and another character who is introduced in the next scene. I have so many characters and clothes to make, I better step it up!

I am also rethinking my tags on this blog, which are getting kind of unwieldy. Not sure how to fix that, however. I can't make tags for every single character (there would be dozens and dozens!). I would hope the gallery would help organize the characters and anyone who is not a "principal" would just be labeled "Supporting Characters" or something of that ilk.

And speaking of the gallery, I am still working on that. Maybe this coming weekend I will be able to get it in order.

This gold smoking robe (it's longer than a "jacket", but too fancy for just a bathrobe), is a bit much even for James, but I had fun designing it and painting it. Originally I was going to add some maroon detailing to the piping and the belt, but decided to leave it the way it is.

When we first see James, he's taken this robe off in the kitchen to flirt with the sometimes-cook. The outfit I will post next is what he's wearing underneath (the doctor is in the house, so he is dressed ~ otherwise there would likely be nothing underneath!).

I may enhance the lost detail on this as you probably can't read the title of the paper he has in his hand. It's called The Whip. There was a popular underground movement in the 1840s to publish racy political tracts that were ultimately banned as pornography for their lewd poems and often salacious engravings.

In the 1850s, I imagine there may have been one or two still quietly in limited circulation. James would have easily been a contributor to such trashy rags.

I had a busy and distracting weekend (probably more distracting than busy, but the point is I didn't get around to painting all the clothes I had anticipated). Nevertheless, to show that I am actually still working, I offer you a few undergarments for James this morning:

Basically a night shirt (that he probably almost never wears, which is why it's so nicely ironed and not rumpled), a pair of silk stockings, and a pair of mildly amusing carpet slippers that I adapted from a pattern I found online. I have James' smoking robe and some other things to post, so I will try to scan them this week.

We're almost out of underwear. Outerwear to follow!

Today, a lovely piece from the French ladies' magazine Le Monde Elegant. This is the plate from July, 1877 (the late 70s and early 80s are probably my favorite eras in terms of 19th century clothing. The crazy-wide hoops are gone and the enormous ridiculous bustles haven't yet become vogue.

I got this image from the University of Washington fashion plate collection, which is a pretty cool site with lots of neat plates to explore (everything from the Empire period through the Edwardian period).

Will be posting more original work this weekend.

Something to tide you over while I recover from a mung and try to get back on track here.

And okay, the mannequin is kind of creepy on this one, but I love the outfit. This is typical dress attire for a man in the 1850s: dinner coat with tails, cravat, linen trousers, silk hat. 

In America (the clothing here is British), after the Civil War, a lot of color in dress attire for men was not especially fashionable. Black and white was the mode of the day (or evening, I should say), with the tuxedo taking over, more or less completely for a while. Prior to that, men's clothing was still colorful (and interesting!). This is perhaps part of why I like this decade in particular. Colors after the war were not unheard of, just not the norm.

Love the mannequin's crazy coiffure. Good decade for clothes, bad for hair.

This awesome picture comes from the awesome collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The first time we see Emmaline Hunter, she is sick in bed.

In the mid-19th century people sometimes wore more clothes to bed than they did while awake. Particularly if they might be receiving visitors (doctors, etc.), in which case it was as important to be well-dressed in bed as it would be out. Not that Emmie would care about such things, but modesty would dictate she at least be covered up and not just in a chemise.

I chose for her a plain negligee, which in those days usually meant a robe with a sash made of light (and occasionally sheer) fabrics. Most were heavy on the ruffle/lace/and decorative side, but Emmie's tastes are rather plain, so she wouldn't likely dress something like this up too much.

I did a very messy paint job on this piece (was fighting with the paint and a new brush for some reason), but I am nonetheless pleased that what I perceived as a somewhat slapdash attempt actually looks all right! While it is hard to scan watercolors, the scanning process can be forgiving of major muck-ups, too. Only had to do a little digital touch-up to fix a bad streak. Bet you can't even tell where!

Additionally, I made for Emmie a simple corset typical of the period (short-waisted), and a plain pair of stockings with ribbons for garters.

Once again, I think Emmaline's clothing is generally geared toward the practical for the most part. She comes from a family of modest means and in the late 1850s James is employed as a schoolteacher, primarily, though does a little architectural and engineering consulting on the side. They are not wealthy people at this point.

I suppose I should have made her some slippers, but she wouldn't be wearing them in bed, so I sorta forgot. I will try to do some later and add them to the final .pdf version.

Speaking of which, I am sill trying to figure out how to best .pdf these dolls for you amusement. I have some samples posted to the gallery at the moment, but I am using them to test some things. I will make a big screaming announcement when the actual final versions are up.

More to follow!