“Look at that one,” he said, pointing to a woman in a white and red gown. “How brazen to wear such a thing.”

“What do you mean? It’s kind of an odd color combination, but…”

“Considering poor Lenora’s fate, it’s downright indecent.” He shook his head. “She must not have known, or she’d have never worn such a thing tonight.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before,” Linnetta replied, “so I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.”

“It seems to me Lenora’s story is the most tragic of all of your sisters,” her partner said. “How horrible her last days must have been.”

“It wasn’t her fault though. About Georgiana and Ginevra, I mean…”

“Who’s to say for sure? She thought it was. Maybe Georgiana was just an accident, but she did deliver the poison to Ginevra.”

“Shall we dance again?” Linnetta asked, hoping to stop the conversation, but she regretted the words as soon as they were said. Just getting to her feet made her feel light-headed, and she clung to her partner as they made their way to the dance floor. Where was her father? Once she could have counted on thoughtful Ginevra to save her from such a predicament, or for Celestine to cause some sort of distraction.

“It’s all right,” he said. “This will be the last dance before the announcement of the queen.” She could hardly pay attention to the dance or the music; she had to fight back the feeling of being overwhelmed. It didn’t help that her partner was still talking about her family.

“I’ve heard,” he said, “that towards the end, Emmeline became paranoid, which I suppose was a reasonable reaction given the circumstances. She said Celestine complained of a crushing feeling right behind her eyes, shortly before her unfortunate boating accident, and that Lenora refused to see anyone before she took her life, blaming a horrible headache. And so when she started getting headaches herself, her own retreat was foretold.”

“You know more than I do, I’m afraid,” Linnetta said, her eyes downcast. “I was so dreadfully sick that the whole time is still such a blur. My father shielded me from the details, too…”

“Of course. You wouldn’t have needed to know things like that,” her dancing partner replied.

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BitterLilly sent me colored versions of the two most recent black and white dresses – they’re very delicate and cute! Click for the princess gown and for the masquerade gown. And as before, vote for next week and… uh… start suggesting literary character Halloween costumes, because I was counting on fairies winning and I haven’t thought of any. I’d like them to be Halloween related in some way though. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is probably in, for example. Assuming that fairies don’t make a comeback…

When her partner suggested they sit, Linnetta agreed immediately, hoping that it wasn’t obvious that she was stumbling, rather than gliding, to the edge of the dance floor. He guided her to a chair beside another stranger, a woman dressed in shades of blue that seemed to shift and flow. Linnetta’s fatigue must have been getting to her; her head was swimming. Linnetta accepted a glass of punch, and — when she’d finished the whole thing in one decidedly un-aristocratic gulp — the woman in the blue gown had gone.

“I think I had better leave soon,” Linnetta said tentatively. “I’m exhausted… I think I’ve been overdoing it tonight.”

“But you can’t leave yet,” her dance partner answered, “the queen of the ball hasn’t been announced!” He leaned towards her and whispered conspiratorially, “You’re bound to win…”

This cheerful thought made her sit up a little straighter, eyeing her competitors. Certainly no other gown was as striking as hers, and no one else had a prayer of causing as much sensation as she had simply by showing up. Her partner scanned the crowd too, frowning.

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… Some dresses, like yesterday’s, take pages and pages of sketching and redrawing, and some dresses you sketch with a cheap pen while waiting for your car to be repaired and they come right together and couldn’t be any other way. Not complaining. I like this one, although the two middle blue shades are more different on the original than they are in the scan. (Today, after a good night’s sleep, I like the green one too…) The poll is still up, so please vote.

After three years of black and purple mourning clothes, Linnetta’s gown for the masquerade ball — a playful representation of a demon princess — was a blaze of glory. She felt as if its crimson lining was burning her skin, and her cheeks glowed with, if not perfect good health, a fair imitation of it considering all she had gone through. Even after so many near brushes with death and grief, no one was as beautiful as she was tonight: such thoughts consoled her on such a difficult evening. Linnetta bowed her head demurely as she made her entrance at her father’s side, ignoring the buzz of voices. It was distasteful to hear people placing bets on when she was going to die, but she had gotten used to it.

Linnetta found herself trapped in polite conversations with Lady Someone-or-another, and then Duchess So-and-so, and (so it seemed, in the rush of masks and spangles) every woman at the ball; in her absence from society, Linetta had forgotten most of the titles she ever knew, but she’d lost none of her charm. She didn’t really want to talk about her sisters, but whenever a conversation partner made sympathetic noises about her unfortunate loss — five sisters, and so young! — she made grateful noises in return, so each nosy woman could leave feeling like they had comforted poor bereaved Linnetta without actually sharing in her tragedy.

The cursed sisters all should have been there that night, and Linnetta felt their absence keenly, as if she saw them from the corner of her eye. The masked faces were all focused on her, trying to predict the manner by which the youngest and fairest daughter would meet her end, and wondering if it might even be tonight. Linetta ignored them, taking refuge in a cluster of acquaintances. She couldn’t even lose herself in the dance, for it’d be unseemly to be too carefree at her first appearance after her long illness, and the period of mourning.

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… Don’t worry, I’ve written the whole story out in advance this time. In terms of site news, no one has guessed the correct singer / group that I learned to draw gold from. (Hint: look at my about this page link for an idea of possible dates – this isn’t a trick I picked up recently). Also, I’m going to put up a poll tomorrow for week 3 of costumes: please post any suggestions in the comments.

Sorry for missing yesterday – the time went past a lot quicker than it’s supposed to. There is a chance I won’t post tomorrow, but that is because I want my masquerade series to be great and I don’t want to rush it… We’ll see, wish me luck. If I don’t post tomorrow, you have this black and white masquerade gown to keep you company…

The elf dress coloring was suggested by Monica, who guessed my favorite warm color to be Sunburst Yellow (it’s in there, actually, in the gold part). Hope you like it! As before, I’ll color the masquerade dress to the order of whoever guesses this week’s question, and it’s kind of a strange one…
I learned my technique for coloring gold (fabric, metal) a while back, when I tried copying a costume from a specific singer or musical group. Which singer / musical group was it?
Not giving you any more clues than that… One guess per person please!

Leaving the poll on the LOTR costumes up a little longer…

I didn’t really intend to return to elves for the last day of this series… I wanted to do an Entwife with an orange blossom theme, but I got started too late and my patience with making a dress out of leaves and bark just ran out. You can always tell when I just want to get done for the day, because the dress will be white. No matter how crazy and detailed it ends up, if it’s white, it usually means I started out in a grumpy mood.

Galadriel doesn’t get a lot of description besides “white,” making her good to paperdoll on a grumpy day. I really rather like how this gown turned out, although if I was to redo it I would probably cut off the gauzy middle layer of material on the sleeves.

That makes my seventh costume for Halloween: a whole week of Lord of the Rings, all finished. Uh, those of you who have followed me for a while (like, for more than a week) may have figured this out already, but it’s slightly rare for me to finish up a project so well and consistently: it’s usually one or the other. (See also my poor dancing princesses…) I’m rather proud of myself. Since I don’t think masquerade gowns are likely to be upset at this late hour, I’m putting up a new poll just to satisfy my own curiosity… It’s rather unfair to pit the black and white elf dress against the others, because I think it’ll be lovely when it’s colored, but oh well.

Brian got Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride a little while back, and we traded off turns playing it for weeks. In terms of overall plot it’s pulled straight from the big book of RPG cliches – evil dude wants to take over! only the legendary hero can defeat him! queens are kidnapped! – but there’s two things that really make it great. One is “party talk,” where in different situations (entering a new town or dungeon level, for example, or after talking to most NPCs) you can talk to the characters that are in your group. The amount of dialogue this game must have is staggering – imagine writing a different response for all those different characters! It’s amusing because a lot of the time it’s stuff that you, the player, are probably thinking, so hearing it from another character in their own voice can be a little startling. It really helps make the characters real, too, when they have their own takes on situations or wonder about things that you might not even have noticed. That leads into the other thing that makes the game great: the generation system. You start out as a little kid, then time skips forward and you play as an adult, getting married, and then time skips forward again and your children are old enough to go adventuring with you. So it’s not like your character is accompanied by some random red mage, fighter and white mage: you’re almost always with friends, often with family, and they always have some interesting thing to say. For someone like me, who likes story and character interaction better than battle systems and so on, the game was great fun.

In the DS version of the game, you have the option to marry three women: Bianca, your childhood friend, Nera, the kind and gentle daughter of a rich family, and Deborah, Nera’s haughty and blunt sister. The game pushes you to choose Bianca (you have adventures with her in your childhoods, Nera has another guy that loves her, heck, in the old versions of the game if you didn’t choose Bianca her father died) but you can choose any of them. So I did choose Bianca my first time around, but Nera definitely has the prettier dress, and anyways she’s more my type, if I was a male RPG hero. (Although I suspect that playing the game with Deborah around to talk to is the most fun.)

This dress is also from when my cousin and I were drawing together, so I didn’t really have a plan for it, I was just playing around with the different greens. (I didn’t really intend on scanning these, but I ended up liking them so much that I just had to.) It seems to me kind of like Evil Fairy Queen goes to the prom. I’m sure she would spike the punch and turn girls with prettier dresses into tadpoles, and heaven help those who danced with her and those who turned down a dance with her alike.

Wikipedia was never as fun as my Magic Wiki Dress, at least for me anyways. I loved watching things shift from dinosaurs to masquerades back to dinosaurs, and so on. Brian was at Recent Changes Camp 09, a conference at wikis, this last week (which is what inspired the post in the first place) and he reported that Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki, said at the “Creation Myths of Wiki” session that for a wiki to really work, “you have to believe that not done is better than done.” A perfectionist like me doesn’t always get that, but I feel like I did while watching the wiki get edited. I could let it go all year and see what people come up with — and I definitely want to draw some of the other outfits it produced. But to make things simple, I gave it a deadline this time, and this was the last outfit that got posted before noon on the 21st. I don’t like how the sheer purple part turned out, I forgot all about the gloves, the silver scrollwork turned into black scrollwork somewhere along the line and I took some artistic license on the shift, but I think it turned out pretty nicely! It was definitely interesting to draw…

Click for larger version (Penelope Cruz); Click for larger version (Kate Winslet); Click for larger version (Angelina Jolie); click for the list of dolls.

11:56: And that’s it for this year’s Oscars: thanks to everyone who kept me company! I enjoyed this a lot, I think I’ll do it again next year too.

11:38: I think I’m going to do something really easy tomorrow. Like a mermaid wearing a paper bag.

11:33: Yay for Kate! Wow, I had no idea how the back of that dress worked. Glad my drawing doesn’t contradict it.

11:19: Ohhh, Reese. Talk about a seatbelt strap dress. I really like the shade of blue though

11:17 OK — now I’m exhausted. That’s it for my drawing tonight!

11:07: Just finished Angelina’s black gown, scanning and processing. I think that will be it for the night, I’m tired now. Glad I don’t work tomorrow!

10:57: Oh, excellent, a Bollywood number. Wonder how Wall-E will fit in?

10:27: Yawn. How much longer do we have to go? Ten more categories. I wonder if I can do Angelina Jolie’s dress in that time? Black is easy enough…

10:25: Scanner made a hash out of this one, but oh well. I might have it in me for one more, but it has to be super simple.

10:12: Finished with Kate Winslet’s dress — not perfect but not awful. Scanning and processing.

9:37: I’m not so sure I can pull off Kate, but I’m going to give it a shot…

9:26: Is the sparkly vampire contractually obliged to keep his head down and glower at all times?

9:23: Funny that Tilda Swinton is the one bucking the nude lip trend. I think she looks fantastic!

9:21: Score another one for lavish period pieces!

9:20: Here’s our favorite category, costume design…

9:16: AAGH. Now I finish and post the thing, I find a better picture. I was close but it’s not quite right.

9:13: Here it is, Penelope Cruz’s white lace gown. I can’t promise this is precisely how the skirt works, but I think it’s pretty close. I’m thinking Kate Winslet next, but I need to take a second and look at the new pictures. Oh yeah, yay Wall-E!

9:00: Done with the dress — scanning and processing, up soon. Feel free to suggest my next subject in the comments. I want something with color now!

8:47: EXCELLENT. If I’m drawing the Oscar winner’s gown, I’ll get more traffic. *grin*

8:31: Ohhh, such love for the jazzy Lawrence of Arabia theme. Had to restart Penelope Cruz’s dress but it’s fun. Expect it to be done by 9, 9:15.

8:07 Angelina Jolie went too subtle, I think, but I guess that’s better than ending up on Go Fug Yourself tomorrow…

7:52: OK, I’ve got my first paperdoll subject of the night.

7:47: Well, Kate Winslet is doing the one shoulder strap thing too, but I think it works for her dress…

7:43: Now that is quite a mermaid skirt on Melissa George. I think the fetish-style corset lace-up is jarring, but I like it from the front well enough.

7:41: Sarah Jessica Parker’s dress is growing on me — I think the belt makes it not so much a prom dress, even with that poofy skirt.

7:29: justin.tv is failing me. It’s superfluous considering I have the Getty Images pictures, but it just doesn’t seem the same without the inane chatter in the background…

7:20: Wow, Marisa Tomei also has the seatbelt strap that Eleanor and I don’t like. Just saw a bit of it — looks like there’s something interesting going on with her skirt. Hurry up, Getty Images…

7:09: Great picture of Viola Davis and Taraji Henson — I think both of their dresses are really nicely done. Still haven’t decided who to draw first though.

7:06: Yeah, I’m not a fan of her neckline or one sleeve, but love the rest of her dress.

6:50: Hate the E! football-esque highlight pen — love that color blue on Frieda Pinto.

6:19: Ah — this is how her dress works. It’s a little more than most of them are going to be, I bet, and it reminds me a little of a pinecone, but I like it — I’d just take off the bauble on the belt. And wow, what a train.

6:09: I’m watching at justin.tv now. Did I see a Cinderella-style overskirt gather on Miley? I just got a glimpse…

6:00 PM EST: Welcome to Livedolling the Oscars with Liana. I’ll be your host, once I stop frantically looking for a live feed of the red carpet coverage. I’ll also be using images from Getty Images’ Oscar coverage as reference. I’m not the only one liveblogging the Oscars, but I bet I’m the only one armed with colored pencils and not snark. There are some cute dresses showing up on the red carpet already, but so far they’re all “TV personalities.”

So recently, I got an e-mail from Diana asking if I could draw a dress for a roleplay she was taking part in. I went through and read the scenario, and Diana’s character Leslie is a human spy in a magical world who has to infiltrate a masquerade ball attended by aristocrats. So I thought this was a fun challenge: what sort of thing might a spy wear to such a ball? It’s dead easy to make a gown that says “hey everyone, look at me!” or one that says “I am a Woman of Mystery” but one that looks expensive and magical enough that no one questions its wearer’s right to be there, yet isn’t so noticeable that everyone winds up talking about her… fun. I ended up going with blue, a rich but soothing color, and an overskirt with fabric like shimmering water and seafoam, studded with crystals — although I don’t really think the crystals worked out too well. Oh well. Diana, I hope you like it anyways, and I look forward to seeing where the story goes!

The poll is yet ongoing…