So the first thing to understand is that I have eighteen grey pencils in three sets of six, French Grey, Warm Grey and Cool Grey. For each set, the 10% pencil is the lightest and the 90% pencil is the darkest, with 20%, 30%, 50% and 70% in between. I almost always use French Grey — I think it has a nice warm tone to it, it blends well with the colorless blender and the lightest French Grey is lighter than the lightest greys from the other two sets. Most of the white dresses or parts of dresses that you see on my site will have been done in French Grey. I like Cool Grey for silver, white parts with cooler colors like blue and sometimes just if I’m bored of French Grey. Warm Grey I don’t use all that much.

Generally with grey I work from lights to darks. I like to start off with light lines and pin them down with darker colors later, so I used French Grey 20% and Cool Grey 20% to draw the base of the swimsuit and cover-up (traced over the doll). 10% is hard to see, so I’ll usually go with 20% or 30% here.

Using French Grey and Cool Grey 10%, I colored most of the area where I intend to have shaded areas eventually. This is the base that the rest of the grey goes on, so these lines are more like a covering than sharply defined shadows.

Working my way up now, I’m using French Grey and Cool Grey 20% to lightly redefine where the shadows are going to go.

French and Cool Grey 30% define the darker areas even more now and start to make it look less flat.

Now that I’ve used the lighter colors (10%, 20%, 30%) I like to stop and blend a bit with the colorless blender. The general way I use the colorless blender is to rub it over the dark areas first, blending them into the lighter areas gradually and softening the whole area. I don’t always use the colorless blender with white outfits, though — it makes it smoother but it only makes a really dramatic difference with colors. I especially won’t use it with whites if I’m scared of accidentally dragging another color into the white section.

Going from 30% to 50% with the French and Cool greys is a big jump – if I wasn’t doing the tutorial, I might stop here and not use the darker greys, because the more you use the darker greys, the more risk there is of it looking less “white” and more “grey.” Anyways, I redid all the major lines and some of the shading with French and Cool Grey 50% here.

Using French and Cool Grey 70%, I added in even deeper shadows, especially around the knot at the waist, and redid the border lines.

Going back to French and Cool Grey 50%, I added in deeper shading where I thought it was needed. (Note, in this tutorial I don’t use the 90% colors at all. Beware if you have them out with the others, more than once I’ve picked up 90% when I meant to use 70% and made myself very grumpy.)

Again, I’ve smoothed out the colors with the colorless blender. I also added some more shadowing to the sides with the 50% pencils.

Added color to the flower and some little pink dots to the cover-up, and voila! I would have probably stopped at step 7 if I was doing a proper outfit, though. I think you can use a lot of grey and still have something be read as white, but it’s easy to slip into being more grey than white. In this white dress which I think turned out well, the lines are all French Grey 50% and the only hint of 70% is at the folds in the hem.

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 I saw this pattern on A Dress A Day and thought it was just beyond cute and it needed paperdolling. Seriously, look at the little collar and the pointy shoulders. Adorable. Erin thought it made a good airship hostess uniform, so I added a little cap and little airships around the hem. (Yes, that’s what they’re supposed to be…) Check out the original post and a post about a version of the dress being auctioned off.

I don’t have too much else to say about this dress other than that drawing tiny airships is fun and that my scanner is starting to annoy me (see the banding? It’s been doing that recently, plus the blue is cuter in person), so please go create a dress for me on my dress wiki.

So I got a new Trek Wasabi. I haven’t had a bike in years, much less a good one, and I’m so excited about it. This is a really geeky bike; not geeky in the sense of “My new bike is perfectly aerodynamic and has fifteen thousand speeds” but more of like horribly cute and retro. (Brian thinks I’m crazy for getting a one-speed, but I don’t mind — I never could work gears well anyways, and we live in Ann Arbor, not San Francisco.) I’ve wanted a bike for a while, one that I would actually use and love, and I think Wasabi here fits the bill. I drew this dress based on Wasabi’s coloring and a rockabilly dress pattern from Damn Good Vintage.

I found Min’s blog when she linked to me a while back, and I’ve quite enjoyed perusing her charming vintage hat collection since then. (It’s called “It’s Raining Min,” which always makes me think of warriors falling off a cliff…) I really liked this royal blue pillbox, but what to partner it with? The answer came in a recent A Dress A Day post in which the weird poses of the models were discussed at length. But the outfit, a slim 1960s dress, was cute, so I borrowed the look to go with the hat, and voilà.