I have three silkstones, two in lingerie, a redhead and a blonde, and one African American one who came to me nude. She's been wearing a little green skirt and jersey top for some time and when I set her up to pose for my drawings, the shape of her skirt was perfect.
Silkstone dolls have a lovely skin quality, gorgeous legs and the tiniest little waists and uplifted bustlines carried on fairly broad shoulders and ribcages, and were all elements I wanted to put into play, to emphasize, in the design, starting with the legs and waist, which the little green cotton skirt emphasized. That was where I began.
The bodice, now. Well the only excuse for a neckline is to emphasize the jewellery one wears, so I figured in a minimal bodice, like a one-piece swimsuit. Something on tv triggered it, though I don't recall what. I wanted the back to be open and to run up the sides of the body to just cover the sides of the bust -- that side line is what I wanted.
That then left me with do I want straps or not? I had already thought that I would continue on with the chain strap element I used on Ellowyn's Little Black Deconstruction Dress. Straps had nowhere to go; if it were a bathing suit, I would cross them. I decided then that I could use a thin silk (on the doll, my available fabric, tulle) understructure to which the bodice could be sewn so that I could do away with straps and also provide the modesty a useful LBD prefers, along with a contrasting color, a muted red-violet, a slightly paler one (a muted RV tint*) -- so that it would show against my model's darker skin.
A high neckline that closes at the back of the neck would provide the vertical support for the strapless bodice. Leaving the entire back seam open to the top of the skirt would provide a peek-a-boo window to frame not only the model's (lovely) skin, but also frame the long counterweight of the back of the necklace, which I decided, if this were a production piece, would have one of those tacky or tarty little Tiffany heart charms as its weight: they're popular. For one of my own, I would use a teapot charm, to indicate that this is not just a LBD but a tea dress -- as the loose sleeves of the underblouse suggest.
To emphasize the legs and waist, the short but full skirt with (what is that piece called, a yoke?) a waistline-hip yoke was already in place, and to further emphasize them, sheer nylons -- panty hose -- in the same muted RV tint with a diamond and dot design in black running up the outside of the stocking on each leg would pull it all together elegantly: the diamonds are meant to be woven as open spaces, again to provide windows for skin, as the back of the blouse does. * muted red violet tint: great minds think alike, Durelle!
The shoes grew before any of the other elements after the skirt -- just a simple strap across the ball of the foot, exposing 3-4 toes and covering joint of toe to foot, with an ankle-strap and covered heel.
The necklace would be silver, a flat circle chain, three (or four) strands from mid-shoulder to shoulder, draped to hang just below the hollow of the throat and clavicle, across the sternum, and just above the bodice line -- as low as possible into the neckline without being in close proximity to the highest part of the bust fabric. These
draped chains would join larger circles meant to sit on the shoulders, tacked to blouse if need be. A chain and clasp goes across the back, from which drops the counterweight in the window/frame element of the blouse back.
In the
second stage of the drawing,
I thought to put halter straps into the bodice and a very thin buttoned join across the back of the neck, attached as bias tape to the blouse neckline. In the final revision, which I had to do
on the computer, I took them out again (and they are still seen in the reproduction of the full drawing -- at top of page).
Now a funny thing happened on the way to the . . . . It was so relaxing, just drawing and thinking on the white paper that, in darkening up the lines to trace over, finalizing shapes,
my pencil started tracing the motion and hemlines of the sleeves and each made a circle, from the models just where they were:
two adjacent circles. What wonderful structure underlay the whole thing!
From there,
it was a short step to seeing a Yin-Yang circle behind the two figures, one of which had not had her hair colored in yet, so that
the hair colors provided the seed parts of the opposite within the larger ground of the comma-shaped halves,.
Since I had opted to do a drawing, I let it turn into a drawing -- not an illustration -- from which I got an immense sense of satisfaction. On the final presentation, compilation (is is compiliation or compilation???) of representative elements, the Yin-Yang drawing element takes center stage with the cropped section of the two dolls in front of the black and white, with the full-length examples receding in importance.
