Tbt #1: Kitty

I have a binder full of women. It sits in a drawer in my art studio containing a few hundred paper dolls, all a decade or older, all locked in place under plastic photo protector pages. These dolls, an obsession of mine as a tween and teen, represent but a small fraction of the original collection. Originally around 600 or so cut and labeled individuals, this collection wasn’t merely a bunch of pretty lady dolls. No, they had names, personalities, and back stories. Most of the dolls I no longer have were of spouses,
boyfriends, family members, and offspring. They weren’t just fashion dolls- they were people.

I was a weird kid, y'all.

From the roughly 300 of these that remain, I now plan to (once a week) redraw a character from my binder. In doing so I get to revisit the stories I created way back when and expand on my drawing and design skills.

The first in this series is Kitty. I would put her full name but in retrospect I now question my choice of accidentally giving her the initials KKK. The original drawing on the left is very old and faded. She is the first paper doll of this series that I drew.

Kitty was older, middle aged. She was the kind of woman that had a sadness that surrounds her. In my stories she had grown children. It was the kind of parent/child relationship where the kid comes to realize the parent is a fuck up but the parent is so pathetic that the kid can’t help but feel bad for them. For my re-draw I pictured her in the full technicolor glory of youth. She looks ready to go to some sort of underground party from the 60s or serve some martinis to a handsy businessman at a high class strip club.

That’s it for Kitty. 

Parting art lesson: Anyone who teaches you to pose peoples’ arms behind their backs so you don’t have to learn how to draw hands is noooooot helping you out in the long run. Curse my impressionable twelve year old self!!



Update: You can now buy a limited edition artist trading card of Kitty for only $2.50, which includes shipping. Check her out here!