BA1a ★ Project3 ★ Character
10:02Part 1: Silhouettes
For this project, I was assigned 1800s America. While reading "The Tinderbox", I became quite interested in the character of the princess, who actually doesn't spend very long awake, since she's mostly seen in her sleep by the soldier during the course of the story. I thought that it would be interesting to draw the princess in a nightgown reflecting the location and time period. She would also be the daughter of a mayor if the story were converted to fit with 1800s America, rather than an actual princess.
I started off by researching existing nightgowns from 1800s America, since I had no idea what the popular silhouettes for dresses were at this time. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an interesting collection on their website, featuring many nightgowns from different time periods, including American nightgowns. I decided to start looking at these for inspiration.
1&7:
With this, I felt equipped enough to start exploring silhouettes.
However, I found it very difficult to create unique silhouettes and designs, as the silhouettes are all quite similar. I found myself wanting to add more detail to the dresses since the nightgowns of this time period were so intricate.
Part 2: Iteration
I started off by exploring hairstyles and how they suited the time period, so I knew whether the dress should accomodate for how lengthy her hair was or not. However, I ended up liking the bottom right the most as it felt feminine yet suitably 'old-fashioned', which meant that it was easier to detail the top of the dress in my later iterations.
I then began to use some of my ideas from the silhouettes to sketch out iterations of the princess' nightgown, playing with layers, ruffles and other details. I decided that I liked the top right one best, and moved to adding colour.
I wanted a simple colour scheme that would convey the image of a calm and collected young lady. I played with mostly creams with coloured accents before deciding that I liked the mid-green the best; I thought that it was a relaxing colour scheme that felt like it linked the princess to concepts such as nature and serenity. However, i wasn't fond of the extra layer of darker frill I had added along the bottom of the dress and resolved to remove it.
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