Christmas Lolita Collection Redux 2: Electric Boogaloo (UPDATED)

It's that glorious time of year again, people! My Christmas Lolita collection of cards has some brand new additions to the roster!

Now onto the commentary!

"Loliskate": The main change I made for this one was giving her a fluffy bunny hood. Other than that, the only real upgrade was a cohesive colour scheme of pinks, blues and white and better streaks of pink and blue amongst her blonde hair. Too bad her skating skills haven't improved since the first time I drew her back in 2008. :-P

"Gingerbread Lolita": Would you believe that this is the second time I've done a revamp of this particular lolita? I last drew her back in 2010 when I first wanted to update this series but I think this iteration feels a little more faithful to the fashion. Plus, I can finally draw classic old school lolita headdresses!

"Caroller Lolita": Another example in which I decided to change the skin tone and hair colour of the original design because hey, I love my diversity in my girls. I think the colours (especially in her outfit) came out a lot richer and vibrant and I love it all the more because of it. :-)

"Snowlita": This was originally the Snowman Lolita but I love my terrible puns too much. XD

Anyways, out of all my designs, this one was the most challenging (but fun!) to revamp into a more realistic lolita style. I know white face is considered a huge "no-no" in lolita but hey, I see shironuri fused with lolita fairly frequently so I figured, hey, this might work here as long as I don't get super literal with the snowman imagery. It's also safe to assume I had Mana (aka the Patron Saint of Gothic Lolita Fashion) on the brain for this design.

Christmas Lolita Collection Redux!

They're baaaaaack!

That's right! It's been years since I first drew the Christmas Lolita collection and well, let's just say I've been chomping at the bit to revamp these designs. Not only has my art changed drastically since then (in terms of color, anatomy, facial features etc.) but my knowledge and experience with lolita fashion in general has been expanded greatly. To say that the old dress designs are "lolita inspired" would be generous. :-P

The cards are available at My Sister's Closet in Vancouver, British Columbia for $5.00 each. Proceeds of each card sold go towards the Battered Women's Support Services. Gorgeous cards (if I may say so myself) for a great cause!

Reindeer Lolita: If there's anything that I've picked up from working on these cards, it's getting creative with mixing Copic marker colors and making new ones. It's pretty apparent in that deep red on the ruffle trim of the dress. But yeah, her hair and antlers are adorable. ^_^

Christmas Tree Lolita: Remember what I said about creating different shades of color by mixing Copic markers? It was most apparent in this card when I had to create a shade of green that I didn't have the Copic marker color equivalent of to the...Crayola marker. (Oh, those old days of yore. :-P) Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with how the coloring on the Christmas Tree Lolita turned out. Fact: this card sent me out on a goose chase searching for a sparkly blue gel pen. Yeah, I still love gel pens. Deal with it. XD

Angel Lolita: When I first did these Christmas cards six years ago, I sold them at craft fairs. One of the things that stood out most to me during these craft fairs was a woman asking me if I did any cards of dark skinned girls. Sadly, I did not. That was then, this is now. One of things I wanted to focus on during my "quest for improvement" was diversifying my characters not only in terms of avoiding "Same Face Same Body Syndrome" but in adding more variety to my skin tones. It's surprisingly hard to find coloring tutorials specializing in darker skin tones (at least on DeviantART) but I've been able to apply a few techniques from other coloring tutorials to create different skin tones for various ethnicities. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how the Angel Lolita turned out. Her hair though, oh man, that hair...it must've taken me 45 minutes or so just to color it because I'm insane like that. :-P

Santa Lolita: Here's the final card of the series! (For now, at least. I went crazy and did like 10 different designs, both old and new. I could only do so much before my deadline would creep up.) If there's one thing I wish I could fix about this card, it would be that first layer of color for the skin. I really should've refilled the ink on that E000 Copic marker. >_< But it's not too bad. There's still a lot to love about the Santa Lolita and this card in general. :-)

The Gingerbread Lolita Improved (With WIP Scans)

I was going through my old Christmas Lolita card designs earlier this month and I couldn't help but notice how, well...amateurish they looked. I had a lot of weird things going on anatomy-wise, the coloring looked a little shoddy and some of the eyes looked lop-sideded. Sure, there's always room for improvement no matter where you are with your craft but looking at those cards elicited memories of older drawing and coloring techniques that I've long since drifted away from (my skin tone pencil crayons are probably happy and well rested because of this). They just no longer fit in with my current work.

I didn't have a whole lot of time to revamp the entire set so I just decided to focus on one design and update it just for my own personal sake.

For reference, here's how the Gingerbread Lolita looked three years ago...



Hope this is considered an upgrade of sorts!