During the Victorian era, fancy dress balls were one of the grandest and most fashionable ways for a society hostess to make her mark. These magnificent, costumed affairs were widely reported in 19th century newspapers, with a great deal of attention paid to who was wearing what. Guests dressed up as historical figures such as Marie Antoinette or Napoleon. They also wore more creative costumes—many of which were recommended in fancy dress advice manuals and costume books.
Following up to this post, here’s a fantastic look at Victorian “fancy dress balls”–they were all the rage at the time, but really picked up in the later half of the century where the focus was more on self-expression than hiding oneself, as was the case at 18th-century masquerades (Phantom hearkens back to this earlier tradition, but the idea of a masquerade hiding one’s true identity also works perfectly for its theatrical setting).
Here are some wackier costumes from fancy dress balls. I’m in love with this one:
And look! A bee!
Here’s a fashion plate with some costume ideas from across the centuries (and of course, we wouldn’t be in the Victorian era if there weren’t a bit of tone-deaf cultural appropriation with the Native American costume.):
It was actually common for women to wear shorter skirts at these balls so they could show off their fabulous boots (as you see above, and as is the case with Christine’s stage version of the Star Princess dress):
Depending on your host, masks of all kinds were welcome, so you were free to be as unsettlingly disturbing as you wanted while you lounged by the punch bowl and made rabbit eyes at the eligible young heiress whose hand in marriage comes with fifty thousand pounds a year and a lifetime of resentment because women’s rights didn’t exist yet:
Suppose you can’t make it to the most fashionable balls London or Paris this season. If it’s 1883 and you are Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and happen to have $6 million of disposable income at your fingertips, why not throw your own fancy dress ball for New York City’s elite (and spend millions on champagne alone)? And why don’t you one-up every single one of your guests by dressing as that most wondrous of new inventions, Edison’s electric light? I defy the Rockefellers to steal your spotlight when the spotlight in question could very easily electrocute them.
Like flowers? Of course you do. Like spring? Oh, my God, do you ever. Like pretending you’re but a mere shepherdess, giggling and flouncing away from the advances of the blacksmith’s apprentice? GOOD LORD, YES. Like the 18th century? HELL YES, OH MAN, GIMME THAT ROCOCO SPRING FLOWER EXPLOSION:
BUT WAIT! You’re not gonna let that Rococo Spring Flower Explosion HARLOT flounce away with your suitor, are you? HELL NO, YOU ARE NOT. Which is why you are prepared to send her running dressed as a GORGEOUS FREAKING BUTTERFLY:
But where would a butterfly be without a lovely flower upon which to perch? Enter your secret lesbian lover, the Rose:
Or, if you’re uncomfortable with NOT being the center of attention every waking moment, you could just pull the equivalent of one-upping the bride at a wedding by wearing white and come dressed as the DAMN SUN:
But maybe you’re more of the goth persuasion. Might I suggest a tasteful sorceress?
A dainty Batman ensemble to match your wife’s delicate moth angel gown?
Vampire mistress of the night, perhaps?
Actually, bat motifs were an extremely popular costume option, not just in the 19th century, but also at 18th century balls:
But if it’s 1880 and you want to carry on grandma’s bat tradition, this might be a more modern take on a pocket-sized blood-sucking demon:
Or this:
You are so thrilled to attend the costume ball like the goth nightmare you are, you can hardly contain your enthusiasm:
Here is a tastefully acceptable take on Satan. Might I sample your punch, Mrs. Higgenbottom, before I make away with your soul?
“Oh, Ella!”
“Yes, Constance?”
“Oh, I do so love your seagull gown.”
“Oh, why thank you, my dear friend!”
“But I’ve not the slightest idea what I shall wear to the ball!”
“Why, Constance, it is a simple matter of identifying something near and dear to your heart and then adapting it into a suitable costume. I, for example, find solace in the sea, particularly in the birds of the sea, and most particularly when they nose-dive into and defecate upon the boat, shrieking like banshees in heat. Hence, the seagulls adorning my gown. What do you like the very most, Constance?”
“MOTHER-EFFING LOBSTERS.”
Or, maybe you’re just a shameless ho and don’t give a brass farthing about showing your ankles, your calves, your thighs, or your hoo-ha at the Embassy Ball, in which case, blaze it:
Oh my stars your art is amazing!!! Do you think maybe you can make a shading tutorial sheet? owo
Hey there Anon! Sure thing! I’ll do my best to explain the process of how I usually do things in regards to coloring and shading. I’m not the greatest at Explaining, so I’ll do my best to keep things as crystal clear as possible!
Step 1: LineartI’ll start with Lineart purely because this step is important to the coloring process in one regard, and that is making sure the entire line layer is closed without any holes. Even the smallest little gap will make the selection process hard later, and we don’t want that. So the cleaner lineart you have, the better. I’m going to go ahead and use my Monster Hunter Generations Huntress for this.
Step 2: SelectionEither in Photoshop or SAI or whatever you use, click outside your character and any other negative space surrounding them. This means…basically anything that’s not your character. Then go to Selection > Inverse and invert the selection. You should have something similar to what I have below. This makes it so much easier to add colors without having to worry about all the little nooks and crannies that could mess the cleanliness of the drawing up real bad.
Step 3: Flat BaseCreate a new layer beneath your line layer with the selection still active. This will be our color layer. Remove the visibility of the line layer, and fill the remaining “Silhouette” with a dark base color. This makes those nasty corners look a bit cleaner, as sometimes if there is a lighter color your computer will want to make them stand out pixelated. Again, this is just for cleanliness beneath the line layer. Turn your line layer back on, as they will now act as barriers for the fill bucket tool. Make sure the entire silhouette is filled, and that no lines were accidentally selected! You want a see a completely filled and flat color if you turn the line layer off.
Step 4: Flat ColorsAt this point you can lock the transparency of your Color Layer, and go ham. Either with the pen or a fill bucket, figure out how you want to color your character and add in the flat colors. Notice I’m on the same layer as the Base that we made. This is so those lines still play nicely with one another. Clean up where necessary.
Step 5: Analogous Color GradientWell, we don’t really want our character to be too flat, do we? This is where the color wheel becomes your best friend. Select similar colors with the Magic Wand (like I’ve done her skin tone here) and using the color wheel, choose an analogous (that means “close by” in color wheel terms) color to add a bit of depth to the color. For skin, I usually go with a red or a bronze, sometimes purple. Use the airbrush for this. Then, deselect and select another color to gradient, until all the colors have some degree of new color to them.
See? Now things look interesting! We added some blue to the greens, some purples to the reds, some blues to the grays and so on and so forth.
Step 6: ShadingOkay, here’s where things get interesting. Time to shade. Make a new layer between the Line Layer and Color Layer, and make sure you make it a clipping group/clipping mask. This is so it won’t go anywhere that you don’t have color. Set it to multiply or linear burn (whichever you think looks best) and bump the opacity down to about 40-50%. Choose a color that you want the shadows to be; I like deep pinks and purples. I first use the Pen tool to get down “hard” shadows - shadows cast by hard materials, close shadows, and inorganic materials. Once I’ve got those down, I head on over to the softer areas, such as the skin, hair and cloth and alternate between the watercolor and marker tools to give “softer” shadows. There’s no real law to this, you just have to know where shadows fall and how they behave and work with those three tools to get the look you want.
Step 7: “Highlights” - Rim Lighting Okay, these aren’t really “highlights” in the correct sense, but adding sort of “rim lighting” around forms really helps make a picture pop. To do this, make another layer above the shading layer, set it to “screen” and keep the opacity at 100%. Then, get really familiar with your CRTL key because you’re going to be color sourcing a lot. To add a rim light to a form, select the base color of that form, and use the marker to trace along the edges. For example, I picked up the nude from the skin, the silver from the dagger, the gold and maroon from the hair and the tawny brown from the skull to use on those specific objects. Any place you want clean works well, but the edges of forms works best for this technique. Additionally, if you’d like, you can create another layer above the Screen Layer and set it to Linear Dogde, and do my “glowing eyes” technique on anything you want to stand out, such as the metal of the belt, gold objects and of course, eyes.
Step 8: The OverlayAlmost done! While your photo can now stand alone as “finished”, there’s one more thing that I enjoy doing, and that’s adding a simple color overlay to bring the whole picture together. This is done by flattening all the layers you have so far (you’ll want to “Merge Down” in order from bottom to top or “Flatten” to avoid the layers going crazy on each other) into one layer. Then, make a layer on top of that one, set it to a clipping mask, and set it to “overlay”. With the Airbrush, choose some colors (I prefer soft pinks, blues and violets) and go along the “edges” of your character with a BIIIIIG brush. This kind of resembles soft ambient lighting or shadows. I just think it makes the photo look nicer.
TA-DA! And Now we’re done!
And there we go! I hope that helped, and I also apologize cause this ask sat in my box for awhile and I never got around to it until now. :PI’d be happy to answer any questions y’all have, but this is the simple basics! Remember to practice practice PRACTICE! -Gael
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