Costume Designs for Young Delilah

This was frustrating for a few days: I knew I'd need a few different costumes, and I had a bunch of reference at my disposal, but I didn't know exactly where to aim my efforts.

After a bunch of semi-productive but aimless sketching, I thought to set my story beats in order and consider what type of costume I'd need for each. This may seem obvious beyond measure, but I hadn't considered it. Doing so made it a lot easier: I itemized the different looks I would need and discovered how to approach the challenge.

Since the story includes elements of DD's conflict with her mother over the issue of becoming a Proper English Lady™, naturally it makes sense to represent that in her costuming (as opposed to dressing DD in refined English-style dress to begin with). So she starts off in Eastern Mediterranean fashion. To push the idea a little bit, all the costumes tied to ideas of travel and childhood and freedom from obligation feature diagonal elements (e.g, the necklines). Her English-style dress features right angles and straight lines. Then, as her English-style dress is punished and put through the wringer, the elements are made diagonal again. (This notion didn't occur to me until after the first two designs, which I will probably not use.)

As an aside, I tried using an ink brush pen and… I really enjoyed it??? 

I also tried using Clip Studio Paint to assemble the designs, and… it's clearly going to take some getting-used-to. Anyone know if there's an easy way to do a total keyboard shortcut conversion so it uses Photoshop shortcuts?

As a final aside, I got my old scanner out in order to assemble the DD costumes together (I traced the costumes over a paper-doll style DD figure). If you do any scanning, allow me to recommend the application "VueScan." It gives you an insane amount of detailed control over your scanner and can automate some features, but best of all: you never have to install drivers. I have a Canon scanner and I don't know or care whether their own software supports my current OS, and I don't have to, because VueScan obviates all that. When I needed to scan DD3, I installed the app on my laptop, walked into the Emily Carr University library, unplugged their expensive large-format scanner from whatever stupid workstation it was connected to, plugged it into my laptop, and spent the whole day scanning pages right into my own machine. I am so grateful for whatever small price I have paid for it.