I admit that I enjoy seeing celebrities
doing normal activities. I like seeing them in their grocery shopping
outfits or walking their dogs. Growing up in the southern and midwest
United States it's so so easy to feel completely detached from the
pop culture that is out there. As a huge consumer of said culture it
is disconcerting but also humanizing to see the people who seem so
much larger than life onscreen appear normal out in the real world.
With Dasey, I wanted to do something
similar. I imagined that she was a real person, an actor or musician
of note, and how her professional appearance would differ from her
everyday one. I thin the results are a pretty good representation of
fantasy vs. reality, right? People who look 6 ft tall on screen might
actually be teeny tiny in real life. Curves and body shape might be
equal parts padding and Spanx. Hair and makeup done by a professional
can make a face look totally different than it does in its natural
state
So for Daisy I stripped those things
away and re-imagined her in some simple sports wear. In doing so I
must admit that I am guilty of some certain mindsets. Like everyone,
I'm a product of the society I was raised in, in conjunction with
other things. And part of the messages I have been fed is that
femininity should look a certain way. I now know that that is
bullshit.
So, in my own tiny and meaningless way,
here is an attempt by me to reconcile what I now know about the world
with what I have been taught is the truth. And what I have been
taught in the past is that visible muscles (or being strong in
general) are masculine traits. Or course I now realize the stupidity
of this, not to mention the insanity since every human being has
muscles. But it is a message that is a part of the culture around me
and it's hard to shake those messages off.
So I do not have experience drawing
muscles. Or bone structure. Or anything that would interrupt the
smooth flowing lines of the figures I have drawn in the past. In the
original Dasey you can see I added cheekbones and lines on her back-
this was during the time period where I discovered those things and I
remember thinking they were attractive but not being sure that they
fit in my style.
Well, here I am today attempting to
draw a six pack. Looking at this redraw I now think I may have
positioned it too high in regards to her rib cage. Also I a trying
out knees and elbow creases because I don't want my drawing to
continue to be “after” pictures. I want them to feel real and
alive, covered in the marks that symbolize our humanity: our creases,
our lines, our bones, our organs, our blemishes, our folds.
Maybe that's a bit of a heavy burden to
place on a few squiggles but if there is anything I have learned in
life so far it's that things are only important if you give them
importance. Otherwise it's all just passing time.
Art tips: So my usual process here is
to draw a line drawing on paper as the original design model and then
scan it and trace it into a vector file with Inkscape. After that I
break it into pieces like a puzzle and color and modify it as needed.
I have been having a problem with
getting eyes the way I wanted because just copying the shape and
giving the copy a concentric based gradient wasn't leaving a large
enough hole in the middle for the original shape's color to show
through when I overlapped them. So for instance my first try on her
eyes was a pale green circle with another transparent centered and
medium green edged circle overlay on it. But that overlay just
darkened everything too much ( see below pic) and if I moved the handles out farther
then I didn't get enough of the dark color to edge the eyes.
So this time I finally just added a solid band of medium green over the pale green circle by copying the paler circle, adding an outline, sizing it back down to account for the outline, and then making the outline the darker color and making the fill color transparent. Does that make sense, lol? I suspect this problem is due to Inkscape and its limitations or my own ignorance. Regardless, though it is hard to see in a smaller size, when enlarged the band does make the eye color look better than any of my previous tries.
