Mary and the Man-Child

This week in XX/XY, we had to make an illustration based on either lactation or testosterone. It was pretty open ended, really, and we were encouraged to draw from cultural perceptions, history, science, etc. I was pretty psyched up on the article we were assigned to read about lactation, which among other things brought up the many depictions of Mary nursing the baby Jesus (a few examples below).

I love this Hans Baldung engraving (or woodcut?). Why is there a man in the moon? What are all those clouds about? Who knows?

A classic example of the tendency of artists to show Mary's breast as a sort of water balloon or globe shape by Bernardino Luini. Also, what a weird garment!

Quite a coy little christ

Mary's milk is essentially seen as the purest and strongest of any human excretion, for it both symbolically and physically sustained Jesus. I also wanted to touch on maternal guilt in past and present society and the ridiculous amount of pressure and judgement that mothers face. This guilt often manifests in over-sheltering and coddling a child in order to shield them from physical/psychological/emotional harm. And thus, we have the "man-child."

A common animal in my experience at college, the man-child is a male, usually white, who has been sheltered so much by his loving mother (and father, perhaps) to the extent that he is unwilling and incapable of taking care of himself. He may be in college or living at home, but in any case he is still suckling at the metaphorical teat, while he depends on others to perform basic tasks of adult life for him: laundry, cooking meals, paying bills, cleaning his residence...The man-child is immature and greedy, after being indulged for far too many years by a well-meaning family. Stunted, he will continue to depend on others until forcibly weaned.

So I guess what we have here is a juxtaposition of the man-child and classic Christian imagery. The mother's care (milk) is powerful nourishment, the most formative of a child's early experiences. But like all mammals, the young must eventually be weaned, or it will become a gluttonous and helpless mess - a man-child.

Oh, and have some sketchbook pages to make up for the slow post rate.

"Mary and the Man-Child" 

Two pages, two days

I got to stop by open figure drawing for a bit today, something I would never have time/energy for during the normal schoolyear. 

Conceptor

This week in comics we had to make a page in colour, which was...intimidating to me. I looked very hard at some moebius comics and then made the comic you'll find below. I also included the sketchbook studies I made beforehand while I was planning it, for context. After class today, I made the digital version of the comic, to see what it would look like with cleaner, more solid colours. Next week is watercolour, so I'll be continuing this story into a second page.

Tezuka-mania

My current comics project is to make a comic of several pages that is informed and inspired by the methods of Osamu Tezuka. If you haven't heard, Tezuka was rightly considered the "God of Manga" and possibly created more comics than any artist in history. Several of his works famous in the states are Astro Boy, Phoenix, Black Jack, and Buddha. I'm a huge fan of his work and I'm currently waiting for the return of Phoenix pt. 7 to the library. I made a couple of scans from Phoenix pt. 5 for reference, they give a pretty good idea of what I'm looking to pull from in Tezuka's work.

My project will be 3-5 pages and is set in a futuristic environment inspired by Tezuka's worlds. I just finished the first page yesterday, seen below.

I've got high hopes for this project! Below is a sketchbook spread that includes the thumbnail  I used to plan this page. You'll notice that it's fairly refined, and that's because I went through two or three messier versions on the previous page. On to the next one...

Sketchbook Page

I went to a lecture by famous illustrator/painter James Jean last night, and was thus inspired to do a million more anatomical sketches and studies. I already do anatomical studies for fun, but seeing James' sketchbooks made me realize that I need to do more. So here's one spread representing part of today's sketches.

Guise of Normalcy

...is the title of my second assignment for Shanth's comics class. Basically the same assignment as last week, but the whole thing had a few structural requirements (as far as panelling) and had to be done in the ligne-claire style. Not entirely pleased with it. Definitely some drawing issues, but I feel compositionally and as a whole it's solid enough.

As a bonus, below that is another one-hour master copy done in-class, this time no pencil drawing allowed. Source was a very famous page from Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind manga. Better than last week's effort.

HL Fanart + Foot study + Photoshop practice

That's all there is to say...

Ink, 14x17

Ink, 14"x17"

Sketchbook, ink & pencil

Photoshop, 1200 x 2700 pixels