A couple revisions

I reworked two of my XX/XY projects slightly based on critiques I received in class and on the big scary world of the internet.

What's new? Text bubble, no more lines behind the figures, a few minor adjustments to the bodies. Most significantly, person #6 lost her giraffe legs and person #7 has top surgery scars. It's still not where I'd like it to be, but hopefully it is less problematic (visually & conceptually) than the original image. Next!

This was pretty difficult to revise since it started out as a fairly small ink drawing. Mary sat down in a chair and put on some pants (she's no longer stuck wearing an impractically long dress). Meanwhile, the plants on the right grew a an inch or so and jesus put on some brighter shoes. Half the revisions were made directly onto the original via white gouache and more ink, but the entire pants & chair area was drawn on a separate page and photoshopped in. A few more adjustments were made in photoshop to clean up stray marks. I wish I could have made Mary's halo smaller, but it turned out to be too time-consuming and frustrating a task to complete.

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. 

Sex Ed!

This week for XX/XY brought a "sex ed" assignment - to create a two page spread (implied that it is in a sex ed book for a chosen audience) or an instructive toy/game/object. The interpretation, audience, medium, etc. were all up to us. I made these two pages with the imagined audience of a fairly young girl, perhaps age seven. This was kind of about exploring a new process for me as well - I started with an ink drawing and tried to develop it to finish in Photoshop. It took longer for me to figure things out than a traditional process would have, which was very frustrating. I'm not 100% happy with it, but I feel like I learned a few things during this project in regards to brushes & workflow that may come in use in the future.

Hidden

Below you'll find my second assignment for XX/XY. The prompt was to make an illustration which applies to one of the following topics: transgender, intersex, or androgyny. I chose transgender, and I owe a lot of my inspiration to the French movie Tomboy (which is great, by the way. See it!). The comic is pretty bittersweet, I suppose, but in the context of how most transgender people are perceived by the world at large, this is a pretty optimistic take. Both pages are approximately 8.5"x11" watercolor, with some minor revisions in photoshop. I don't usually tool around with stuff in Ps  save for contrast, value range, color vibrance, and the like...but seeing how other artists use digital media to make changes quickly and efficiently or even work solely in digital has changed my mind. I'm an amateur when it comes to imitating or improving  upon my traditional stuff in Ps,  If you look closely, you'll definitely be able to see a couple places where it's clearly touched up. Yikes! I suppose I must start somewhere, though.

XX/XY

Below you'll find my first assignment for XX/XY - a diptych. I'd rather not say too much about the pieces, save that I'm much happier with the first one than the second. Both are opaque watercolor and ink on my favorite ridiculously heavy watercolor paper.