Cultural appropriation

This weekend I decided I would draw the Hindu deity known as Ganesha. It was just something I remember reading about long time ago and I’ve been wanting to draw for ages. I posted the sketch on Facebook and the thread lit up. The main topic of debate was cultural appropriation – if I were to commit that drawing towards an item of clothing, would I offend Hindu people by doing so?

Opinion was divided, including among those who declared themselves as Hindu. Some cautioned me about the issue, stating that they knew of people who were sick of non-Hindu uses of their Holy icons. Others welcomed my depiction.
 
Reading around on the topic further – for example this essay – the issue is cause for concern among those who feel that their carefully nurtured culture and history is being eroded and ‘cheapened’ by those outside of it. And yet on the other hand, there are those who argue that we live in a melting pot society and the proliferation of new ideas, icons, imagery and themes from other sources can help to keep the traditions alive and introduce them to a whole new audience - for example as expressed in this opinion piece.

Most artists and illustrators I believe are sensitive to these issues. We research our subjects with care and try to learn as much around the topic before committing to artworks. In my case, I guess one could easily point at many instances of cultural appropriation. For example Irish leprechaun, Hanuman, Buddha monkey, Haida shark:

 
Final thoughts
I personally feel that for an artist, depicting images from other cultures shouldn’t be off-limits. I also feel that an artist applying their own interpretation on traditional themes is fine. But with research and reading around the subject, it is also important not to do something deliberately disrespectful and inflammatory. For example, it is common knowledge that drawing the prophet Muhammad in any form is offensive to Islamic tradition. Similarly, applying Hindu symbols and art onto shoes and footwear is extremely offensive.

I don’t know if any product line will develop from my drawings of Hindu deities. If I do make something, I hope the majority will recognize that I do so in honour of the rich cultural heritage and a route to reach out to a wider audience who perhaps may be inspired to learn more about other cultures.



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Black Tortoise

Black tortoise is the second in a series of drawings for the Swedish fightwear brand Kenka. The first one I drew was the white tiger.

I began the piece with a detailed sketch of the tortoise:

I liked the carapace shape and textures and the limbs but the head wasn't quite right. A few quick re-draws and I felt this was more like what I wanted, plus I added in the snake outline:

Then I added in the details:

Once scanned, I was able to play around with the layout and I felt that inverting the design would bring out the best of the whole rashguard:

The Kenka Black Tortoise is available to buy here on the Kenka webstore.



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Pens and stuff

I've been shopping at the ludicrously addictive website Cult Pens and bought some new items which I will write about later. But in a mild bout of OCD, I decided to do a pen inventory of my art box, and here is the current line up (minus a bunch of duplicate pens and misc pens that I never use).

The brush pens (A) are new. I will be giving them a play around soon and posting up the results here. All the fineliners in (B) and (F) are the same ones I wrote about in my fineliner review.

The Posca and Kurecolour markers were bought solely for my series of canvas shoe and baseball hat artworks. I'm keen to do more, mainly so that I can make further use of these excellent colour markers.

The white pens (H) are new, one is a Tippex pen, the other is a Uni-Ball Signo Broad Gel Pen, which I have read reviews saying it is the best opaque white liner pen in town. White pens are vital for my drawings where I have to capture lots of white hair and fur. Even when drawing on white paper, a white pen has considerable use combined with the black colour fineliners.

Pencils, eraser and sharpeners are everyday tools for my sketches. The rest are kind of extras that fill my artbox but rarely get an outing. I definitely want to try some more calligraphy, or rather, my own shaky attempts at gothic hand lettering. In fact another one of the new pens I bought is a very wide nib calligraphy pen which I'm dying to test out.

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Morcegão Vale Tudo Fight Shorts

I designed some Vale Tudo fight shorts. This style of shorts was popular with fighters a long time ago in Brazil and have since been a staple of MMA fighters and nogi grapplers the world over. My version features a big bat that I drew. (Big bat in Portuguese is known as Morcegão).

Here's how I put the design together:-

Bald Eagle - step by step video

This was a fun art project I set myself with the aim of honouring my USA followers. I began with pencil sketching the eagle and flag. I took a still frame with my SLR camera every few pencil strokes, then combined them within Windows Movie Maker. 

I next scanned in the sketch and inked the remainder of the lines within Manga Studio Pro. Finally, I saved the Manga Studio image as a transparent PNG and played around with flag background and grungy textures in Photoshop. All these digital work throughs were recorded using a screen capture program called Snagit.

This is the finished piece:

Cintiq 22HD Touch updates and Art Software Demos

Since purchasing the Cintiq 22HD touch and getting very comfortable with handling and operating the graphics tablet - see my initial report  - I have spent some time experimenting with different art programs.

Cintiq 22HD Touch

I bought myself a Wacom Cintiq 22HD touch. This is a dedicated graphics tablet which enables users to digitally draw directly onto the screen. After many years of using a standard Wacom Intuos tablet, I felt it was time to upgrade to something that would give me a closer connection between hand and eye. Here are my initial thoughts on the device…