sqbr | Drawing the Other

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Drawing the Other

Since I've been doing my fanart prompts for a while, here's some somewhat undirected thinky thoughts.

I've encountered a lot of talk about writing The Other, trying to be inclusive and respectful when writing characters who are outside the "default" of white straight able-bodied male etc. I've pondered this with regards to my own (small amount of) writing, but about a year ago had the sudden realisation that it applied to my art too: When I tried drawing the original SGA team for a prompt I realised that my drawing style really didn't suit dark skin. And when I looked back at my art I realised I'd never drawn anyone very dark, and instead had lots and lots of skinny able-bodied youngish white people, both in my original characters and my fanart. Even the comics I drew about I and

cameronm have us much skinnier than we really are.

So I've been trying to fix it. I made my mental default skin tone for original characters darker, and made an effort to draw more dark skinned characters in fanart. When I'd been doing that for a while I decided to branch out and asked for Fanart prompts: not skinny youngish white people.

And it's been a really interesting experience. I guess the two different aspects are the apolitical practical issues around drawing a different skin tone or body type etc, and the deeper issues relating to how we see such bodies and who we choose to draw.

For example, most women in fantasy drawings are not only white but seriously pasty, often with blonde hair. Even just drawing the same sort of pictures with a darker white (or paleish non-white/POC) woman can be quite striking and a bit of a challenge, eg I had trouble getting the colours in this Mucha-inspired picture to look right since all the women in the original images have much lighter colouring. (nb she could be read as non-white/a POC, but I was going for darkish white)

Something I discovered as I tried drawing darker skinned people is that darker skin has a much wider range of luminosity. This means that the common anime-ish technique of doing a flat colour and then shadows looks much more fake and flat than it does on pale skin (this is also an issue with dark hair and clothes etc, but the human eye is more prone to noticing flaws in faces). I'm still trying to get the hang of highlights on dark skin, and every time I screw it up I have this horrible vision of some black person feeling really insulted at the depiction. A lot of artists seem happy to just not do highlights but it looks wrong to me.

I wrote a fancomic with an Egyptian cast and was quite happy with it..until I realised that my Tintin-esque dot eyes were kind of hard to make out when not in a pale face. And then, after looking more closely at my reference images (modern photos of Egyptians plus some tomb art) realised I'd given everyone pointy noses which is totally wrong for those ethnicities (I semi fixed the noses, the eyes I was kind of stuck with). After some trial and error, I adapted my style to include the whites of eyes and I think it's become more expressive (nb the colouring on that picture is crap because my tablet was broken).

Similarly I've been learning about how to draw wrinkles, scars, epicanthal folds etc. It's been a really rewarding challenge as an artist.

But while getting the hang of drawing Afro-Caribbean hair may be roughly as challenging for me as getting the hang of drawing freckles or glowing purple eyes it is not equivalent.

By avoiding or badly representing the appearance of marginalised people we add to their/our marginalisation. I may find it annoying that freckles always seem to be drawn as discrete dark dots when my own don't look like that, but the effect this has on me is totally different to that on an Asian person who sees a "squinty eyes" drawing, or on a black person who sees Martha Jones drawn with a thin pointy nose and beige skin, or never sees her drawn at all.

And I developed an art style that didn't suit darker skin not because it's inherently harder to draw, but because all the people I drew, and all the people in art around me, were pale. The reason drawing myself as I actually look looks "wrong" is that I live in a world where the only people I see drawn positively are thin. Adding to this, growing up around visual stereotypes (like drawing black people with giant red lips) makes it harder to draw stereotyped groups without either making them look "normal" (white, skinny, etc) or falling into those stereotypes.

Some art styles tend to blur these boundaries, eg most people look pretty much the same when you draw them as a generic anime character. You also have the fact that anime characters look Japanese in the heads of their original artists, but often look white in the heads of Western fanartists. It's been a challenge trying to translate various features into my own stylised drawing style without descending into caricature.

It's not always easy to tell the difference between a valid and a dodgy stylistic choice eg the difference between making everyone look skinny because of a bias against fat people, and doing it because you're doing pseudo-stick figures. Sometimes a stylistic choice can be valid and tend to support pre-existing bias, and that's something anyone using that style has to keep in mind. EDIT There's the difference between marked and unmarked eg the assumption that all stick figures are white men unless otherwise stated.

A body doesn't have to be visibly different from the default to be marginalised. Most POC/non-white characters in visual media have relatively pale skin and european-ish features thanks to racist casting choices, yet are still treated in a racist way by canon and fans, and it's still racist to draw them as out and out white. And as someone with an invisible disability I know that people can still look at you funny when you don't look "different" at all.

Something I've noticed the more I draw outside the default boxes is how much other artists don't. Every time I add a picture to DeviantArt I do a search to see who else has drawn that character (to see if mine is better :D) and I will think for example "Really? There's only 7 pictures of Bra'tac? But he's the coolest!" When I look for reference images I keep finding pictures of the more conventionally attractive members of the cast, or in the case of disabled characters only finding them looking able-bodied. I do enjoy feeling like I'm giving under-appreciated characters some love, but they deserve better!

Overweight, non-white/POC, old, visibly disabled etc characters are underrepresented in our media and underrepresented in our fanart, and it is really unpleasant for people with those types of bodies to feel so invisible and unimportant. The only way to fix that is to make a concerted effort to work against the trend.

Anyway, I'm really glad I've been doing this and strongly recommend it to other artists. Feel free to use some of the prompts my reading list came up with. Two shows that have a fantastic variety of types of people to draw are "The Middleman" and "Avatar: The Last Airbender". I'm not looking for more prompts for myself, mind you, I think I have enough.

I still have a lot further to go, and sometimes it's really scary and hard to try and draw this stuff without screwing up in a hurtful way (if only hurtful to my ego), but what's the fun in creating art if it's not a challenge?

I'm aware that Racefail was started by a post called "Writing the Other", hopefully artists are less prone to imbroglios than writers :) Anyway: this post is kind of stream-of-consciousness, I've probably got giant holes in my argument, I look forward to hearing other people's thoughts. I am very much open to any critiques of this post or my art etc for ending up inadvertently racist etc despite my best efforts. I am not so open to people being all "But my intentions are good, why are you accusing me of being a NAZI just because I think blondes are hot?". That argument has been done, and frankly I'm kind of sick of it (if these ideas are new to you I recommend looking through the links on that post, there's some good stuff).

Since I want to post this to metafandom and they apparently have rules about this sort of thing: I have left (signed-in) comments unscreened and the comments policy is for now more a set of suggestions. Please follow them anyway! And note that I go through long periods where I'm not up to answering my mail.

Also: I've only been really talking about fairly traditional drawn fanart. The issues around manips, icons etc are a bit different but I would say broadly similar.

Two possibly useful tutorials (I must admit I've only poked at them vaguely):

Note: I've barely scratched the surface of the issues and techniques relating to this topic, and I definitely wouldn't take anything I have to say as definitive, I just wanted to describe some of the stuff I've personally encountered.

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I won't say you're safe from imbroglio, but I'll note one (IMO significant) difference between you and Elizabeth Bear: you are pondering the process and examining your own fallibility, while Bear was writing an instructional post, from the POV of someone who Knows How It's Done... except that she didn't know as much as she thought she did.

Sunflower

Oh, I don't think I'm in any danger of repeating the exact set of circumstances, but there's still the possibility of people getting all defensive at the idea that they should change their behaviour. *points to icon*

::wry half-grin:: Too true. It's pretty much a given that they'll do so, somewhere; here's hoping is that they don't do so all over the comments to your post.

Sunflower

(Edited to put reply in right place)

Beat me to it. It's amazing how much difference a little humility can make.

This post was really great! It's interesting to see the challenges an artist finds and how they're dealt with.

I'm glad you found it interesting!

I've noticed this in my own drawing style: there's no vocabulary within it for "fat" nor for any racial phenotype other than white. And solving that on the fly, mid-drawing, doesn't work so great. So far I've been copping out by not marking anybody, but as we all know, "unmarked" defaults to white and thin, especially when the characters aren't known to the viewer (which in my case, they're generally not). It's easy to justify that copping out with "Oh, just stick figures, which are almost by definition unmarked" but I've got two styles, and I notice that when faced with a character who has a "marked" body, I'll choose stick figures "just for today."

"Just today" has had a lot of days, so far. :-/

Marked vs unmarked! I vaguely gestured in that direction but shall edit in a specific mention.

I noticed the problem with darker characters (specifically, dark furred anthropomorphic cats, and doesn't that speak volumes) years ago, it was only when I was stuck with a particular character and picture where I couldn't cheat that I decided I needed to make a concerted long term effort to fix the problem. Clearly YOU should start drawing Friday Night Lights fanart :)

*mutters something about not being good enough to draw fanart*

THERE IS NO SUCH THING

Something that I found incredibly freeing with creative stuff, especially writing (since I was brought up to see drawing as something you just do) is to see everything as a practice exercise. So even if it's utterly shamefully dire(*) and you never show it to anyone it's still practice, and thus a step on the road to making better stuff.

Also I had a look and can't find ANY fanart for Smash, so even just a happy stick figure cartoon would probably make some FNL fan's day :)

(*)Not that your art is. But we all see our own stuff that way sometimes.

Seriously, there's nothing for Smash? Nothing? *sigh* I assume that means there's double-nothing for Waverly, then. And Waverly totally needs adoring fanart. I have a crush on her this big. (Setting aside the squick that she's canonically sixteen or so, and that if I knew her in real life the age gap is such that there's no way I'd have a crush on her. TV is weird.)

And yeah, I know better than that muttering, never fear. ;-) It's more properly a question of where I want to be putting my time and effort, and what investment-level it'd take to feel some satisfaction about it.

This is a completely noob question, but I've never participated in fandom. Where/how does one check to see if there's fanart/fic for something? Are you straightforwardly googling, or...?

Yeah, fair enough. It's certainly no coincidence that I started drawing so much fanart when I got sick and had nothing better to do.

I must admit my search was kind of half assed, I'm still figuring out the mechanics of fanart fandom. But I searched for a few variations on "Smash friday night lights fanart" via google and on DeviantArt. There doesn't seem to be a lot of drawn fanart for the show of any type, but there is some.

(Also, yes, TV is wierd. Though a lot of the time when I squick myself by being attracted to a teenage character the actor turns out to be like 25 and I don't feel so bad :))

Some art styles tend to blur these boundaries, eg most people look pretty much the same when you draw them as an anime character.

Try spriting. :p Size differences are difficult to do! (Also darker skin/hair tones is difficult, for me; finding shades of brown that aren't too green is haaaard.)

Huh, yeah, I can see how that would be hard. In general if you're using a very stylised.. style it can be quite challenging to consistently expand it to fit new types of people not originally covered.

I'm loving the cat-versus-Goa'uld in ancient Egypt fan comic. :-)

-- Steve Sloan

Thanks ^_^

(here via metafandom)

The Cat-Goa'uld story was very cute. :)

Thankyou!

Thanks for addressing this constant issue from a new viewpoint!

What you say here is particularly wise: A body doesn't have to be visibly different from the default to be marginalised. Most POC/non-white characters in visual media have relatively pale skin and european-ish features thanks to racist casting choices, yet are still treated in a racist way by canon and fans, and it's still racist to draw them as out and out white. And as someone with an invisible disability I know that people can still look at you funny when you don't look "different" at all.

Thankyou!

I thought it was important to say, otherwise my post could come across as implying that
hard to draw = visibly different from the default = marginalised
and they're three different things.

gallo_de_pelea at LJ, here via metafandom.

This is something I've been wrestling with for quite some time - I work primarily in black and white, do all my shading with graphite, and as such have been relying mostly on facial structure and features to indicate various ethnicities. (Graphite shading is terribly blotchy over skin, unless it's a close-up)

I've started laying in flat gray tones over the pencil, but am not too satisfied with that, either - Hoping to work out a decent technique on my own, but if anyone here has found one, please let me know!

HMMM. I don't know.

*looks you up on lj to see if there's any examples*

OMG IT'S YOU

(I discovered "Failed Experiments in video editing" not long after getting into vids so it has a very special place in my heart, plus your art is awesome. And yay "TJ and Amal" has started!)

Anyway: I would say the grey fills do definitely make Amal's skin look more like the shade it's supposed to, but aren't quite as pretty as the plain ink and pencil so I see your dilemma. Maybe they'd look better if they weren't flat grey, but were like pale blue or sepia or something? Yeah..I don't know. Good luck!

I... it honestly had not occurred to me to do a sepia tint on the comic pages. (which is weird, because I usually add a slight sepia tint to sketches and inks before posting them on the web.) Just put it up in straight grayscale... and the gray tones on Amal just look so cold. I bet it'd look better to do the whole thing in a slightly warmed-up shade. WHY DID THIS NOT OCCUR TO ME BEFORE

Woo thanks! I can't wait to give this a shot.

Not everyone can be as much of a GENIUS as me :D (which is to say, I saw someone do this technique recently and was all "Brilliant! Must steal!")

I look forward to seeing the coloured comics and thinking "That was meeeee" :)

Chapter 3 goes up tomorrow with new and snazzy slight sepia tint (well, more like Warm Gray). Amal's skin still doesn't read as dark as I'd like (without obscuring tiny facial lines, at least), but it's a hell of a lot better - the previous pages look cold by comparison, so I'll be warming them up too.

Huzzah!

Of course now when people tell you how awesome the comic is you have to say "Well, really all the credit should go to sqbr.." :D

Very interesting post.

I've got a rough and rather undefined thought in my head about background colour, and how the fact we default to white 'paper' must affect how we then interpret adding or removing colour, even in media where it shouldn't be directly relevant. Would setting a different default background maybe help challenge that?

But it's 3 in the morning and I'm not sure I can carry the thought through more than that.

I think drawing in black and white certainly does restrict the ways you can depict the subtleties of skin tone, and it's hard to draw people in a traditional thin lined ink drawing without having them look pale eg as in this picture I found on google.

That said it's not inevitable that black ink + white paper = pale figures, see for example this post on the way russian cartoons use black as the default.

I'm not sure about changing the background colour, I can se that being a useful technique sometimes especially if you just want to do a simple line drawing but..hmm. *ponders*

I've noticed that in drawing books on human anatomy and such. You very rarely find a good mix of people. And little to no attention is paid to how different bodies look, when bodies are conceptualized in books on drawing humans. Of course the obvious thing every drawing book will tell you is to study humans, draw from life, carry a sketchbook with you, blablablah practice-cakes, which is of course as true as it is supremely unhelpful. Nobody needs a book to know that to draw and study real people is good practice. OTOH drawing from life has also limitations, which is most likely the reason why you got the drawing book in the first place, to help you solve the problems you have. Which is especially true if you want to do fantasy art or action scenes rather than some sitting nude.

And in every drawing book that breaks down humans to help you that "generic" human is usually a young(ish), white man, though young, white women appear too, and they are usually drawn in a way that is considered "well-proportioned" at the time, which fluctuates a bit. And the one book (by Ron Tiner) I've encountered that is a bit more decent about different body types and ages (and to a lesser extent race) turns "scientific" classification systems from the 19th/early 20th century into artistic tools without any reflection or even notice that they were racist crap, for example the craniometry with its cephalic index. I wouldn't even mind the use of the terminology from outdated racist anthropology to describe skull and body types descriptively (I mean, late 19th and early 20th century anthropology was kind of obsessed with measuring and categorizing humans, so they do have a lot of specific vocabulary to describe differences in humans), but the book presented those as if this was actually "neutral" anthropology and it was from the 1990s and apparently did not at all realize that it is of the racist, debunked type.

the one book (by Ron Tiner) I've encountered that is a bit more decent about different body types and ages (and to a lesser extent race) turns "scientific" classification systems from the 19th/early 20th century into artistic tools without any reflection or even notice that they were racist crap

I don't know if that's the same specific drawing book I encountered, but the one drawing book I ever found that had detailed advice on drawing a range of ages and drawing different races was also full of "cacausoid/negroid/monogloid" terminology and other language straight out of 1920s anthropology textbooks. I think it was actually a couple decades old as opposed to from the 90s, but it was still recent enough that the concepts the writer was using had already been repreatedly debunked when it was published.

Interestingly, one of my fiancee's "How to Draw Manga" books from the 90s uses some of the same stereotypes and language, except it depicts Japanese people as the norm and African, Europeans, and Chinese people as the "here's how you change the default human to look like these people" Other. I kept wondering when reading it if the dated and racist terminology was the product of a really clumsy translation of the Japanese-language original, or if it had been intentionally added by the guy who translated the book (and if so, why, in 1992, did he think "negroid" was exactly the word he wanted to use).

When I reviewed Tiner's book a few years ago, I scanned a couple of pages so people could see,you can see an example page here, so maybe that helps you to remember whether it was the same one, but I think not, because I don't remember him using "negroid" and such. But I am not surprised that this happens in drawing books, where also the "classics" from the 1920s and earlier get recommended again and again still. And it's not that they don't teach useful things, but it would be nice to have some updated standard works on drawing the human figure by now, that would be more inclusive. But then too often the newer ones still aren't any better. Like I have a drawing book by Gary Faigin that is really good for breaking down facial expressions, and shows you what is involved in even subtle changes, how age changes a face, but the example faces are almost all white people. There are a few others with whole faces, but all the looks at details of how to draw eyelids, noses and lips showed white people iirc.

I was skimming a "How to Draw Manga" book once and there was this AWFUL black-face-ish caricature just sitting there with the other examples of something or other.

Very good point about the drawing books.

That's disturbing about the human types thing. I've encountered things a bit like that in various tutorials, which is annoying because it's something it would be good to have tutorials on (I saved the ones I linked because they seemed non-creepy as well as useful)

Drawing books are frequently disturbing, both with sexism and with racism. In the recent Wizard book series on drawing comics, in the volume on character design I found one single black character, tellingly in the section "brutes" drawn under some sort of gorilla monster.

D:

The last comics/drawing book I read (and the only one I own) was "Making Comics" by Scott McCloud, and I remember him using non-white people (and non-sexified/naked women!) here and there in the examples but I wasn't paying very close attention to the overall patterns. I think I might look at it again, becuase I now find myself asking "Were any of them overweight? Or unusually tall/short, or visibly disabled?" and I'm really not sure. Hmm.

♥ the Mafdet story. The daughter at the end is reading The 99! Hahaaaaa brilliant!

Yay, someone noticed! I knew I wanted her reading something fannish and some googling found me the 99 which looks seriously cool and exactly the sort of thing an Egyptian fangirl would read. Plus the title is very easy to make recognisable :)

This post and its links are just what I needed. I'm trying to draw this comic I've had in my head for over a decade, and since it happens over much of the world, it's important to me to get the various ethnicities right. Thanks so much!

I'm glad you found it helpful!

Thank you for asking the question. It's sad to keep seeing Teyla drawn as a white blonde chick in SGA fanart, so I'm glad you've at least recognised the problem.

Yes, I've noticed that too :/

Black hair, comics and you.

http://www.digitalfemme.com/journal/index.php?itemid=365

Thankyou, I came across that ages ago when I was still pondering this topic vaguely and forgot to save it.

Of course, it assumes the reader has gotten the hang of straight hair :) *sighs at self*

This post has been added to a linkspam round up..

*nods* Thanks for the heads up (though I noticed it on the delicious account :))

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Drawing the Other

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Fan comic

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this might be relevant

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