March

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I really enjoyed the art work in March, I would place it as one of my favorites in the class drawing wise. The use of line width combined with the ink washes for shading all have a very lush feel. The drawings had such a richness that with each panel I found my self wanting to study it closer. This style fit with the story very well, and the realism allowed for a lot of individual characters to standout with out a lot of stylization. I especially like how the chickens were handled and how the shapes were cut out with negative space.  There is also a strong since of gesture used through out the piece that adds great clarity to the personalities of the characters.
On the topic of stereotype use, I think that to a point some can be necessary, but not in the way some would take this to mean. I think that to a point there is a wide range of things put under this label that do not always belong there. In terms of art, there seems to be quite a flux in this area. For instance, characture. I have read and come in to contact before with people who think that certain elements of the human face are stereotyped, but this feels like a real grey area to me. Sure, when looking at many of the early comics in class there are characters that are obviously stereotyped, but most of the time it seems that is because of the incorporation of blackface, which itself was a racist practice. This to me puts those examples in to a separate area. But people continue the same out cry at charactures. However this practice is dependent on taking a person features and exaggerating them. Depending on the level of severity this is done, results very greatly. This is where I find confusion, because how can one have a drawing based purely off of a singular individual and be labeled as stereotype? This carries over to more normal drawing as well. Different ethnicities have different traits; this is visible on the skeletal level. Even when doing a hyper realistic drawing those traits well be visible because that is why it will look like the individual. Take that drawing and simplify it, you are simplifying those elements, and at a certain point of simplification there are people who come out and accuse stereotype. From an artist point of view, it kind of feels like you have now where to turn here, because you actually started with something real and suddenly people are angry. People want to be represented but then there are some that out cry when drawn differently. People are different, its what makes individuals. It seems that at some point different and stereotype became synonyms to some, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Stereotype is based in offensiveness and the confines it places upon a person. Until that is realized, then under some people’s definition stereotype is necessary other wise every character would look the same. Bellow is a link to an artist who has created a chart about how to draw different ethnicities, based purely on research.

http://cedarseed.com/portfolio/human-types/

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