It Never Gets Easier

I chose to do my contemporary piece on gender roles and transgender issues. Gender roles are harmful to everyone, men, women, especially at a young age, because they try to tell children who the should be and what they should grow up doing. Little boys are expected to enjoy getting dirty and sports and other things considered 'masculine', and girls are expected to like Barbies and make up and baby dolls, and I feel like this is incredibly toxic. Toys and games should not be gendered, and children should be allowed to express themselves however they wish, or else they may grow up with a toxic view of who they should be. And this is even more difficult for members of the trans community, with all of these gender roles trying to tell them what box they should fit into, it can be very difficult when that doesn't feel right. The gender spectrum is expansive and can't be put into small boxes labeled 'male' and female'

For this piece itself, I did the whole thing in Photoshop 7, using the shape tools and a silhouette of a male and female crouching looking distressed, I filled in these with the words, and then deleted the silhouette layer to create the image out of just text! The smaller little 'male' and 'female' shapes within the larger ones were simply recolored using the select tool and locking the text layer. The background was also made with the shape tool. Overall I love the effect this ended up with, and I think it worked out pretty well. I hope it was alright that I used a digital medium for this!

The Bubonic Mask

My Pointillism piece, it is sadly unfinished, but I intend to update this post when I am able to finish it. This was done with Artist's Loft brand ink pens on cardstock paper, and is based around a photo that I took of my own plague doctor mask with my iPad, edited the contrast and made it black and white with Photoshop Express before I began working with it on the cardstock. You can see the dotted outline to get an idea of the general shape that it will take when it is completed. Pointillism is a very interesting media to work with, and incredibly tedious. The outcome looks so amazing once it's finished, but the process can be very intimidating and unforgiving. Still I did enjoy this project, and hope to finish this piece soon.

This is another piece appreciating the history and aesthetic of the Plague Doctor mask, work by specialized doctors during bad outbreaks of the plague. The mask was fashioned so that these doctors could keep herbs in the beak, to keep the 'bad air' from reaching them, as they believed this was how it was transmitted. This was called the 'Miasma effect'. Plague doctors also sometimes placed red lenses into the eyes of the mask, believe it would keep out the 'evil' of the plague. It's interesting to note that a lot of plague doctors weren't even real doctors, because most doctors fled the plague, knowing that there wasn't much they could do against it.

The True Gentleman

"Sir, may I be permitted to peck out your eyeballs? Most gracious of you!"

This is my Organic Line Drawing, a character concept that I put together of a very dapper Pied Crow that wears a plague doctor mask. Crows and ravens have always been some of my favorite types of birds, and I always love the way Pied Crows appear to have a 'bib' of white, it makes them look like they're dressing up all fancy! This fellow probably wants to peck your eyes out, but he'll be a complete gentleman about it!

The mask comes from my love for the plague doctor theme, I love the history and aesthetic of the masks and the costume as a whole. And since Plague Doctors often worked around sick or dying people, it seems fitting that they would be associated with crows and ravens, which are often carrion birds! The top is the lines, which were done in Paint Tool Sai, and the colored image was put together in Photoshop 7.