+ listening to: “tongue-tied” by Aqualung

Yesterday my friend Kevin treated me to my first outing to a little coffe house called Carpe Diem.

finis.

+ listening to: “crawling in the dark” by hoobastank

“In the homes of the black and white Americans of the same cultural and economic level one finds similar furniture, literature, and conversation. How, then, can the black American be expected to produce art and literature dissimilar to that of the white American?

Consider Coleridge-Taylor, Edward Wilmot Blyden, and Claude McKay, the Englishmen; Pushkin, the Russian; Bridgewater, the Pole; Antar, the Arabian; Latino, the Spaniard; Dumas, pere and fils, the Frenchmen; and Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles W. Chestnut, and James Weldon Johnson, the Americans. All Negroes; yet their work shows the impress of nationality rather than race. They all reveal the psychology and culture of their environment?their color is incidental. Why should Negro artists of America vary from the national artistic norm when Negro artists in other countries have not done so?”

–from ?The Negro Art Hokum?, 1926 article by George Schuyler

More than once people have asked me why I don’t draw more “black” people (males in particular). It’s not an common question, but it has come up. So, while I may not agree with the article as a whole, I sympathize with the general idea. My art reflects my surroundings and my upbringing.

I could go way more in depth with my views and feelings about race and stereotypes. . .but I’m not. I’ll just point out that I like to draw characters that are racially ambiguous. Of course, all of them have specific ethnicities and cultural backgrounds that I have in mind for them, but unless they’re colored, I think, the viewer isn’t really sure. Also, I don’t draw a lot of males in general, because I’m not that good at it. I’m working on it, though. So, my lack of African-American male figures has nothing to do with my dislike of that particular group. On the contrary, it’s because I don’t want to do them injustice that I don’t attempt to draw them much, if that makes any sense. Since I can’t quite execute artistically the idealized version of said male, I stay on the safe side and draw other things (people) that I’m more confident in portraying–like pretty young women. ^_^

+ listening to: “not for all the love in the world” by The Thrills
+ mood: completely disoriented

I was awakened this morning by the wringing of my cell phone. It was on the other side of the room by my computer. I jumped out of the bed to answer it as I realized that I may have overslept for class. As I went for the phone. I looked at my alarm clock: 8:49.

Shoot.

I hastily answered, and after having a brief chat with my younger sister about her anxieties about turning in her argumentative essay on blood transfusion alternatives, I rushed to get ready.

Fully dressed, I went back to look at the clock. 9:02 a.m. My class doesn’t start until 10:10. I don’t know what was going on with my mind. It is now 9:11, so I’ve got about an hour to kill before class. I could be productive and work on sketches for my children’s book, or layout for my web site design project. . . in so doing, actually being productive, for once.

Well, the first thing I’ll do is go find some grub, because I’m always starving after my studio classesÃ?–they last two and a half to almost three hours, and we can’t eat in the computer lab. I’ll see what happens after that, and return this afternoon with a progress report.