Inktober Retrospective 2019 | Day 7: Dance

Indian poses tickle the artistic part of my brain. They create dramatic, impressive, EXpressive silhouettes that can really only be an Indian dance pose. Now I believe it’s specifically Hindu, but I’m not educated enough on this topic to separate religious dances from the secular ones. Whichever it may be, I wanted to create something heavily influenced by these dance poses.

However, as I mentioned before, I’m not educated on Indian/Hindu dances. For all I know, there could be some super tiny detail that I miss or forego for cartooning’s sake that actually has a very deep, indispensable meaning to the Hindu religion. And boom, I’ve offended an entire religion. So, I decided instead of trying to take something from an actual photo, I made the costume from scratch. It’s one of my silhouette women with a rose/flower theme. The pose is sort of there, the clothing is kind of there, but it is far enough from the real thing (I hope) for it to be “based on” and not a faulty “representation of,” you know what I mean? I don’t even think the pose is a direct pull from something. I think I pulled two different arm poses and put them on a different leg pose.

Hmm...

The base is good, I feel. The figure has movement. Its structure is pretty solid. My main problem with this piece is how the materials look together (or more specifically, how I made them look together). Some areas have really good value contrast, like the flower behind her behind and the rim lighting on the bottom of her pants. Said flowers help balance things out, but the rest of the picture gets muddy elsewhere. Her petal headdress doesn’t stand out from the things behind it enough. The woman herself doesn’t stand out from the background enough.

It comes down to two things: time and my camera. In reference to time, I was, once again, filming this, and I believe my battery had started to die, so I sped through much of the finishing touches. Even though I did add extra touches after I stopped recording, I wanted to post to keep on schedule, so I had to cut it short. This, of course, limits what I can do, in all stages of production, from sketching to final lines, inking, etc. I could go back and fix it, but I haven’t done that yet, so am I going to? Probably not.

In reference to my camera... well, I daresay, I’ve already covered part of that. But there’s more. At this point, I still didn’t know quite how to photo-edit toned paper pictures. My lighting is not optimal for photographing things in color. If it’s all greyscale, I’m golden (oddly enough). I suppose, then, it’s less of my camera’s fault than it is mine...

I like it quite a bit. Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for you), it looks much better in person.

Thanks for reading~

#ink #inktober #silhouettewoman #cartoon