White Society Nude sketch

#1

Any feedback is helpful. Anything that I can add to strengthen the meaning.

WhiteSociety - not sure if I made this clear, but basically the wind is blowing her
black skin away, revealing white skin underneath. This is about how white’s
basically control the society, or how people feel they do. About how even some
blacks feel they would have better jobs and be treated differently if they were
black. Basically, society wants us to be white is the idea.

There is an overarching theme in this collection, which is why many are drawn
to some degree as synthetic people, or even doll-like. The hair takes different
forms and shapes to express the emotion. Their hair is sometimes more like
crystals and other times like strips of metal.

#2

One thing I teach my student regarding visual communication, is using the real acid test to see if your visual narrative makes any sense to people who can’t read your mind or won’t bother to read (or don’t have access to) any accompanying texts you have about it. All you need to do is to show it to your family, friends, co-workers and ask them what they think the image is trying to communicate. If most of them can’t understand what you’re trying to convey as a visual storyteller, then you’ve failed and need to make changes to the image so it’s more easily understandable. Ask yourself if you have included enough visual clues in your image to allow the viewer to understand exactly what you’re trying to communicate. How could your viewers even know about the pressures and expectations and prejudices of society based on your image? There are absolutely zero visual clues conveying any of that–it’s only in your head and your viewers cannot read your mind. You need to put those elements in your image in order to give your viewers a chance to understand what you’re trying to communicate. Use symbolism and visual metaphors to get your point across.

While in the fine arts circle, people might say it’s not important if the artist has communicated his intent effectively and it’s all up to the viewer’s interpretation. I disagree with that stance because I feel if you have message then you surely want that message understood and not misinterpreted, otherwise you have failed as a visual communicator. (And this is different from instances when you do want your visual story to be open to interpretation and have multiple possible meanings.)

#3

Thank you for taking the tine to reply. Although, I agree when it comes to visual story telling, such as a comic panel, like in my comic Aditi Reborn, you want to leave little up for interpretation, for this piece, the only thing I want clear to the viewer is that her black skin is being changed to white.

I want the view to interpret that as they will. Each piece in this collection expresses many views that I do not hold, but others do, so in some I leave the meaning more open, in others I use more symbolism, but even then, I know not everyone will see it the same, such as Mary Jane Went Down to Georgia.

#4

In personal art and fine art, whether the intended message is clear isn’t critically important. But in the commercial world, failure to communicate an idea clearly can have grave results–sometimes costing a company millions of dollars (in lawsuits, ineffective marketing campaign, backlash, etc.).

In the case of your first image, I think the dark skin getting blasted away can be more obvious. It’ll be more obvious if she retained more of the dark skin and only a little bit of of has been blasted away. Right now it’s about half/half and it looks more like she’s got some kind of pattern of spots on her (like animal’s fur). Also, having those light valued streaks in front of her confuses the direction of the blast a little. We don’t need to see those streaks–we only need to see the darker skin getting blasted away in streaks behind her to get what’s going on. Instead, have the background be really bright on the right side and get darker on the left side.

#5

Thank you Luna. I was thinking the same thing about not having streaks on the right side. Maybe just part of her face and upper body for the skin turning white.

It will be done in watercolor. I’m debating to leave the paper white for the white skin, with maybe just a few lightly skin colored shadows.

Most of the time I know exactly what I want to do, but this one has been bothering me.