hey, I don't want to seem like I'm attacking you, but I have a question. there's some art of yours where Percy Newton from The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue is drawn as white and that's not cool. Percy is canonically Black and drawing him whitewashed is kinda racist. so could you not draw him like that anymore?
I saw this ask in the morning, but didnāt have the time to reply to it because I had to go to work, but Iāve been a little confused by it all day, because Iām not sure what you mean? I have never purposefully drawn him white.
Iām guessing you could either be referring to my pencil art, or my watercolour art, because I feel like in all my digital art Percy is very visibly black.
When it comes to my pencil art, works like this, I only draw lineart. I usually donāt shade or colour in my pencil art, so everything including skin, hair, eyes, no matter the colour or character, will be left paper white. If I were to shade or colour my pencil works, I would obviously colour everything as itās supposed to be.
Watercolour on the other hand is a bit more tricky. Looking back at my art, I think you might be talking about especially these two works. I understand where youāre coming from. However, I would like to stress that Iāve never imagined Percy as white, and Iāve always tried my best to present him right in my art, even in these two works, even if they ended up being failures on that front. Watercolour is a difficult medium that Iām by no means a master of. When painting with watercolour you have to work from light to dark, and if you accidentally go too dark at some point, you canāt go back anymore. Thatās why I often tend to be a bitĀ ātoo carefulā with watercolour, making multiple layers where I little by little go darker, until the result is to my liking. It seems that in these two works, I didnāt make enough layers, in the fear that I would make too many and end up ruining the whole piece.
Also, if you look at the first work, the post with the six different characters, you may notice that Percyās skin is pretty much the same colour as Jesper Faheyās on his right. Jesper Fahey is also a black character. Then compare this to Andrew Minyard, an actual white character, on the left. If you look at the work closely, you can also see that Percyās palms are a little lighter than the rest of his hands. I guess Iām just trying to point out that I really was trying to go for black skin. Though I admit that itās not a very successful presentation, and itās always been one of my least favourite Percys Iāve ever drawn.
Looking at my newer watercolour works though, you can hopefully see some progress. This is the point where I started getting a little bit more comfortable using actually bold colours in watercolour painting. Also black comes in multiple shades, and I think in some of my works I was going for a little lighter shade of black, considering Percyās father is white and mom is black, and his skin is described as being the ācolour of sandalwoodā. Those works were a long time ago though and I donāt fully remember my thought process behind each of them anymore. Iām sorry it ended up too light.
So, tl;dr: I have never intentionally drawn Percy, or any poc character for that matter, white. That would be against my values.Ā In addition, TGGTVAV is my favourite book and Percy Newton my favourite character, perhaps in all of literature, and Iāve always tried my hardest to do him justice in all of my works. The fact that I have failed saddens me.
If you have any further questions, or if you were perhaps talking about works other than the ones I brought up in my reply, please feel free to leave me another message.
