bit of a short one but I'm quite proud of these pieces and wanted to get this out here! oh my god the tags
from left to right, top to bottom
India, China (The prompt for this was wedding themed indchu 🥺🥺I still adore how this one looks I love it so much)
Zanzibar (Haven't drawn her in forever and wanted to make some art of her for her new pfp!)
Malaysia, Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Cuba, Philippines, Indonesia, India, Ecuador, Turkey, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Singapore, Vietnam, Egypt (Oh my god I ran out of tags while tagging all the characters- this piece has been split into two bc i think it looks nicer!)
Yemen (An experimental piece! I wanted to practice more backgrounds and full bodies and i'm so pleasantly surprised with how it turned out!)
transparent version of yemen below read more if anyone wants it 😺😺
Dusted off my aph Botswana design and gave him 1) some friends and 2) a human name! Meet Seretse Motswaledi
a bunch of headcanons and such under the cut
The given name Seretse is the same as the first president of independent Botswana, Seretse Khama. I’m no expert on the history there, but I really liked the sound of the name “Seretse.” Motswaledi is borrowed from Gomolemo Motswaledi, another politician who founded the Botswana Movement for Democracy in 2010. Wikipedia is obviously a questionable source of information but apparently Mr. Motswaledi was also a music composer, which seemed appropriate for my OC
His general look (read: the cowboy hat) was inspired by the impossibly cool heavy metal subculture of Botswana, but I want to be clear that Botswana the character is neither exclusively into metal music nor is a particularly cool person lol. He in fact loves all music genres with a passion to rival Austria’s and mostly likes the goth cowboy look to feel badass.
Unlike Austria, he’s not really a natural talent when it comes to music and doesn’t have much of a head for composition, but he loves it enough to have become really good at several instruments. He’s got a good sense of rhythm so he’s pretty good at drums, and he also plays the segaba, which is a string instrument native to Botswana that I have no idea how to accurately describe the sound of so go look it up if you’re curious.
In theory, this man really likes rain. He likes seeing things grow. He likes it when the weather cooperates with his farmers since Botswana is prone to drought. He likes how cool thunderstorms look.
In practice, he really, really does not like rain. He behaves like a cat if he gets wet and is a huge fussy baby about it.
India is one of his closest pals outside of Africa; IRL, these countrys established relations early on after gaining independence from England, and though I did say Botswana is not meant to be particularly cool, these two definitely could bond over the knowledge that at least they’re way cooler than England lmao. They also have a mutual pal in South Africa, who I should probably draw them with some time, there’s lots of great South Africa designs
Russia is another country that was early to establish relations with Botswana, but on a character level, they haven’t known each other long enough for Botswana to have all the baggage of so much history as is the case with Russia’s neighbours. Without that old fear, Botswana is free to find Russia’s personality an endearing sort of odd instead of finding him a bit creepy. This also means Russia feels comfortable teasing him without as much risk of stumbling into genuinely hurtful territory, hence the above image of Botswana being a baby about the cold.
His ugly pink puffer jacket is very much inspired by Spike Spiegel on my part, but he has no idea who that is. Japan saw him in it one time and was very sorely tempted to ask where the hell he had gotten it (Russia gave it to him when he was under-dressed for Moscow) but he didn’t think they were close enough on either a personal or geopolitical level to be so impolite.
Also, if you noticed, I changed Lesotho’s hair design since it looked like another Lesotho oc. I love this hairstyle anyway and think it suits her more? Yeah? No?
And finally, after 3 (4?) years, I’ve drawn eSwatini! Most of y’all probably know him as Swaziland though. Anyway, I’ve finally finished all members of the Southern African Custom Union (SACU)! Fun fact, they’re the oldest customs union in the world! It was founded in 1910.
