What I'm Doing This Month
I try to be pretty active on Instagram but like we all know, it's very hard to be posting everyday, especially when life gets in the way. Instagram has some pretty cool art challenges, such as Mermay or probably the most well-known, Inktober. I had a blast participating in Mermay last May and if you love mermaids as much as I do, you better try to make a dang mermaid next May.
This month I decided to try to post daily again. I've been stuck at a certain number of followers and I was ready to get over that hump. I thought it would be cool to come up with my own theme for this month, I called it Ugly August Girls. After a day, I realized this could be a tricky theme. Who am I to say what makes a girl ugly? Great, looks like I just laid out a mile of eggshells to walk across. I got a few conflicting opinions from friends, one saying I better watch who I draw and call ugly, while the other said that art is censor-less and not to be so scared of what to draw because someone will always be offended in the end. I was a little stuck in the middle but in the end, I've decided artistic freedom would be the way to go.
Inspirations
For my 7th Ugly August Girl, I decided to make a rag doll, Frankenstein type of being. I used Pinterest for my inspirations of course. I used a figure drawing reference as well as inspirations from artists Pedro Astudillo and Allan, also known as memorypalace on Deviant Art.
Meaning
Below are images of my 7th day Ugly Girl. Many women are seen as rag dolls or inanimate objects. A pretty thing that is useful in a limited number of ways, but easily replaceable. I tried to capture the emotion many individuals experience living under such an oppressed lifestyle. Her face is sad as she looks down, but what can she do? Many women are forced into this lifestyle or feel they have no choice. Her body is stitched together, perhaps made ideally for a man. Her body doesn't matter. She doesn't matter. Women are made to feel pain, to carry it with them and not falter. But she is weak, off balance. She needs love. She needs safety. She is tired of being ripped apart, only to be stitched back together. The stitches won't heal because she is teared so often. Soon, her beauty will be unrecognizable and all that will remain will be a stitch person, made entirely of stitches. And what about her strength, her insides? She will be broken more than on the outside.
