WANGIE
WANGIE is back! (For real this time.)
Sorry it was such a long hiatus! I'm pretty embarrassed about this, but I'm back on track. A few months ago, I started looking at normal fashion editorials and it messed me up. There's a real difference between editorials that are focused on the clothes (which you often see in style blogs!) and editorials that are focused on the fantasy, the beauty, etc, and I found the former empowering and the latter crazy-making, to put it simply.
See, I really like this quote from The Awl from an article about Antony Hegarty and his influences, because this sums up a lot of what I'm trying to do with Wangie: "Hegarty's work can be best understood by considering the life and art of the Australian-born performance artist Leigh Bowery. Bowery used his art to push himself past his own personal shame-by adorning his body in ways that were grotesque or bizarre, by opening himself up to ridicule and surviving the scrutiny of others, he sought to transcend humiliation." But it's hard to keep that focus, which is the focus of Wangie, while looking at fashion editorials and feeling like Wangie needs to be more conventionally beautiful. I wanted to draw plain, dark/Asian girls with wide hips and fat arms, and the more fashion editorials I consumed, the more I felt like that was not... acceptable? Or something? See, I told you I got into a bad headspace.
So I've imposed a strict moratorium on looking at fashion editorials! Only street style and personal style blogs for now.
Anyways, Wangie's back now, and I expect to keep updating it, unless I go off my rocker again, or something. I've changed the style just a bit--softened it up with gray lines instead of black. It'll allow me to use softer colors too.
WANGIE
Sorry it was such a long hiatus! I'm pretty embarrassed about this, but I'm back on track. A few months ago, I started looking at normal fashion editorials and it messed me up. There's a real difference between editorials that are focused on the clothes (which you often see in style blogs!) and editorials that are focused on the fantasy, the beauty, etc, and I found the former empowering and the latter crazy-making, to put it simply.
See, I really like this quote from The Awl from an article about Antony Hegarty and his influences, because this sums up a lot of what I'm trying to do with Wangie: "Hegarty's work can be best understood by considering the life and art of the Australian-born performance artist Leigh Bowery. Bowery used his art to push himself past his own personal shame-by adorning his body in ways that were grotesque or bizarre, by opening himself up to ridicule and surviving the scrutiny of others, he sought to transcend humiliation." But it's hard to keep that focus, which is the focus of Wangie, while looking at fashion editorials and feeling like Wangie needs to be more conventionally beautiful. I wanted to draw plain, dark/Asian girls with wide hips and fat arms, and the more fashion editorials I consumed, the more I felt like that was not... acceptable? Or something? See, I told you I got into a bad headspace.
So I've imposed a strict moratorium on looking at fashion editorials! Only street style and personal style blogs for now.
Anyways, Wangie's back now, and I expect to keep updating it, unless I go off my rocker again, or something. I've changed the style just a bit--softened it up with gray lines instead of black. It'll allow me to use softer colors too.
WANGIE