urn:uuid:e6c187ce-6f71-71da-8732-10f7b6e96c90 2010-03-21T07:41:30-04:00 EruannaTelperion urn:uuid:ccef1bb0-f187-f4e2-a3c3-e9c7a8cda122

I havent touched comics since the WTCNS? fiasco (for those not in the know, that was my one and only attempt at a webcomic when I was 14, it was not very successfull)
I have avoided drawing comics under the excuse "I wont draw comics untill my art is better"...which is fair enough I suppose, my art was horrible back then. But Iv come to realise that I will never reach a point where my art isnt going to improve anymore... Ill never have "arrived", there is always, always, for every single artist out there, room to grow. So I could say "when my art is better" forever.
Iv decided that I want to start actually drawing comics. Not a long standing neverending webcomic kind of deal, more of a short story put to comic form is what Im thinking. Something to test my skills on, that wont take up morethen, oh, 100 pages maybe. Less hopefully.

Iv been inspired lately by the works of Junko Mizuno, most notably "The Life of Momongo" which is a perfectly bizar story about a half insect half human girl who lives in a futuristic world where everybody is starving and turning to cannibalism and she has sex with a jellyfish (not pictured) but that in fact, turns her into a jellyfish, so she outlives everyone because jellyfish dont need as much food and are practically immortal. Another equally odd work of hers, "Pure Trance" is a helter skelter plotline, also in the future, about drug addicts and dominatrix nurses and clone babies, omai.
Iv also been inspired by the internet, a webcomic entitled "curvy" is about a licorice princess from Candy World who escapes to our world to avoid being forced into a political marriage, and meets a human girl and their adventures continue from there.
"DAR" is an utterly adorable comic, its basically a comic diary of this girl, and her adventures through life as an artist.
These comics all contain nudity, copious amounts of, but dont treat it like anything special. Kind of like a "Ho hum, breasts" attitude. Like "Theres a shirt....theres a pair of boobs...theres a tree...." like it was just normal and casual. I really like that and its a sense that I want to incorperate into my comic. The works of Junko Mizuno tend to be quite gross but in an utterly adorable way. I still remember the first image by her that I saw, which featured one girl holding a frying pan over a fire, topless and wearing a frilly apron, while another smaller girl sat over the pan and pooped onto it. Right. Your reaction is the classic "WTF?!" responce but the image was so adorable due to the way it was drawn, they were both smiling, had big girly hair, and chibified features. Im fascinated by that art style, taking something utterly gross and turning it into something cute. Everyones seen the classic "Menstruel Dreamer" picture right? Google it if you havent, feaures a cute girl with pierced nipples and a big grin on her face with little happy red animal faces exploding out of her pussy in a wave of blood. Gross eh? Yet adorable in a strange unsetteling disturbing fasion.
I want my comics to have this sence of the macabre, gross and bizar wrapped up in adorableness. Nudity everywhere, and cute, somewhat erotic while not being pornographic.

My only problem? I have no story.
I have no idea the story to put to this project. I dont even, for that matter, have any characters. Id like the story to be slightly sci-fi/fantasy, gothy, maybe a touch steampunk, and incredibly surreal.
Can anyone give me some ideas?!]]>

2009-05-25T15:19:54-04:00 urn:uuid:8d02f343-24f4-a1b0-5e61-9edee6535e22

The purpose of this project is to raise awareness about body image issues surrounding the female genitals, and also challenge preconceptions about what can and cannot be portrayed artistically.

When the vulva develops, many girls find themselves wondering a lot of things about themselves. Its around the same time other things develop as well; and us girls, we worry a lot about appearances. About the same time a girl starts wondering "Are my boobs big enough?" and "Am I skinny enough?" and "How do I work with my hair?" there also comes another question. That being "Is my vagina normal?". There are worlds of different types of vulva, each one unique to the girl it belongs to, and girls enter a confusing time where they dont know whats up. Lips had hardly been evident before puberty are now hanging, and so on. Pubic hair starts to appear. Girls wonder "Is this normal, or is something wrong with me? Should I shave or shouldnt I?"
And it isnt as though they can go around asking their friends to compair notes on gential development. And the only images available in media and online are highly sexualized and pornographic, which is obviously not a good place to find answers concerning body image.
While most girls tend to get over this stage of curiosity, a growing number are now turning to genital plastic surgery.
Just check out This Article.

"On the youth sex-education website Scarleteen.com, dozens of teenage girls can be found commiserating about their labia. "i REALLY h8 mine! They hang really REALLY low and r SO long!" reads one comment. Meanwhile, on MakeMeHeal.com, a consumer site that sells special bras and other gear for women recovering from plastic surgery, women of all ages submit photos of their nether regions and ask for feedback on whether they should get nipped and tucked down there. Welcome to the strange new world of female genital cosmetic surgery, where body insecurity issues are fueling a small but growing Western market for such procedures as labiaplasty, clitoral un-hooding, G-spot augmentation and hymen reconstruction, a.k.a. "revirginization." "

When I first started drawing nude women, I took the clean, censored route prefered by a lot of artists; legs always together, and no nipples. Plastic boobs.
I had always considered nipples to be rather on the obscene side. If it has nipples then one is getting more into the realm of pornography right? Not somewhere I wanted to go. But by self censoring myself it became clear to me that I was teaching myself that nipples were disgusting in some way. Dirty, unclean.. obscene. When I realised this, I forced myself to draw all my nudes with nipples. At first it grossed me out to do it but as I continued I realised that they were perfectly natural, a normal and beautifull part of the human body.

It took years later to apply the same concept to genitals. The genital areas on my nudes were always quite bare, and I honestly truely thought of genitals as disgusting. Just imagining anyone having them grossed me out. Worse, the very fact that I had a vagina just made me cringe. I hated them.
Its only recently that I have decided to change this preconception. Iv been doing figure drawing for the past couple years and did manage to get over my genital-phobia, but still never really felt comfortable drawing them, ever. To include the genitals on a nude just seemed to me like too much.

Now, I have decided to change that.
To declare a personal liberation from insecurities about my own genitals, and also to challenge the idea that genitals, a perfectly natural and normal part of the human body are obscene and dirty.
With this project I am planning on drawing with a large number of different mediums, many different types of vulva. Referances for which I have compiled from the-clitoris.com, a website about female sexual health, which has many pages on body image issues, and a wonderfull gallery of vaginas, normal, non pornographic, vaginas. Also taken some shots of my own for referances.
Incidentally, I also highly reccomend The Breast Gallery which is focused on displaying a wide range of non pornographic, normal, breasts.

Do tell me what you think of the whole idea. Its probably the most riske thing I have ever attempted, so Im a bit nervous about begining to post some of the peices in the series. Tell me what you think.
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2009-05-13T22:19:48-04:00