You don’t realize how many artists have same face syndrome until you try to find an artist who can portray ethnic features. Many of them either lack the skill or the motivation, or maybe the motivation to develop the skill. But sorry I don’t want you giving my Black OC a pointy little nose and that same mouth you drew on that white girl over there.
Next time you find an artist you want to commission, look and see if they have any Black or brown people in their portfolio, and as you search, maybe fruitlessly, all the faces begin to look exactly alike and it starts to feel like you’re looking at someone’s incredibly well executed dollmaker.
People who can draw a wider range of features than just “generic white fantasy girl #9” are stronger artists and more worthy of your cash. (Unless the same face Pixar thing is what you’re going for, then by all means, proceed with mediocrity.) And I don’t mean “draws the same face and gives it dark skin and curly hair” I’m talking big noses, wide noses, flat noses. Monolids and thick lips and textured hair and PEOPLE WHO’S UNDERTONE IS NOT PINK FOR GOD’S SAKE WOULD YOU STOP MAKING PEOPLE PINK?
Anyway, find quality artists by looking for faces of color.
Oh and body shape/sizes other than “impossibly slender elf girl” or “tiddies out anime girl”!
Some folks are saying use NatGeo as a reference which, um…well, OP’s got a reblog specifically about why that is a bad idea that I won’t paraphrase or do any horseshit with because her words matter more than mine.
To sort of shoot that strawman argument of “well, if I can’t have that, then what else is there? You never provided me that!”, I’m going to speak up with a better suggestion for folks who sincerely want to improve: Unsplash is right there. They have a whole section dedicated to people photos, submitted by their userbase for free use: (x)
Here are some fun ones, just from a quick skim right now:
Like this is just a skim! Folks, we can do better and not use racist resources. Sure, Unsplash is limited by what users submit, but at least by that virtue, there’s so much more there on Unsplash to practice with as an artist for diversifying your face shapes and body styles. And, again, all of these are free to use, so they’re willing models.
I appreciate this addition because you did the work to find a quality source of pictures from models of color who are every day people. They also VOLUNTEERED to have their pictures used for free by artists as reference. That gives them agency, it makes it a oit communication and not colonization.
I don’t want people to never make an addition to my posts, it’s just way too often people blunder along without any care for the core subject - which is racism, not a simple criticism of technique. This shows an understanding of the underlying issue and then says to other white people “hey look you can stop being racist AND not be racist at the same time!”
Anyway, sorry if that didn’t make sense, I’m hopped up on anti anxiety meds after the incident with the dog at the park.
(via flapwrap)