Indias Bravas

Indias Bravas

Per the suggestion of a fellow blogger and virtual friend, Mo, I decided to post drawings currently in the works. These drawings are part of a body of work dealing with standards of beauty. After reading Joanne Rondilla’s academic work on colorism and skin lightening amongst Filipina woman; examining and visually depicting two opposite ends of the spectrum, indigenous and super model Filipina women, came naturally. With Joanne’s research serving as the impetus, I embarked on a project that become something much deeper than I had imagined.

Re-contextualizing and reinterpreting Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s Doll Test was my original intent. The series was supposed to be comprised of small drawings depicting indigenous and super model Filipina women with modified features. I was going to create a grid of these images. Very similar to Ellen Gallagher’s work, I was looking to re-appropriate images in popular culture. Yet, I’ve always wanted to incorporate blind contour drawing with my renderings. After a multitude of contour drawings as well as representational drawings, I layered them to add a bit more dimension and depth. Again, this series is far from finished but I will definitely let you know when I think they’re done.

Again, I’ll post more soon. It’s been such an exhausting day! I’ll pick up some time again tomorrow…

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5 responses to “Indias Bravas”

  1. Love love love them!!! Thank you so much for sharing these. The drawings (today’s and yesterday’s) are so beautiful and fascinating. And this seems like such a perfect medium for exploring colorism. I don’t know if this is the point you mean to make, but the dark woman is every bit as beautiful as the lighter one. (P.S. I never heard the word colorism until just now, but I’m familiar with the concept — it was a huge recurring theme in that book by Isabel Allende that I just read.)

    1. Thank you so much, Mo! I’ll put a bit more explanation into a future post regarding the original idea and intent. Thanks again!!

      1. Looking forward to it!

  2. These are gorgeous! I wish I had such a talent. When I was a teen, I did love to draw. I was pretty decent at it, too. But I never really applied myself to it, not like you have. I hope you continue to do so, because you have a great gift.

    1. Thank you so much, Carolyn. I will definitely continue on with this series to see where it goes. Again, thanks for the kind words.

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