Anyway, I have specifically been trying to learn to draw women. Over the course of my drawing and doodling life I have never really been able to effectively illustrate a female character. Males, easy. Aliens, sure. Animals, no problem. I can draw anything, really, other than a woman. I mean a stick figure woman, okay, but that's not really a female character—that's just a stick figure win some curly lines on top and maybe a triangle skirt. It's not truly effeminate.
Or, at least I didn't think it was.
So I've been looking at illustrations online. I've been looking up illustrating instructions specific to women. I've been paying closer attention to female figures in cartoons and in comics. And you know what I found out? It turns out that the difference between female and male illustrations are a series of brain encoded stereotypes that aren't necessarily true to real life. The illustrator isn't necessarily trying to mimic reality as much as they're trying to trip the right amount of encoded ideals to make your brain think that's it's female:
•long lashes
•rounded facial features
•small chins
•thick lips
•long, thin necks
•long hair
•bigger eyes
•thin hips
•breasts
These are just some of the ideas you find espoused in discussions on how to draw the female character. You'll notice that most of these features could be attributed to some men, or are not possessed at all by some women. Yet when they are placed down on paper our brain tells us this is a woman. It makes me wonder how long our brains have been trained this way.
In earlier Renaissance or even older Egyptian illustrations these stereotypes are not present. In Egypt the women looked very much like the men in pictures, with perhaps only their breasts to distinguish them. In Renaissance work there was quite a bit more true-to-form illustration with many women being quite round all over—none of the small chins, or hips, or necks present (but we still see them as women). So when did it start?
What's even more interesting is that in simpler, smaller comic illustrations you find the artist doesn't have room for all of these items. Usually it gets limited to breasts, hips, (maybe) long hair, and a long, thin neck. We still see them as clearly female characters, but there's really not a lot there to distinguish them from the illustrated males. One thing I've been doing is using my fingers to cover up hair, or their bodies just to see how my brain reacts.
Wouldn't you know it, when certain encoded ideals are covered the illustration becomes quite quickly androgynous. It's really fascinating to me.
In the comic book about comic book that I got for Nolan, Scott McCloud has this interesting passage where he discusses this idea. He doesn't make mention specifically of men and women, but he discusses the encoding of our brain and our brains desire to make sense of things. He begins with a photo of a man, then moves to a realistic drawing, then a comic style illustration, then a really simplistic illustration, then a stick figure face, and then an electrical outlet. He points out that, all along the way, we never stop seeing a face. Even though the outlet isn't a face, our brain makes it a face. It meets the right amount of encoded points and it's a face.
Aren't our brains crazy?
Anyway, I'm still a long way off from being able to illustration women in a manner satisfactory to myself, but I've found the exercise quite challenging and interesting.
Now I'm going to be coming upstairs to crawl into bed with you for a few minutes.
I love you.
.a boy
