So you might be saying: Lion why a guide on drawing black people? Well young blood it’s because a lot of people cant…seem…to draw…black people..Amazing I know.
Racist (caricatures) portrayals of black people have been around forever, and to this day people can’t seem to draw black people like they are human. If your artwork resembles any of the above even remotely your artwork is racist and offensive. If you try to excuse that as a stylistic choice you’re not only a terrible artist, but racist too!!! Congrats.
Whitewashing is also a problem. A lot of people refuse to draw black features on canonly black characters. While this example isn’t colored, lightening the skin-tone of a character is also considered whitewashing. So lets start with features!
Now all black people have different noses thats a no-brainer, but black noses tend to have flatter bridges, and wider nostrils.
Please stay from triangular anime noses and small button noses.
Your drawings should not depict black people with abnormally large noses. (Especially if you do not draw other characters this way)
If you feel like the way you draw lips on black characters is offensive or resembles a caricature,it probably does and you should change it. ABSOLUTELY AVOID PLACING LIPS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FACE.
Hair is so diverse! Please get used to drawing braids, locs,kinks and coils! If you can learn to draw ringlets and long waves you can learn how to draw black hairstyles.
Add clips! Learn how to draw baby-hairs and never be afraid to add color Pinterest and Google are free my dudes! Also try using square brushes for blocking in coils.
This is the kind of thing I tell people when they go off on me being anti-captivity towards marine amusement parks. Zoos and “amusement” parks are totally different things.
Zoos help animals by having breeding programs like those mentioned above, marine parks harm animals by treating them like circus animals and forcing them to do tricks under incredibly stressful conditions and breeding for profit not for saving the species.
I learned in a history class that because Einstein was an immigrant none
of the US (white) colleges or universities would let him join their
faculty but black colleges and universities welcomed his brilliance with
open arms.
it wasn’t because Einstein was an immigrant, it was because he was Jewish
“Upon Hitler’s appointment as German chancellor on January 30, 1933, Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany was swift and often violent. Prominent Jews were denounced by Nazi officials, attacked in the media, and subjected to violence and arrest by the Nazis and their collaborators. As a vocal opponent of Nazism and a staunch advocate of pacifism, Albert Einstein was a particularly attractive target. At the time, he was teaching at the California Institute of Technology in the United States. Nonetheless, the Nazis publicly agitated against Einstein as a symbol of “Jewish degeneracy” and accused him of spreading “atrocity propaganda.” In February and March 1933, the Gestapo repeatedly raided his family’s apartment in Berlin.
Despite his own March 15, 1933, declaration of self-imposed exile from Nazi Germany, as well as warnings from friends that it was too dangerous to return, Einstein and his wife decided to travel back to Germany, intending to visit their summer cottage. While at sea, they learned that Nazis had ransacked the cottage in Caputh, at which point they decided that re-entering Germany was unwise. At this time, Einstein, a theoretical physicist, decided to pen a letter resigning his membership in the Prussian Academy of Science.
On March 28, 1933, their ship docked in Antwerp, Belgium, and Einstein immediately reported to the German Consulate in Brussels, where he turned in his German passport and renounced his citizenship. The German government promptly retaliated by confiscating all of Einstein’s property and funds that remained in Germany.
On April 7, 1933, the German government passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, excluding Jews and political opponents of the Nazis from all civil service positions, including those in public universities. Among those forced to flee Germany were fourteen Nobel laureates and twenty-six of the sixty professors of theoretical physics in the country.”
Einstein was civil rights activist because Einstein was a Jewish victim of racism. (via x)
So I had the strangest dream this weekend and nobody understands me so I need to share it with you because you might. Press J to skip this post if you can’t deal, I will accept this.
In my dream I was standing on the back deck of a rural cabin that overlooked a beautiful Vermont/Scottish Highlands landscape of unspoiled wilderness. It was a crisp, perfect autumn morning. I held a cup of cooling coffee in my hands as I leaned against the railing and scanned the perfect rolling hills in the midground, behind which the great patterned mountains with their snowcaps marched on until they blended with the horizon: #aesthetic
As I gazed at a distant meadow clearing in the trees, a pair of brightly coloured humanoid creatures emerged from the woods and began to dance for each other. It was an esoteric, beautiful mating dance, a strange combination of instinct and choreography. I felt awe washing over me. I marvelled. I felt a deep sense of wonder and peace as I observed this vanishingly rare encounter that I had never thought to observe in person. These animals were instantly recognisable but had never been studied in the wild. I felt incredibly humbled and privileged to witness this behaviour – I knew that I was the first human witness to observe this behaviour – and I reached for my phone, wondering if I should film it, so it could join the scholarly record, where it NEEDED to be. This could change everything. But then I held back – something told me “no,” to let the creatures have their privacy.
Ok, I can’t go any further without telling you that they were Teletubbies.
A red one and a yellow one. I know. I know. Stay with me here.
The cryptids melted back into the woods. My subconscious drew a discreet veil over the rest of their mating ritual, but I knew instinctively that this had been a dance of courtship. I was busy pondering the implications, because they were critical. You see, although the creatures were instantly recognisable as Teletubbies, as I had studied them, even at a distance, I had an incredible realisation.
They were adult Teletubbies.
This realisation dawned on me and in my dream I understood it fully. The ones that we know of – the captive ones that we have seen on television – are juveniles. In fact, they are the equivalent of toddlers. When you see the adults this becomes obvious. The garbled speech and silly movements of the four captive Teletubbies we know are the babbles of babyhood, a private primal toddler-language brewed up between sentient beings who have never encountered an adult of their own kind.
The adult Teletubbies have more branching, complex antlers and shaggy coats. They are less brightly coloured. They are terrifyingly large. Their strangely human faces, emerging from the thick fur, are unquestionably adult; remote, serene, reproachful. Their television screens are glitchy, esoteric and unknowable. They are cryptids whose public exploitation has undermined their rarity and their strange, alien dignity.
In my dream my feelings of awe and peace turned to great sadness at the fate of the captive toddler Teletubbies. I realised that I had to be the scientist who brought this discovery to the world and raised awareness of their plight. And I also questioned: are Teletubbies like axolotls? Do they exhibit neoteny? (Axolotls, the cute aquarium pets with flaring gills, are actually juveniles of an amphibious species – if given the right conditions they’ll grow up into land-dwelling black newts. But they can breed in their aquatic juvenile form, and most spend their whole lives in this form. Deprived of their wild potential, will the Teletubbies ever mature? Or are they merely experiencing a long childhood, natural for a species that is unimaginably long-lived?)
So in my dream my husband came out onto the back deck and I began to share these discoveries with him and before I could even bring up the axolotls he just said “what the fucking fuck” and went away again.
I woke up disgruntled and unable to capture the feeling of peace and sadness. I then tried to explain this to my husband in the waking world, and he said “what the fucking fuck” and walked away before I even got to the explanation of the Teletubbies being toddlers, which just goes to show that you never know someone as well as you think you do.
Anyway I’m sure you guys will join me in this knowledge. And also I’ve googled it and apparently the Teletubbies reboot features infant Teletubbies, so clearly they are getting more from somewhere and the time to question this is NOW
I have a personal theory that how a dream makes you feel is more meaningful than the content.
What I got from your dream was a sense of wonder and privilege (the good kind), followed by the need to bear witness and advocate for the cryptids. Topped off with a disturbingly accurate example of the attitudes you’d face.
(staring nobly into the distance) yes. yes, you understand. you understand.
I’m so sorry but this is what came to mind and so this is what I drew
Holy
Thank you so much for sharing that dream, it was EXACTLY what I needed to stop feeling like shit. Now I, too, am honored by the knowledge of adult teletubbies.
Here’s my take on this lovely cryptid.
WHOA I’m sorry I missed this. this is magnificent. the feet and hands are really spooky. it definitely fills me with the Fear.
