Another extended tweet

A lot of monthly Writing and Art Prompts have helped push my storytelling and illustrating skills. Glad to participate again this Pride Month, which forces me to actually sketch out OCs that would otherwise remain in my head. 

For example, I came up with high school English teacher, Mr. Bakker. Wrote about him in early scripts, and finally fleshed him out in December 2021. In October 2022, I drafted an episode about his work-relationship and friendship with my male love interest, Peter, but before that, struggled to find a first name for him. 

Sometimes, a character's first name comes to me. Sometimes, their last name. Rarely do I get a full name. 

Now, for this Pride Month, I finally get to draw Bakker and his husband, Gonzalo. And then struggled to research a last name and possible cultural background for Gonzalo... *sigh* 

The creating doesn't end, but hopefully, you'll like the characters I introduced last year and the newer ones this year! 

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH. 

The Year I Couldn't Draw

As quarantine and lockdown forces me to have enough time to draw and even some wee hours to write, I remember when I couldn't draw.

It's not that I would not draw or lost the ability to do so. I just COULDN'T. 

Throughout 2000, many pivotal events happened. I finally freed myself from college. I had already graduated but remained, my excuse was I had a campus job and I felt comfortable. But I didn't want to remain there in case I grew stagnant. 

I also started to substitute teach, which wasn't something I wanted but I just couldn't figure what else to do with an art degree. My mother had to undergo cataract surgery, and I was constantly sick from catching colds and other viruses from little to young students. My body was always weak, my immune system always compromised. I was a sickly kid. Oftentimes, almost to ER-deathly ill. 

This same year trying to figure things out, I ended up in ICU twice. 

And then as the year drew closer to its end, my only grandparent became ill. We spoke on the phone as she was overseas in my parents' country, letting me know she wasn't doing well. She died weeks after, her oldest daughter, my mother, holding and watching her take her last breaths. 

This was also the same year my first short story was published and I knew I wanted to write if the artwork didn't work out. All this happened in 2000. Though my mind was on fire with story ideas, I became lost in what to draw... The ideas dried up. Inspiration and necessity left me. Looking at art supplies caused me to vacillate between anger, frustration, and sorrow. Now I know this was depression but I didn't wish to speak its name. I gave up my art, fearing that the dry-spell would cause me to lose my illustrating abilities once I felt able to pick up a pen or pencil. 

That painful 2000- and the Year of the Dragon, no less. My animal year under the Lunar calendar! -forced many questions. I yielded to few answers. I needed to get back into myself. I wondered if it were possible and I missed my chance. 

There are the people who see your works and feel it flowed to you. That mystical ease of expression. But just as hard as it became for me to create, when 2001 came around, something unclasped and I was able to look at a blank sketchbook page again. I remember drawing a new idea as the tears fell, spattering the colors. 

I had started diving more into my writing by attending workshops, registered for more classes, and attend more writer conferences. 

The effects on my year-long artist block collapsed but with it, pain, rage, and grief for my lost grandmother, my lost ideas, the loss of fear of a parent's health, the loss of my body's autonomy. I had to accept it in order to give it up. And with that, I was free to illustrate once again.

Decolonizing my own work...

When I drew a cat character back in high school, this was around the time I began to formulate characters for my Tabber the Red series. One of the more important female characters, a male student called her 'thunder thighs'. A male character 'looked gay'*.When working on characters for my scifi dog comic, one athletic-looking female character 'looked like a lesbian', as if one's body type determined one's orientation! 

I have gotten a lot of flack, criticism, and insults towards my OCs (original characters) since I could put pencil/pen to paper. And when people attack my characters, I feel as if they're attacking me. One particular hurtful comment was when a close friend and fellow artist told me to kill off my main female character because she wasn't 'good enough for the main male character', who happened to be a gangster! 

Now you probably noticed a pattern here. Most of the harshest critiques are towards my female or femme looking characters. We already know why this is and I can discuss it another time, but, the point of this post is to understand how important it is to me as an artist to show diversity even within my speculative fictional worlds. That's why even my anthro cat characters will have locs and braids. That's why I make sure that this October artist month, when I show my Tabber the Red fantasy-sword&sorcery characters who happened to be tattooed, scarred, or wearing mendhi and/or henna, I put a footnote that all those body markings have nothing to do with war or becoming a warrior and everything to do with cultural/ethnic/tribal/national identity. 

Since I pull inspiration from real-life beliefs and practices, the same respect I will accord to others, I will do so for my fictional people. To me, culture and ethnic identity is important and not to be appropriated as gimmick or 'trendy'. I'm doing my research. I'm speaking to others. I will learn, so that when my characters express themselves, the identity will be as seamless as the 'air they breathe'.

There will be more 'decolonizing' for my OCs and in my writings. Just you wait and see.

*That character that was called gay? It seems that even if that person meant it as an insult, I realized while writing the character that he is indeed QUILTBAG and I'm writing in his sexual identity and orientation into the story. So, I guess that long ago person did me a favor by 'outing' my cat character!