Drawing the Line | An Art Book

my art today: the dryad project

So I love fantasy art. I always have and always will. But as I was looking at art one day, it occurred to me that fantasy art includes very few women of color! This struck me as odd, since the genre allows for almost anything. It's a medium that encourages creativity, but instead we see the same thin blonde women over and over and over again.

A mythical creature I've always liked playing with the vague idea of is the dryad. I love pretty trees and flowers. I love artwork of mysterious fantasy women. Dryads combine both. But when looking at them, I saw the same white dryad over and over again! Look: trees are brown. They generally are. And every corner of the world has a tree that means something, with a unique silhouette and history.

I looked at art and thought about these things, and the idea for the dryad project was born. So far only one is finished, but the idea is to depict many of the world's most recognizable and beautiful trees as gorgeous fantasy ladies of color. My first entry into the project:

The Cherry Blossom Tree

And this, ladies and gentlemen (and everyone else, lookin' at you non-binary folks), is it: My magnum opus. Yes, this is the piece of which I am currently most proud. The amount of work that went into it is insane— my art app (Procreate) tracked the time at over 90 hours. Drawing, painting, redrawing, fixing every little thing until it was just right... It was a labor of love.

The other ladies in this project will keep better with the theme. Normally I'd have depicted the cherry blossom tree as a Japanese woman, but she was sort of born out of a single moment of inspiration and carried on from there. The thing I'm most proud of is that the figure involved very light referencing— she was nearly freehanded. Obviously the detailed flowers and background required a lot of referencing (I freehanded the branches!!), but I digress.

Thankfully my purpose in this project has reached others: I was invited to join the deviantart group "Black Art Society", and Miss Cherry Blossom is currently included in their gallery and featured in some journals!

By the way, I also have a version without the sunlight rays, as I have mixed feelings on them.

What's Next for the Project?

This idea as a whole is instrumental to me shaping my artistic future. I need to develop a style separate from fanart, and decide what kind of art I want to make. I'm also using it to work on my semi-realism so that I don't rely so heavily on anime styles.

The trees I have plans to do are the Acacia, Baobab, Redwood, Gingko, Japanese Maple, Dogwood, Lebanon Cedar, and possibly Asian Pear. Next will probably be the dogwood, as I was thoroughly inspired by a beautiful selfie from #BlackOutDay and want to do a painting inspired by it. I've also tested out a couple of freehand sketches.

(My dogwood lady would have a magnificent fro of hair like hers, and she'd have the flowers interspersed in it. She'd have darker skin with some patterns or markings, somehow, to somewhat mimic the unique bark of the dogwood. I'd want her to have smoky grey eyes and some shiny green eyeshadow, maybe slight green-tinted lips. I can see her in my head, and she's beautiful, I just hope I can bring her to life!

However, I do have a sketch of an idea for the Acacia. I need to alter it/redraw it by hand to make it less resemble the references I used for her face and pose, as I want this project to be as independent as possible, but so far her look captures the colorful African spirit that I wanted it to.

The Acacia Tree

She is inspired by the Samburu and Mursi tribes! I want to depict her with an animal, but haven't decided if I want a lion, a zebra, or something like an okapi. In case you're unfamiliar, the Acacia tree is the one in every African sunset/sunrise picture ever, including, I believe, the opening to The Lion King.

This project idea has spurred others, as well... I want to do more personification/fantasy projects featuring birds/harpies, mermaids/sirens, "centaurs" or people with the lower bodies of animals, and nymphs personifying different flowers. I wanna do things like an Okapi centaur and a koi mermaid and a chukar partridge harpy!!

Let me know what you think of the project, or if you, too, want to see more women of color in art!

As a bonus, here is the kind of travesty that happens
when I try to freehand a background: