Thank you! I think I even sort of look like me in the last two panels. I originally wanted to draw Jesus as an actual person standing next to me. But I wimped out. I know that if I drew Him as the traditional brown-bearded-long-haired-Caucasian, He'd be reasonably recognizable as Jesus. But I also know that Jesus almost certainly wasn't Caucasian, and I'm not yet sure how I feel about portraying Him as one. On the one hand, I dislike inaccuracy. On the other, well, it's an artistic shorthand, so to speak, and the shape of His face or the color of His skin isn't particularly important, is it?
It's true that whatever I attempted to do in caricature would not look terribly ethnic no matter what.
But on a related note, I do find myself wondering what people of various regions looked like 2000 years ago. I know Cleopatra, for example, was supposedly blond -- which shouldn't be too surprising, given how inbred her line was, but it's still a reminder that our preconceptions based on racial makeup today aren't necessarily correct for past millenia. My father is ethnically Jewish, but definitely looks Caucasian.
Are there good sources for this sort of information, do you know? Greek and Roman statuary presumably gives a good clue about facial features for those peoples. But I don't know of any other realistic traditions in art, pre-Renaissance.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 08:00 pm (UTC)It's certainly less of an artistic license than drawing both Mary and baby Jesus as Korean ethnicity. (cf. Makovette's Samsung post.)
I hesitate to think of the artistic skill required for a non-native to accurately caricature the ethnic difference between Serbs and Croats.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 09:24 pm (UTC)But on a related note, I do find myself wondering what people of various regions looked like 2000 years ago. I know Cleopatra, for example, was supposedly blond -- which shouldn't be too surprising, given how inbred her line was, but it's still a reminder that our preconceptions based on racial makeup today aren't necessarily correct for past millenia. My father is ethnically Jewish, but definitely looks Caucasian.
Are there good sources for this sort of information, do you know? Greek and Roman statuary presumably gives a good clue about facial features for those peoples. But I don't know of any other realistic traditions in art, pre-Renaissance.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-28 04:20 pm (UTC)I've never needed to know about this, specifically.
However, casual use of search engines indicates: