#west asian art | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

eye-of-enigmatic-thought · 8 months

Text

Some people get a freak out of me Some people can't see what I can see Some people want to see what I see Some people put an evil eye on me!

WOO MORE MENTAL ILLNESS ART

Another experiment in collage! I'm having way too much fun experimenting with it. This time however I've done some digital painting to go with it, for the 'evil eyes' and a self portrait of me. All the images of eyes from the collage come from wikimedia commons. The self portrait was based on a photo of myself.

I deal with a lot of paranoia, I often have fears that I'm being watched and percieved when I don't want to be, and that what's watching me has a unclear intent thats even more nerve wracking than something outright malicious. I don't know what someone may think when they look at me, a queer neurodivergent person of colour, or worse, what they can immediately tell by looking at me. If someone looks or talks at me in a way that's not so 'friendly', I can feel panicked, I am left anxious over what they could've meant or why they acted that way to me from the Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, in a way, from that, someone has given me the 'evil eye' and I mentally grow sicker.

The superstition of the Evil Eye has always been fascinating to me, especially since its a superstition that comes from my culture (and many others) as a Iranian and how much I associate it with my paranoia. It's not something I 'believe' in logically, but many of the ideas and concepts for it is something I heavily associate with. For this, nazar charms are often a source of comfort and I enjoy keeping them.

This artwork is based on all of those feelings and fears, and how overwhelming it very much is, and also the slight comforts that nazars give me in spite of it all, as overwhelming it still is.

26 notes · View notes

taikanyohou · 11 months

Text

anyway i love being asian and i love saying that out loud with my whole chest out. there's so much tradition and history in our culture and when you're in the west sometimes you fail to understand or you miss the sentiment, the reasoning, the point, of certain practices within the culture. either that, or you feel ashamed of them. until you start seeing, for example, white people doing and taking up practices belonging to the asian culture and you, as an asian, are like .... uh ............ what the fuck am /i/ doing being ashamed about it then .......

like. for example, oiling your hair. when i was a kid, my ammi would oil my hair every single time a day before i was going to wash my hair. that act, yes, held so much meaning for the both of us. it was something my naani did to her, so she did it with me. generational. it was our bonding time. it was her teaching me how we look after our hair. and then ... as i grew up, i didn't get my hair oiled by my ammi anymore. when she asked me why, i had said to her back then that i looked greasy and it was so embarrassing because i'd smell of oil when i would go to school and. yeah. she stopped doing it. and my hair got damaged. and its been years and today, i saw my ammi oiling her hair, and she just called me over, and i sat on the floor and she oiled my hair. and it just felt. like a lot. and i felt ... heavy.

and then i realised that despite being in my late twenties, there's still so much left in me to unpack and unlearn and relearn wrt me being asian. i thought i'd gone past that phase. but i haven't. and thats okay!

which is why its so important for me to have ... this space ... i guess ... where i can validate myself. where i can watch things that are asian, made by asians, doing asian things and following the culture so that i too feel comfortable in my own skin. in the people who look like me. in the food i eat. in the clothes i wear. in the languages i speak. in the art and media i enjoy. in all the big and little things i do.

but anyway. i love being asian. i wish i could talk about it more and how much it means to me when i make a deep dive and indulge within my culture and how rooted that makes me feel. i often feel like i've neglected so much of what it means to be asian, but its still not too late. and there's a deep comfort in that.

#faiza talks #sorry yall i had a bit of an out of body moment just now when i felt my ammi's fingers massaging my scalp when she was oiling my hair #and i was trying so hard not to burst out crying in front of her but its been years. not just 2 or 3. but like #over 15 years since the last time we had this moment together and uh yeah. it was a lot lmaoooo.#so yeah thats why this whole entire blog is so focused on asian things. ive wasted too much of my life ig on non-asian things but like.#now i just dont care. i wanna dive into the stories asians tell and the art that asians makes coming out of asia. theres so much to unearth #and ughhh yeah i love indulging in it. idc whether anyone finds it cringe or whatever man like. im past that.#idrc much for the popularity of it either bc theres GEMS hidden away back home that i wanna discover and bring onto this blog.#and then when u get religion + sexuality + culture together (like boyyofgod for example) like. !!!. idk it just means a lot to me.#that my culture can talk about these things and show these things from as ASIAN perspective.#how religion and sexuality (even mental health) is seen in asia isnt the same as it is in the west. so let asians make art about it all!!!!

30 notes · View notes

iyisilk · 2 years

Photo

Şahmeran ; from popular west-Asian folktales (and probably my favorite cryptid)

#shahmaran #şahmeran #snake #Cryptid #west asian #turkish #kurdish #i will try to post on here idk #i miss the tagging system #my art

68 notes · View notes

tianshiisdead · 1 year

Text

something about how white femininity from the nineteenth century to present being defined with and bolstered by, perhaps dressed with, appropriated east asian concepts and objects that suggest 'asianness'

#library tag #thoughts and stuff #the 'femininity' of rococo art and its ties to asian aesthetics... the beautiful women in art nouveau... the feminized connotation of the #folding fan in the west... the modern usage of 'uwu' japanese pop aesthetic in online circles among girls trying to be 'girly'...#etc etc etc #orientalism #and how do we break away from 'feminization' of easians when our existence is coded like this :/

20 notes · View notes

briliantlymad · 1 year

Text

As an asian gay. It's always weird to see those overarching comments made about gay legacies and how 'we wouldn't have come this far without *insert western person*' dominate spaces during lgbt+ history month, or even just lgbt+ conversations and discussions in general.

Im not like, trying to be mean about it. but it is weird to see. I can understand that the reason behind it is the push of western topics as "global topics". global news isn't global its just western is smth that's true for most online sns discussions.

But yeah, i wish there were more things about asian gays. about Asian art made by LGBT+. about asian LGBT+ content in general. and about LGBT+ history, about groundbreaking actions of asian LGBT+ people in modern days.

#lgbt+#i might make a thread for myself at some point with all the things asian gays have done #and asian lgbt+ history #and asian lgbt+ art #lgbtq #this post is brought to you by my annoyance at my university's effort to be inclusive but failing cus the gay society at my uni focused on #only the west #like bro this uni has a huge number of asians #you're telling me you couldn't organise a single event during lgbt history month that focused on asian gays?#moonbeam thoughts

2 notes · View notes

queerlyfemmeandblack · 2 years

Photo

Pretty Mas, 2020

Marissa Yung Lee

Oil on Canvas

#art #Marissa Yung Lee #Pretty Mas #2020 #2020s #oil on canvas #Trinidadian artist #Trinidad and Tobago #Trinidadian Korean #Asian Trinidadian #Trini Korean #Caribbean Artist #Asian Diaspora #Korean Diaspora #oil painting #West Indian #mas

4 notes · View notes

tyrannoninja · 1 year

Photo

This is a drawing I did of a generic Arab soldier from one of the medieval Islamic caliphates, such as the Fatimids, Abbasids, or Ayyubids. He is wearing a sort of surcoat over a chain-mail shirt and carries a scimitar as his weapon.

#arab #arabic #middle eastern #west asian #islamic #muslim #tan skin #people of color #warrior #soldier #medieval #historical #drawing #traditional art #art

2 notes · View notes

flewtothewinds · 6 months

Text

hi maybe silly question but!! i'm drawing two character, one chinese and one arab. both have fairly dark skin (happy to provide a photo). i know scars appear very differently on different colors of skin, and i'm fairly sure ethnicity has an effect as well. I want to give both of these characters scars that range from newish to quite old. but i'm kind of at a loss where to find references for that. can anyone point me in the right direction? or if you are arab / chinese would you be willing to describe what scarring looks like on you? thank you !!!

#hope i phrased this well :^) please let me know if i somehow said somethign rude or ignorant #especially in regards to the arab ethnicity? from a quick google search i found conflicting info but dont have the time to actually fully #look into it at the moment. if arab as an ethnicity is incorrect the character is from another world but has features that are often #associaeted with west asian countries like iran etc.#basically i jsut dont know where to start looking #thank you to anyone who responds !!!#help wanted #art help

1 note · View note

koshice · 8 months

Text

cmm ✨

#cmm #commission #commissions #commissions open #anthro #fa #furraffinity #fox #dog #furry #furry art #sfw #sfw furry #asian #west dog #oc

1 note · View note

gothseparatist · 8 months

Text

I feel weird even typing this up lol but it is interesting that I’ve seen people post they “headcanon” Meryl as East Asian in ancestry when it is just canon canon?? In most anime I default to Asian anyway but I do think in Trigun the intent is that of multiple ethnic groups

If you zoom into the above pic you can see Roberto has a lid crease and shading whereas Meryl just has shading, suggesting she has epicanthic folds/monolids

Epicanthic folds arise partially from a lower nose bridge (most people are born with this trait regardless of ethnicity but if the nose bridge raises over time that lifts the skin away basically) and Meryl in profile is depicted as having a stylized very low nose bridge

The overall shape, upturned rounded oval is a common enough type too (tip for artists: theres a lot of diversity and despite what many non-asians think plenty of monolid eyes are actually rounder than average non-monolids if you trace the open eye area or compare how much the iris is exposed)

And then there’s the blue-black hair and irises which are established stylistic choices for East Asian characters in anime with clear multiple ethnic groups

#trigun stampede #i get it can be difficult to learn to accurately draw various features #but yeah it is kind of jarring seeing some fanartists white wash her #when IMO it is not ambiguous at all in Stampede's style #not a condemnation tho a lot of ppl are used to white as default in the west and it takes deliberate study to unlearn that #especially since east asians are often stylized stupidly over here #as always it helps to look at real people and its not wrong to trace to help yourself learn #art meta

1 note · View note

leowifefang · 1 year

Text

i have been given the task by mr john exosheroes himself to discover the traditional wear and current fashion of every nation on the exos continent

#this is just about me wondering about how much awakened zeons outfit is brunnian? brunni? yeah one of those two. inspired and how much is #his own stupidass style and schmids own stupidass style #i really really want to start on saint west cause that shit has no consistency but first i need to finish my findings on uhhh whether those #clover shaped hole things are brunni. cause im 90% sure they are. but awakened zeons pattern on his sling and weapon sheathe are definitely #just a schmid thing i think. because i dont see it anywhere else except for schmids sword and his young fc outfit which i cant find the #full art for. but then that brings to question why schmid has his own pattern thing that he just has Everywhere like girl what #itd be funny if he was a brunn tribe patriarch and thats how neomi knew him and also why his handwriting is astounding + he writes super #well and the pattern thing is like? a family recognition type thing but if that were the case! why doesnt neomi have one? and why are #kylocks and dorkas outfits so far away from the usual like. brunni style. a lot of brunns outfits are asian inspired so kylock gets maybe a #pass for his outfit but dorka??? girl what????????? anyways another explanation could be that the tribes of brunn all have slightly #different types of clothing and yeah dorkas a dragon watcher but still the inconsistancy is kinda baffling. if we take schmid out cause hes #vagabond now it literally does not help. i do like the consistancy of all the brunni heroes having bead jewelery though. lotsa turquoise #and orange in all the outfits too #gah i hate this i need to sort them all by nation so i can really really get on analyzing this stuff. the only reason i feel compelled to #do this is because of the negative amounts of worldbuilding we get around the nations :(( please tell me more than 7 heroes 7 nations and #their ruling families :((((

0 notes

svsss-fanon-exposed · 4 months

Text

Exposing SVSSS Fanon: 16/∞

LUO BINGHE HAS A "STEREOTYPICALLY MASCULINE" APPEARANCE

Rating: FANON - CONFLICTING

In fanworks, Luo Binghe is often portrayed as particularly muscular and buff, broad-shouldered, often with tanned skin and sharply-defined features-- all traits that are considered to be stereotypically masculine in the west.

All of this directly contradicts his canonical description.

Necessary disclaimer: I'm not talking against depicting Luo Binghe with a naturally darker skin tone. While that still contradicts the canonical description, I can understand going against colorism (something very rampant in east asian beauty standards!) in fanworks. This sort of discussion is particularly toward those who portray him as fair-skinned on Qing Jing Peak, darker skinned after the abyss, hence "tanned." While this sort of thing might have issues of its own, that's also not the topic of this post, and as a light-skinned Asian person, I don't feel particularly qualified to talk about it.

In truth, deep down, Bing-ge’s fair and clean pretty-boy type didn’t really suit the tastes of “Great Master” Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky.... The art of growing stallions was grounded in science, and the research was clear: women preferred men who looked cultured, pretty, and even a bit soft and feminine. (7 Seas, Ch. 26)

The buff and bulky Luo Binghe often seen in fanworks is not what I would consider to be cultured, pretty, soft, and feminine.

Luo Binghe is described this way just before the conference:

A seventeen-year-old youth, slim and tall and graceful, dressed in white robes, lips turned upward in the hint of a smile, gazed at him with a pair of shining eyes. (7 Seas, Ch. 4)

And again after his return:

The other party was a little taller than [Shen Qingqiu], slender and willowy, dressed in clothes as black as ink that exposed only a fair neck. (7 Seas, Ch. 7)

And a description of his hands later on:

That hand was slender and unadorned. It didn’t look like the hand of a young lord of the demon race who had already taken countless lives, but rather one whose master had been born to pluck strings, his hand to burn incense and bathe in snow. (7 Seas, Ch. 14)

Consistantly, Luo Binghe is depicted this way-- slender and refined, with fair skin and a softness to his appearance that contradicts his actions.

Furthermore, Luo Binghe is also described as looking very similar to his mother:

Luo Binghe was beautiful, and he looked quite like his birth mother. (7 Seas, Ch. 4)

and

Yue Qingyuan’s knuckles slowly brushed along Xuan Su’s hilt. “I was able to meet Senior Su Xiyan once at an Immortal Alliance Conference, many years ago. Luo Binghe’s appearance is seven-tenths identical to his mother’s. (7 Seas, Ch. 18)

As for Su Xiyan's appearance, not much is directly stated-- it can be inferred that she likewise looked quite similar to Luo Binghe, but the only description of her physical appearance that we have is found here:

Even if she wasn’t burly and heavyset, she should at least look like a martial arts master with fierce and ferocious eyes. For all that, when he finally met the culprit behind Tianlang-Jun’s bout of philosophical soul-searching, which had tormented Zhuzhi-Lang for many days, he realized that the culprit in question was not quite like what he’d envisioned... ... Just as these two tourists were standing penniless in the street, a tall woman dressed in black strolled by, sword on her back. (7 Seas, Ch. 25)

The only positive descriptor here is that she is tall, but it can also be implied that she does not have the appearance of a martial arts master, and did not look as fierce and ferocious as Zhuzhi-lang expected, especially in terms of her eyes. However, she is described as a cold person-- whether or not that carried over into her appearance, though, is up for debate.

Su Xiyan's eyes are another matter for discussion--

In appearance, Luo Binghe resembled his mother Su Xiyan, but you could more or less see the shadow of his father in him. For example, in the eyes. Tianlang-Jun’s eyes were deep-set, his brow strong and heroic, the irises dark like fathomless water. In this, he and Luo Binghe were very much alike. Luo Binghe had a pretty boy appearance in the first place, but if his eyes had resembled his mother’s too, his face would have been excessively feminine and the effect would be lost. (7 Seas, Ch. 15)

Here, specifically, Luo Binghe is noted as having his father's strong brow and deep-set eyes, as opposed to his mothers, which based on this passage were most likely to be round, soft, and "feminine"-looking. It's also interesting to see that if not for having his father's eyes, Luo Binghe's features would be "excessively feminine," therefore implying that the softer look applies to all parts of his face except for his eyes and brows.

(thanks to @furbygoblinxiv , @bijoumikhawal for bringing up this point)

So, Luo Binghe is a lithe and petite pretty-boy. Nonetheless, he is still notably muscular. Specifically with a surprising amount of lean muscle-- something that Shen Qingqiu actually remarks on:

Luo Binghe was on top, and Shen Qingqiu was on the bottom, so he was smushed under a considerable weight and almost unable to draw another breath. What had this child been eating?! He looked quite slim, so how was he this heavy?! ... A person’s abdomen is supposed to be the softest spot on their body, but Luo Binghe’s was uncomfortably hard against Shen Qingqiu’s stomach. The farther down he pulled him, the more he was sure that Luo Binghe had an eight-pack. Was that a rock slab down there? (7 Seas, Ch. 16)

(thanks to @verycharismaticdragon for bringing up this point)

As for where the fan depiction of buff, tanned, "hyper-masculine" Luo Binghe may have originated?

I'm not certain where the first such depiction came from, but as for the logic behind it, such phenomena could be explained as thinking of Luo Binghe, the stallion protagonist, as having an "ideal masculine" appearance.

For western audiences and beauty standards, this would certainly be that same sort of muscular, tall, with tanned skin and defined features. Naturally, when first thinking of what a "stereotype of an ideal man" would look like, these traits would come to mind to a western audience.

It is a bit different in eastern standards. While muscular appearances can still be favored, lean muscle is vastly, vastly preferred over bulky muscle, and fair skin, which represents elegance and status (as those with fair skin tones are perceived as those who are wealthy, and do not need to work outdoors) is preferred over tanned skin. This is, of course, a generalization-- but as a representation of ideal masculinity, Luo Binghe's appearance would also be a generalization.

Particularly, Luo Binghe's figure and appearance is described not as those favored by men for themselves, but as those favored aesthetically by women. Therefore, that gentle, refined appearance is a must.

While western vs eastern beauty standards may play a role in this, it is also possible that western vs eastern character design standards may also be coming into play. While in eastern character design, things such as color and style of clothing and hair play a very large role in creating visual contrast, in terms of western designs, body shape and style, along with hair shape and style, seem to be far more important, with the idea that a character should be recognizable by silhouette alone. This may lead to western-trained artists, and also those who grew up watching primarily western cartoons, unconsciously applying those same standards to their own design-- such as making Luo Binghe broader-shouldered and with rounder shapes, the "heroic" type character design, in contrast to sharper, narrower shapes for Shen Qingqiu, the "villain" type character design.

(thanks to @gaywarcriminals , @mu-qingfang-stan-account , @temporoom for bringing up this explanation)

One additional possible reason would be the potential for heteronormative/"het-coding" standards being applied to a gay relationship, where the gong is being given more "traditionally masculine" features in order to align with gender roles. This is something that is fairly common in BL/MLM shipping and designs in general, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that it might apply in some fashion to Luo Binghe's fan-design as well (Note, this does not apply to actual fem/masc mlm pairs, because those do exist and it isn't always about heteronormativity. This is specifically referring to taking characters with roughly similar build like SQQ and LBH and making their designs distinctly more masc/fem based on who tops and who bottoms).

(thanks to @mysteryteacup and @gurggggleburgle for bringing this up)

As for the true source of these design elements, it probably cannot be narrowed down to just one-- rather, it would be an amalgamation of bits and pieces of all of the above, as well as the popularity and spread of certain designs throughout the fandom and artists taking inspiration from one another.

So often i've seen that Luo Binghe's bulk and muscles are shown as key traits of his physical appearance, despite the fact that this directly contradicts his actual depiction in the novel. Thus, it is inaccurate to depict him this way.

Luo Binghe's canonical body type and build is tall, slender, and willowy with lean musculature, and his features are soft and a bit effeminate. The best example I could give for reference would be to base his body type off of a pretty-boy type idol.

Of course, fanartists are perfectly free to continue drawing him however they please, but it should not be assumed that a Luo Binghe with bulky musculature, tanned skin, and sharp features is a canon-compliant depiction.

Luo Binghe is a pretty-boy.

#fanon exposed #conflicting #svsss #luo binghe #edited

763 notes · View notes