Anime Girl in a Costume from Flanders circa 1630

Written by Teresita Blanco (The Artsy Sister)

Flanders is no longer a country. It is just a municipality or something in the Kingdom of Belgium. As of today, there is a strong movement within the country for Flanders to become its own thing again. When I mention the outfits, I refer to their historical names. A country named Flanders did exist during the baroque period. The place is still there. The main difference is that they are no longer their own state. Having control of one’s country is very important. Many a times, the government favors their own favorite places. This was more obvious during Brazil’s history. The places near the coast got overdeveloped, while the rest of the country was neglected. This problem is not one that will go away overnight. Moving the capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brazilia, wasn’t the best move either.

I suppose I should talk about the Flanders instead. I do not know much about Flanders. Most of the history I know of Europe refers to their artworks. Studying art is a good way to get the gist of what that country was about. Most of the paintings in the old days were political, religious and historical. Eventually, artwork lost some of these messages. There was a group that did art for arts sake. They just wanted to make a pretty picture, without being political or religious about it. There was a similar vibe in poetry as well. This manifested in the Carpe Diem poems. Carpe Diem is basically live in the moment. That is a good way of thinking about life. People think they can plan for their entire life, step by steps. Suddenly, some crazy thing happens and all your plans get destroyed. There is a saying that goes along this line: Man plans, God laughs. It means that you can plan for whatever, and there is a good chance God will find it more humoring to mess with your plans.

This change in fortune was mention in Machiavelli’s the Prince. He spoke of Fortuna, and how she was a whimsical mistress. It was important to plan for your changes in fortune. You can have a perfect winning streak for years, and then suddenly everything goes sour. If you have nothing saved in the bank or in your doghouse, then you did not plan for Fortuna. I suppose I should get back to the drawing. I have been making cute maidens like this for quite a bit. I am almost done with my pretty dress series. Like I said before, I drew this for myself. Most of everything I produce, I choose myself as the target audience. It is like the story of the donkey. It was a story my grandma used to tell me.

Once upon a time, a father took his son on the road. He told him he was going to show him how people were like. They took a donkey on their trip. When they arrived on the first town, people were complaining because both of them were ridding the donkey. On the second town, they found it annoying that the son was ridding the donkey while his old man had to walk. On the third town, they felt sorry for the kid who had to walk. On the fourth town, neither of them rode the donkey. The people there thought they were rather stupid for having  a mount and not using them. The moral of the story is that regardless of where you go, there is going to be a truckload of humans who will find faults in everything you do. You can’t please everyone, so why bother to try?

So, this is how I tackle all of my projects. I do them based on what I like. If some people like my drawings, that’s cool. If someone hates them, I don’t care. Well, moving things along. We are reaching the final stage of this verbal ramblings of mine. I am just super exhausted cause I went to the gym yesterday. Writers should not be sedentary folks. Just go to the gym trice a week, to keep from turning into a tub of lard. Lard is bad for your brain and your heart. Anyhow, the drawing was made with some of my sakura gel pens. The finer lines were done with a Sakura Pigma Micron pen. The thicker color lines were made with my set of Stabilo mini pens. The skin color was done with this Lyra coloring pencil. The other coloring pencils are from my Art 101 set. The rest was done with my Royal and Langnickel sketch pencil. The paper belongs to a sketchbook from Leda Art supply. This is just about everything needed to make an anime drawing as pretty as the one I made.