Anime Girl in a Czech girl Costume circa 1000s
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The dates I normally put on these drawings are a bit of approximation. Most sourcebooks and books on the subject can only give a cursory view on each outfit. There was a lot of regional variations and the like. There are also costumes that are endemic to just specific villages. So, when I say, Czech you must take it with a grain of salt. The Czech people used to get around. This was the Celtic way. Along their trips they used to trade and pillage a lot of people. Celtic maidens were bound pick up fashion trends from other maidens they ran into. Women always took fashion more seriously for most of the time. This started to change during the 1400s.
This all began with the Sun King of France. He putted the fashion of men peacocking. The trend continued all the way up to the 1700s. When the monarchies went out of style, so did the fancy outfits of men. Once they got to the 1800s, the outfit of men slowly got simplified into the tuxedo. Whenever a man wants to loo sharp, he wears his tux. The modern day tux started in France, yet again. Men dressed in black, known as flaneurs, used to walk the streets of Paris looking for a good time. In almost all the French impressionism painting of the time, there is an allusion to the observer, to the flaneur. Well, this is at least what my art teacher told me.
The word basically means a wanderer without any purpose. A flaneur wants to become one with the crowd, and to see what the city life has to offer. By then, modern day cities were a thing. The cities were indeed crowded, specially Paris. Today’s modern day equivalent is the dandy. A sharp dressed guy just out and about looking cool. What does this have to do with the drawing? Absolutely nothing. Most of my drawings are just a point of contemplation for my mind. It is the weekend, and one can only come up with some many things to say about the matter. Most people have been obsessed with medieval fashion for quite some time. Whenever people become disenchanted with the present, they turn to fantasy. Fantasy almost always takes place in medieval time. There rarely has been fantasy novels that take place in the modern date. I have read enough of them to notice that fantasy almost always has to take place in medieval times.
There is just something about the modern setting that makes magic look even more impossible. Even when there is magic, it is given a secret society kind of vibe. Then again, there hasn’t been a lot of powerful magic users as of now. The last one of note worthy was Francois Duvalier. He was the tyrant of Haiti, and he used to control the populous using his army of zombies. It is quite the colorful story if you ask me. Haiti has a rich Voodoo history. Not that it helps them much. I studied Voodoo while at University. I was studying a lot of random religions, so I decided to give it a whack. It was interesting to say the least. It is always fun to learn of a new religion, in a school setting. Most of the priest only tell you about the religion to lay followers. If you are just a curiouser, then forget about it. Well, this is just about it. The drawing was made using my Leda Art Supply sketchbook. The colors were mainly done with Derwent and Art 101 pencils. The pen was a bit of my sakura gelly pens. I also used one of my Morris Bamboo pens. The line art was drawn with Royal and Langnickel pencil. I then erased the sketch pencil lines with me pentel eraser before adding new color on top of it. I hope you find this information useful in your drawing endeavors.
