Ballet Boy

For our second Illustration Concepts assignment we had to illustrate another classmate's child story. Here's mine:

"My sisters and I were the only girls living on my block while we were growing up, and if you wanted to play with the neighborhood boys you had to be good at sports. Over time though, I became best friends with a boy named Tyler. Tyler's dad was extremely sexist; and every time I went to Tyler's house we had to play video games or sports. But, when Tyler came to my house we would play barbies and put on plays. Games his dad deemed unfitting for a boy. One day my sister decided that we would all put on a performance of the "Nutcracker". So we all put on tights and leotards (including Tyler) and threw on the soundtrack to the Nutcracker. As we are all whirling and dancing to the music, Tyler's dad walks into our living room and seeing his first born son in pink tights and a black leotard, he decides to throw a fit. He dragged Tyler out of our house still wearing the ballet clothes. We weren't allowed to play with him for a week, and Tyler never played anything he considered "girly" again.

I decided not to draw any scene literally. Instead, I tried to capture Tyler in a more "subconscious" state. At first I tried putting him in the pink tights and leotard but it made the image seem too humorous. I'm hoping that the tutu over the clothing isn't quite so bad.



This piece was drawn, then scanned and colored in Adobe Photoshop CS3.