Even a Bad Reaction Can Be Good

I'm taking part in Inktober this year. I couldn't have done that in the past as I never could draw, but I've come a long way in the past year and I figured that Inktober would be great experience. For those of you who don't know, Inktober requires you to draw something in ink every day for the month of October, and post it online. Well, therein lies the reason for this post.

A long time ago I explained to someone who commented on something I had written that it really didn't bother me that he didn't agree with what I was saying. All that mattered was that he took the time to have read it, and then let me know by voicing his opinion.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion, I feel, and I accept that it might not necessarily agree with my own.  If what I write elicits a response of any kind, I'm thrilled. It proves I've done my job well.

For day six of Inktober the word prompt was "drooling".  My initial idea was to draw a drooling dog. Some sort of hound was what I had in mind, but most of the pictures I found were of other dogs that I thought might be more difficult. They either had more wrinkles or more hair to deal with. Then I got the bright idea of  drawing some guy drooling over a pretty woman. I set out to find such pictures and had no problem coming up with one I really thought I could handle. It was a man in a suit and it was done in cartoon style. So I set out to basically copy that. I managed to make him heavier though and when I got to the tie part, I had this notion that he needed a different head. I flipped though a bunch of pictures and found one with the head in the right position and proceeded to draw that onto the shoulders of the guy I'd already started. Well, he was supposed to be drooling over a pretty girl so then I went in search of one of those. The first one I drew was more in line with what I had in mind. She was a blonde, curvy bombshell.  But I had not placed things on the page properly so I started over and ended up with a different girl. Oh well. It was getting late and I decided to add watercolour to this drawing rather than trying to shade it all in with ink.

Once I was finished I posted it first on Instagram with the appropriate hashtags, like I was supposed to. I shared it to both Facebook and Twitter.  I also shared it on a separate Facebook page. Later I saw someone requesting people to post their latest watercolour works on another group page and I dropped it in there. While there was no problem anywhere else, a major controversy broke out on that new page.  Many people on all three pages saw the humour in the post and poked the Laugh button. But on the new site, there were a few who were either angry or just plain upset when they spotted this drawing. I sat back and watched as they all argued among themselves.  I didn't feel the need to defend myself from what they were reading into the image. I didn't think of it as a political statement. Some of them definitely did. It's a scientific fact that it's normal for a man to drool over a pretty woman. The assignment was drooling. That's all I was thinking.  But the controversy went on all that day and into the next.  Actually, out of the 108 responses (so far) on that particular page, less than 10% had any kind of problem with it, but even that number surprised me.

Guess what, people.  Just like with my writing, I'm not bothered by this. It tells me these people not only didn't scroll past my drawing but that it actually created a response in them. People were either loving it, or telling me off. That's cool. I got a reaction either way.   Isn't that what art is for? My poor little drawing was an amazing success.  I made people feel something and respond to it. I have never referred to myself as an artist in the past, but I'm certainly feeling like one now.

Here's the sketch in question.