Schoolgirls

Actually, this isn't a very uniform-y kind of neighbourhood, but I saw lots of schoolgirls in Quebec City, and certainly, they're all over the west side of this city. In Asia, too. But this pair are purely out of my head.

But, though R. Crumb is an influence of mine, I was trying to avoid making them into fantasy figures, or objects of any kind of fetishisation. I know, how P.C. of me, especially since I'm a cartoonist. But I think it's actually harder for a guy to be that way than it is to go the other extreme, which certainly will come up if you do an image search for "schoolgirl."

I was very unhappy that an earlier drawing of mine ended up linked to a creepy type of web forum, but of course you can't control that sort of thing, and you look like a putz if you try to complain.

I'm actually trying to have it both ways, because I like drawing attractive people, and am very anti-censorship. I do have to watch myself sometimes, because I want kids to visit here and laugh at the cute, funny drawings, and get in the habit of drawing with sketchbooks -- that kind of thing. I guess too bad some of the links at the right are sometimes "Not Safe for Work," which defeats that purpose.

Anyway, it's a big tug of war, and like the issue of cartooning people from different ethnic backgrounds, probably won't be resolved in my lifetime. I'm just trying to do what feels right to me, and hope that doesn't manage to be too creepy or deranged to the rest of the world.