Nina

I talked about Nina Simone a couple posts back so i wanted to share this drawing i've done. These pictures are first attempts and still need some work but pretty good for what it's worth.


She had this really interesting hairdo back in the 60's where it looked like a fuzzy wedding cake with jewels coming out of it. I would have given her bigger/buffer arms (spending time on that piano all day gave her some sweet guns).

Dr. Nina Simone was amazing, she attended and graduated from the Julliard school of music. She wanted to be a classical pianist more than anything. To make ends meet while attending school she preformed at nightclubs, one owner said she couldn't preform unless she sang and that was the spark that started it all. She abandoned her classical dreams to pursue what she thought was more important, the civil rights movement, and she wrote and preformed these famous protest songs: "Mississippi Goddamn," "Four Women," "Ain't Got No," and her most famous "Young, Gifted, & Black." My favorite song that she's ever preformed is "Sinnerman", almost 10 minutes of pure awesomeness. She was not only famous for her protest songs but her amazing and often chilling interpretations of other songs. She could not be defined as a soul, folk, pop, or gospel singer, because she sang it all.

"I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a night club where I have performed, I want them to be to pieces." -Nina Simone

On the note of my last post regarding African American caricatures I do have another one to share, but this time it's women.

Her afro would be fun to draw in fast movements, her hair allows you to play stretch and squash with it. There's also the woman in the bottom right, she's some kind of 60's civil rights soul singer... I was listening to Nina Simone and she got me goin'. However the woman with the afro was inspired by a song called "Feeling Free" by Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators, I think when i'm done with my current project maybe i'll do something with that song, I would really like to do something with Nina considering that she's a damn genius but her voice isn't terribly exciting for animation, i was considering maybe doing "Feeling Good" the lyrics give me something to work with and she does some pretty fun scat singing in the end but other than that her voice is typically pretty static. Anyway, too early to tell for now.

Also, ignore the drawing on the upper right, it's shit, that's why it's unfinished.