Nabs-draws - Art By Nabs - Tumblr Blog

Some Character doodle shenanigans:

These are some doodles for my new witchy Project. I was exploring Witch dresses and how I could modify them to capture personality. (i was a bit lazy to design their wand though). My goal is to pump out maybe 2-3 Halloween themed lllustrations this month.

And here are some messy early doodles, in case you're interested.

Aside from that, I also worked on a little just for fun case study of the NONSENSE mascot. In case you didn't know: NONSENSE is a clothing brand from Japan. They have this adoreable little cat mascot and I tried to see if I could translate them in my style. (while they were the new EVA merch). It was a fun project and defintely a challanging one too. Because I'm not used to draw antropromorphic characters. I really tried to push myself here! And I think I'm happy with the result.

Yeah, that's all I wanted to share today, bye!

Lets talk about being Biracial today.

(TW: Mentioning of racism, CSA, Domestic abuse)

I'm biracial. My Mother is german, my biological father is a Pakistani. My biological father immigrated to Germany in the late 80s/early 90s when he met my mum. They became friends, they began to date and my mum got accidentally pregnant with me. My dad tried to push my mum into abortion first, because at the time mum was pregnant with me, they were not married. Which is a big nono in Pakistani culture. Yet, mum kept me. And convinced my dad, that it will be allright. A year later, they married.

As a kid, it never actually mattered that I was biracial. Because most of the kids I grew up with had a immigration background. Some kids were turkish. Others were russian. and some kids in our neighbourhood were polish. We usually all played together. I learned a bit of russian and Turkish as well...but never could return anything about my culture, as my dad didn't teach me much about Pakistani culture. Yet, the whole outer family expected me to live as a Pakistani.

My parents fought a lot. Both of them had a love/Hate relationship towards each other and my Dad was very abusive towards my mum, and later towards me too. (which resulted in me having cPTSD today). My mum, as a result of my dads abuse and his hostile behavior towards us, became neglectful of me too. I don't blame her today. But it wasn't easy. Especially if you were exposed to violence since birth. My aunt always said, that he should use me and my mum as a way to get the german citizenship. After all , he impregnated a german woman and I was the result, but somehow despite my dad being a monster, he also kind of loved us and said that he would never do such a shitty thing. (but beating your wife and sa'ing your kid was not a shitty thing, huh? ). Dads side of the family were verbally abusive towards me too, considering the fact that I embrace my german side more and pushed away the Pakistani side. It sucked but yeah, it is what it is. I might talk more briefly in the subject in the future, when I'm ready. For now. This is as far as I can go about my family dynamic. Back to other parts of my childhood:

I think the first time I experienced racism, was in 2nd grade. It was the 12th September 2001. I was pretty early in school when a group of kids approached me. Since a lot of people were curious where my name came from, I was always open about my biracial background. "You are Pakistani, right?" In confusion, I responded with a nod. "So that means, you're evil too?" I was still confused by it. They clarified "It was propably your family member that flew into the towers, right?" and they pushed me. Like, I knew what happend on 9/11. But how on earth do they think that I was related to them just because of my ancestory roots. Overwhelmed by all of this, I began to cry badly. A few classmates saw what was happening and called the teacher and told her what happened. My teacher , who was the sweetest person on earth got furious. Not at me of course, but what the kids put me through and she lectured the kids and afterwards thought us about Racism and why we should NEVER discriminate someone because of their heritage. Or looks, or for who they love. Miss Viera truely was the best!

In my family, I usually clashed with my Dad because I began to show interest in christianity. I'm not religious at all, but I was always fascinated by Theology. THe similarities between religious beliefs. And of course, European churches. The concept of Angels and Devils, as overused as this topic is in popculture.

People are always surprised by the fact that I'm biracial, because I pass as white on the street. I have lightskin, but my facial feature would call out the Pakistani side immediately. My amber-colored eyes too. My hair is darkbrown with a ginger shine on it and some lighter brown hairstrains. Which are natural, not colored. And I got freckles. I always joke around that my Parents genes were as stubborn as they were in person, resulting into a weird mix because non of the genes were able to tell which one is the dominant one. and well yeah. I'm in the priviledged position of being read as white , but this doesn't mean that I don't face racism and microagression regardless. Mainly because my name calls me out. And Pakistanis easily recognize me too because of facial features.

Once people get to know my name, they usually begin to treat me differently. They willingly mispronouncing my name, which resulted in me being annoyed and tired of correcting people each time. People asking me where I'm from and not believing me that I'm german (despite my CV says that I'm born and raised in Germany.) Having to deal with bigoted opinions, primarily with authorities and them apologizing, once they learn that I have a B.A. Or people telling me that I speak "good german" once they realize that I am biraced. like…yeah. My mum is german!

Being biracial makes it harder to speak about being victimized by CSA from the family. Because you never know if the therapist in front of you might hold racist believes or not and you don't want to tell your story in order to hurt other people or bigoted people to instrumentalize your story for their fu**ed up believes in thinking that all immigrants are evil (no they're not, by he way I was just very unfortunate to be born in a familysystem consisted of a group of predators that put harm on their children.) That you have to apologize in behalf of people you don't even know just because these people did evil things. Like…for gods sake, it's not our fault that these people do these shitty things. …okay I should stop here.

Anyways…That's why I drew this image. Inspired by the song "Half" by Queen Bee, where Avu-chan sings about their own experience of being Biracial. In fact, it was that song that inspired me to reflect on my own biracialness. That it's not always easy. That we want to live regardless and make people happy. That it isn't our ancestory that makes us matter but the people that we are. That evilness has nothing to do has nothing to do with our culutral heritage but the effed up believes that other people have. For thinking one is more worth than the other, when actually, we're all just human in the end. And if you think otherwise with your racist believes, than maybe this blog isn't for you!

In the end I like to say that you matter. Regardless of your race, your sexuality, your gender, your ability or you age. You are important. You are loved. You matter!

P.S: I need to clarify that every biracial person experience being biracial differently. Just because I had a shitty upbringing, doesn't mean that every biracial person had a shitty upbringing. I'm just talking about MY experience!

P.P.S: I really hope that this doesn't offend anybody. I'm was sitting here for the entire day, not being sure how to write it. On top of this, english isn't my first language so it might be that some sentences might be weird due to errors in translation. Thank you for understanding. If there are problematic sentences, please let me know and I will change it. And please be kind towards each other!