Inktober

This was a series of ink drawings I did in a small accordion sketchbook in 2018. Each page had an illustration of a woman in black and white, smoking a cigarette. It was a great exercise in composition, but I was also interested in the idea of the many different meanings behind the symbol of a “young women smoking cigarettes”, How to some it can be seen as a rejection of traditional feminity for something more mysterious, dangerous, and sexual, while to others it’s a rejection of beauty, youth, and life itself. Both rare expressions of individual agency in a masculine world. Or rather does this image merely persist in our culture today as imitation of stereotypes found in films, television, and advertising?