Lynching Blues #6,19,21,8 & 20

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1. Lynching Blues # 6 is one of my earlier drawings in the series. I was still getting more acquainted with the ink washes, and layering techniques to build value. It was also my getting used to drawing the male figure in such a gruesome setting. 

2.Lynching Blues #20 is one of the later lynching scenes, that resembles a stage set for theater. Although many lynchings were considered entertainment, and events that attracted an audience. It is very fitting that the two wooden posts crop the image of the victim, as he hangs helpless with hands bound behind him, for an audiences' viewing pleasure. I also took a looser drawing approach.

3. Lynching Blues #21 is a very emotional piece obviously, as it certainly was to create it. I imagined the horror experienced, from a woman to discover her loved one was a victim of lynching. The man has also been castrated, as this too happened often during such times. 

4. Lynching Blues #8 is one of the more effective drawings I created, that captures the intensity and drama that awaits, when a black victim decides to defend himself against being hunted and murdered by a vicious white mob.

5. Lynching Blues #19 was inspired by the several photographs I had seen, where the victims were mocked by the onlookers, who seemed proud that another great deed was done. It is a wicked scene, that happened far too often on earth, during some of the most atrocious and deeply disturbing eras in American history. One of the victims was castrated also.

Lynching Blues #3 and four more!

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1. Lynching Blues # 3 displays my continued interest in wash layers making statements with less pen lines, to tell the story. The southern fog or humidity floating around the crimes, hours or even days after committed, with a distant moon being veiled and suddenly unveiled by drifting clouds, during am hours.

2. Lynching Blues # 13 shows how not only were black men victims of lynching. Women too could be lynched, as being female did not excuse them from being black and targeted by racial terrorism.

3. Lynching Blues # 15 was an interesting piece to create. It tells the story in such a dramatic and necessary visual. The horrors of racial terrorism breaking through the darkest night, as mobs hunted for black men as game. The bright head lights of the truck and reckless driver chasing a black man through the night, who is running for his dear life to some kind of safety!

4. Lynching Blues # 16 is about how the duties that were enforced, continued as slaves worked in cotton, sugar cane and tobacco fields, among other forced labors, while carrying the heavy burden of their people being brutalized and unjustly murdered. The fears and dehumanization of people who looked like them, stained the conscience and broke the spirit, but could not cease the humility of having to do what was required to prevent serious harm or death. 

5. Lynching Blues # 17 captures the moment a man has to accept his fate, that stares back at him in the form of a hanging rope, prepared for his death. I wanted to give a view of the foreground, middle and background of an intense and crucial situation. Death awaits before the victim and it also mocks him from behind.