Sita from the Ramayana

Description:

I should have probably drawn this on Diwali this year (Oct. 22-23), but unfortunately the inspiration did not bite me until weeks later. Consider this an overdue celebration. When I was going to grade school as an expat in Singapore, every autumn we would celebrate the Hindu holiday of Diwali in honor of the local Indian community. We would watch these animated videos retelling the story of the Ramayana epic, in which the blue warrior Rama saves his girlfriend Sita from Ravana. Good times, those were. This is supposed to represent the love interest Sita. I referenced her facial features and wavy hair from a girl of India's Irula ethnic group. In the old days of racial anthropology, these people were classified as "Australoid" (i.e. similar in appearance to Aboriginal Australians and Melanesians) in contrast to the "Caucasoid" Aryans who entered the Indian subcontinent around 1750 BC.