I do but I'm lukewarm rn, I took a break from her (I'll just take a break from youtubers sometimes, no reason) before the drama started. I saw the Instagram post and was super confused and went to the video. She should've not avoided the problem, but I'm not hating her...but I'm not necessarily liking her at the moment. I have mixed emotions.😭
Don’t hate her, don’t dislike her. But after all of… This. And seeing her duck even critical comments that tried to be friendly and understanding… I don’t really plan to go back to consuming her content. That, and I REALLY started disliking some of her fans.
Filipinos, despite consuming mostly western media, are usually very ignorant abt societal problems, social issues, and racism. That is why, racist humor is normalized here, because they don't know that it's harmful. Even if it is bad, they are still ignorant, and they need ppl to correct them, but they can't be corrected bc for every knowledgeable person making them aware abt the harm they cause, the fact that its so normalized makes ppl ignore these and keep making very unethical jokes.
@frankiie I think it's really understandable now knowing she is Filipino. Because our beauty standards are harsh and racism is kinda not a common subject to Vast majority ouf our people
As a professional, I'd argue with kooleen that it actually takes much more skill to draw ugly people. Perfection is easy; there are no flaws to detail. But ugliness? That takes pain, dedication, sickeningly-accurate detail... it is a much more time-consuming and delicate task. If you want to get better at art, perfect the tasks you want to achieve.
Bold of you to assume she wants to strive for that level of greatness. I find her kinda boring and same face syndrome-ish. If you're a newbie in art around junior highschool then sure you're gonna find her art as GODLIKE level. So yeah she's the queen of middle schoolers
I meant that a studio in America made it, making it western media despite its diversity because it's still western media (because it was made in America)@@jeb0309
SHE IS FILIPINO (so am i) 😭 if she went outside of her home or to town she's gonna see people who don't fit her template. The fact that she uses the excuse of the lack of exposure to western media is unreal.
(For context: I am also Filipino) Not to mention the fact that the Philippines used to be a colony of the US until the mid-20th century. Our country is one of the few countries in the region with a high exposure to American/Western culture and media. Her excuse does not make sense from a World History point of view.
same but i live in Ireland LMFAO, since i live in a white country i kinda draw my character with white skin 😭 bc i see white peoples everywhere, and it’s normal for me kinda makes me think how whitewashed i am… i don’t know how to speak tagalog or bisaya and im forgetting to bless my elders when were at a party, and i don’t like how im forgetting our culture 😭 and stuff i can’t even speak to my cousins in the philippines ☠️✋🏻😭
As a south Asian, we’re barely represented in popular western media lol. And even when we are, it’s a weird stereotypical depiction of a generic North Indian. It’s quite important to acknowledge that humans and culture come in all shapes and sizes; thus art and beauty come in all shapes and sizes. There is no template for human faces. And there is no single standard for beauty. That’s my mini rant lol.
Fr why isn't Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, and Thai (excluding Anne Boonchuy) culture represented the same way. It's usually Japanese, Chinese, or Korean culture.
As a Filipino, I was surprised to find out she was Filipino even after seeing her face. Not sure if she lives in the Philippines or has been there before, but most Filipinos don’t match her idea of “beautiful people”. Most of us have flat noses (including me) and are darker skinned. My side profile doesn’t follow the “guidelines” that she used lmao. And we’re from the same country. Unfortunately there is the beauty standard of being as pale as possible (an idea prevalent throughout Asia). And in the Philippines, having straight, bridged noses is something they instil in you when you are young, to the point that parents would tell you to massage your nose to “lift” it. You can see how that influenced her art of Miguel - in my opinion, she has altered his nose to look more “European”. I don’t think it’s a lack of skill that prevents her from drawing him accurately; I think it’s bias. Most actors and actresses you see on Filipino TV are half white or have noses with higher bridges and pale skin. This obsession with European beauty standards is something that really needs to change. I can understand how Kooleen grew up with ignorance, but that doesn’t justify her behaviour. Another commenter pointed out that she apologised on Instagram and not RUclips, the platform where most of her audience is. While Kooleen may not have had racist intentions, her comments and actions were still hurtful, wrong and need a proper apology.
@@xkiruo yes big yes! I am also Filipino and tbh I can't help but find it kinda... sad?? when filipinos only draw things that are eurocentric or east asian centric in beauty standards... especially since it's so opposite to what many filipinos look like. Filipino are diverse asf, but my same classmates with Chinese, Spanish, Japanese ancestry and so on... they have cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents who look stereotypically Filipino. When this drama first came out I looked at the people in the jeepney and saw so many of them had those features she described as "gorilla." It's sad tbh.
@@xkiruoi agree, except that she altered miguels nose to look more european. Not all europeans have straight noses, in fact plenty have sloped or hooked noses. Its just that straight noses are preferred over hooked noses. And Miguel himself is a mostly white latino
I'm not an artist, but "never draw ugly people", besides being morally very questionable, just seems like bad art advice. I had an "anatomy for artists" book as a kid and it was full of sketches of wrinkled, overweight, and old people, because drawing them is great practice for understanding form and light. It's easy to draw what you think everyone should look like, but it's a lot horder to capture someone's actual likeness.
This. I have an art anatomy book as well and it consists of the kind of people that Kooleen and her fans wouldn't draw because they look "old, fat, not yassified enough" etc. This is both not something nice to say in general and horrible art advice. I hope Kooleen really is being satire and she doesn't mean to be racist and all but... yeah. Oh and excuse any typos I might've made, I'm not an native English speaker.
to learn art it's better to focus on the "ideal body type" to simplify learning when having a figure that has little difference to the skeleton, and has clear muscles to learn about them, it's not about hot vs ugly people, as much as some of these people would like it to be
@@엉덩이먹는사람 hard disagree. if you're gonna learn how to draw, learn how to draw real people. Not 'ugly', not 'hot', not not fake unrealistic people. real people. learn the options you have immediately. The tactics you learn to get things right should work for everyone. You're just advocating for everyone to become korean artists; those people who definitely have talent, but can only draw one specific person.
"if you draw "ugly" people you'll never get better at art" is such terrible advice for beginners. She is setting people up for failure later in their careers. Learning to draw fat people, old people, people with facial deformities, etc (not that those people are ugly, just deemed so) will massively improve your art, range and character designing abilities. something something, more tools in your toolboxes.
Learning to draw humans normally is already a hecc of a challenge lol, especially if you start off with bones and muscles. Fat distribution in a human is, let's just say, not often taught (I actually had to hunt down those resources through multiple means just to get an idea of how fats affect the skin).
Np fr. And you get to introduce interesting characters, appreciate the uniqueness and avoid same face syndrome. You know hownmanh "ugly" character I fall in love with! Plus stuff like deformities or body shape can be made a reason in their story!
Literally. I feel like people forget there are careers in the art industry besides just portrait illustrations. As a comic artist I was feeling like my panels were falling flat and every character was a replica of the main character with a different hairstyle. It wasn’t until I started practicing different shapes, sizes, and features that a scene really came to life.
@@Audreyana get what you're saying, but I don't quite feel the same way, if those young artists wanna draw different races and ethnicities etc they could use that as a chance to branch out to different artists, therefore finding out more styles and perhaps educating themselves more on techniques etc rather than getting it ''all'' from one artist y'know?
@@kemonono Some people are REALLY attached to her and is heavily swooned by her manhwa art style which I don’t see many artists have. While she can draw whatever she wants, it’s in her best interest to at least be more inclusive and descriptive in her tutorials. in her free time, she can draw whatever she desires.
@@MohammedAgbadi Her video actually talked about it and she looked at videos from people that showed other techinques (replying to her technique). So she has learned :D
This is so real I used to draw the same white boy every day until I started drawing Waluigi. Now I’m much more enthusiastic about different facial features!
Im 13 and I loved her. I watched her videos for a long time and applied her tips into my art. I took a break from her videos before this situation. ANd while taking a break, I started observing people's features. THeir face shapes, their skin conditions, their proportions and etc. WHen kooleen said that she doesn't draw ugly people I slowly felt like I should draw stereotypical pretty people. And I applied this to myself. I grew more insecure about myself. And during the break, my art style changed drastically, it looked so much better, more diverse and realistic. Looking back on the drawings I did when I was watching and following kooleens advice, I realize it looks so simple. Nothing different. It looked the same. I feel terrible that I applied such knowledge into the real world and into my art. I think everyone is pretty. EVeryone is beautiful. Everyone should be drawn and seen and painted.
I don't think that means that others shouldn't have thought that her comment was hurtful. Of course there are those that blow things out of proportion.
Yes... But even if it's "just a joke" I think it should be taken seriously. It's not funny when jokes hurt. I don't think people understand unless they're in, say, my shoes when people call me "Ching Chang Chong" for a laugh. If I retort, they will say I'm too sensitive because it's just a joke 🙄 I was even called a gorilla because of my Asian features while they tried to take a picture of me laughing, by an Asian person as well. So even if I'm not black, that statement hurt like shit
I think it's mostly cultural ignorance Edit: I'm not justifying her actions. Her intentions were obviously not racist, but what she said was still racist Like for example my grandma 🥲 My sister was listening to japanese music and my grandma legitimately said "Oh is that your ching chong music?" 💀
I’m pretty sure her art suffers from Same Face Syndrome, since her style is just walking Korean beauty standards (same eyes, same v face, same nose) People with same face syndrome art style can’t draw people outside their preference zone. While many people face same face syndrome at some point during their journey, Kooleen’s is problematic because she is an influencer, with millions of followers. She portrays as if her way is the correct way. Her main audience consists of beginners, who wanna improve their art so they follow her. Its easy to draw pretty faces, make them look appealing. But its very difficult to draw “ugly” faces, make them look appealing to the eye. Same with same face syndrome, you won’t know you have this problem until you realise and its very hard to fix that (i promise, I’m going through the same).
Thank god I wasn't the only one feeling that. All her characters/drawings look almost exactly the same. The " I don't draw ugly people” comments just makes me think that she can't draw other face types.
I don't think so. If you have seen most of her videos there are funny times where she does draw unattractive peeps and she also showed her sketchbook once and there was a middle aged man drawing.
I personally think Kooleen's humor is very insensitive at times. I know it's her brand and all and she probably isn't like this in real life, but the way she presents herself in her content is probably why the backlash was so strong.
I think people in general is more attracted to negative/aggressive thing so that's why her contents go viral (not saying that she IS negative, but her content branding tends to fall into that side of area with her choice of word and stuffs). It works, but it can be a double sided sword Another artist-youtuber with almost the same way of branding is Ethan Becker, but even he always put out words like "In the end, it is a matter of preference [in terms of stylistic choice]" so that the audiences can grasp what they want/can take from his videos and what they don't
Dude, I’m white as fuck and I have that “gorilla-looking” jaw. I feel like this problem is actually super broad: all of these art tutorials that go “always draw eyes like this!” or “always draw ears like that!” only serve to alienate people who do not have these features. And, yes, given our ridiculous white-centric beauty standards, the people that end up being alienated are often people of colour. When I was just starting art, I had one of those “beginner’s how to draw” books, and I remember seeing anatomy tips such as: “the nose is the most prominent feature of the side profile, nothing goes further”, “for young women, always leave a gap between the upper thighs”, “ears never go lower than the nostrils”, etc… and as a young pre-teen girl at the time, with a prominent chin, long ears and no thigh gap, it made me feel really bad about myself. I guess what I’m trying to say is, if I as a white person am feeling like I can’t mesure up to our white-centric standards, then I can’t imagine what it must be like for people of colour. We really need let go of these ridiculous “art rules” when it comes to drawing people and accept that they come in all shapes and sizes. Of course, when trying to learn the basics, it can be hard to draw the line between “basic anatomy” and “unfair standard”, but I think we should just learn to be more lax, you know?
well artists have to start somewhere. the problem is that the "guidelines" that are meant to help newbies get started end up turning into "immutable rules that should always be followed when you draw something" in some artists' minds.
girl same! I'm white AF but got so much chin ... robbie the villain worthy, no nose and way too tiny fucking ears ... I still hate taking side profile picture of me to this day ;n;
@@PsycheTrance65 But isn´t that what viewers take from the tutorials? That art can only be drawn in the one and only certain way? Than thats its their own fault for not broaden their horizen on different types to draw people.
@@SukeruTengokuyou're so meeee but diff is i keep taking pic of my side profile thinking itll look better and ill feel better...i just felt worse lol and this comment of kooleen pretty much hurts me but not as much as poc
she lives in a bubble of unrealistic Korean beauty standards for her art and now reflects that in how she views the majority of human beings like girl even YOU don’t fit the perfect standard 😭
I honestly don’t care what you draw as long as they’re not racist caricatures or if you’re blatantly turning POC characters white. Even then, I don’t go harass them, I just avoid them 🤦🏾♀️💀
She’s used to drawing characters that fit the Eastern Asian beauty standard, and while these aren’t the exact same as Western standards, the similarity is the erasure of prominent ethnic features. The fact that she calls art outside of those standards ugly is something she should be held accountable for but probably wasn’t a conscious decision. It just means she shouldn’t be giving general art advice 🤷🏽♀️ Edit: Changed 'Eurocentric' to 'Western'
But that's not the case tho, the art which she was critiquing, which caused all the drama was objectively ugly, there is no ambiguity behind it. Unless you think all black people look like crimson chin, in which case you're the racist one.
@@ps1hagrid786 art forms like abstract, surrealism, pop art etc can be judged subjectively but a huge portion of it lies on the objective spectrum as well, like anatomy which is exactly what this was about. You can't just bend human forms to your will without any stylistic intent behind it and call it good art on subjective basis. Y'all are just trying to grasp at straws to justify your hate brigade at this point.
@deBrawnyo As an artist, I'd say that the anatomical "inaccuracies" in that drawing (I assume you mean the side profile one) lie more in the placement of the eyes/eyebrows, the size of the ears and the shape of the neck rather than the lips or general lower facial area, so that still wouldn't be a justification for erasing its ethnic features.
@@whowhat957 and as an artist myself, let me tell you there absolutely was anatomical errors regarding the chin and the underbite in that drawing along with brow placement. Most human skulls aren't built like that where the chin protrudes past the nose whether it be African, asian, caucasian or Latino, they just don't. The thing y'all are complaining about black people deviating from the triangle law absolutely exists but it does so because of the protrusion of the mouth combined with the fleshy lips, it absolutely has nothing to do with the chin. If you can't see that, sorry but you're not a very good artist.
I never draw ugly people because I think every iteration of the human body is beautiful and miraculous. It can take so many amazing forms! Wrinkles that tell stories, features passed down from ancestors, smiles that show crooked teeth and scars that witness of survival and overcoming and just all of us being HUMAN. It’s beautiful.
Her community just baffles me Responding to someone feeling offended with "learn to take a joke lmao" is shitty regardless of the situation A joke made on behalf of someone who is hurt by it isn't a joke, it's just an insult for people who aren't included in it to laugh at Edit: Reading some of those replies I'm also really shocked of how little boundaries mean to people
her community is pretty supportive and young so i guess they dont have filters and sensors in their vocabulary and can't wrap their heads around context properly....it seems
@@lilnightmare109 I have the features she makes fun off 😐 And even if it was intentionally an insult, you should learn to take if you are gonna be on the Internet. Move on with your life and don't stay inside too much, you gonna grow roots. Try making some friends, which I doubt you have if you get offended by someone you don't even know and wasn't talking about you.
@@xcorpionz922 Nah, bro. A joke is supposed to be funny. Y'all's humor sucks if you think *that's* funny. Not everyone has to laugh, they can dislike the joke.
Tbh i think it was more ignorance than racism, anime art styles end up failing when drawing people of different ethnicities. So her making fun of the different style was just her normal type of roast, although in very poor taste
I think it’s ignorance too. Until you sit down and do some real hardcore research on side profiles it’s easy to not realize how varied side profiles can be.
@@seal8092Exactly. I didn't heard about this drama and fron the miniature of this video I didn't even know what could be the problem. I see some black people when I commute but I try not to stare at them so I've never noticed that their side profiles look so different from white people's profiles
totally agree with you, never really saws much of her content but it seems shes one of those artists that draw similar faces for all her drawings and is just too attached to the conventional beauty standard and cant see beauty beyond those features, which also explains why she only has the anime artstyle and can only really draw anime characters or white people. Im pretty sure its not something she does with malicious intent but just being ill informed of realistic features only sticking to drawing in her own art style for so long. its pretty well known to artists who dance around with art styles when first starting out to only be able to draw a certain X and have troubling straying away from what theyre comfortable with
@@seal8092oh come on 💀 she goes outside doesn't she? You're obviously going to see people with different side profiles even if they're your own race. Not everyone has "juicy smexy lips" or an anime side profile so there's no reason to have a singular guideline for it because it just doesn't work
The biggest problem with this that I can see is that by refusing to acknowledge or listen to the comments by people telling her that the things she was saying were harmful, she's basically grown herself a fanbase composed of people who genuinely support the ideas she was 'joking' about. Which is something that can be best defined as something very difficult to get a hold of once you've allowed it to happen, and has an established tendency to lead to the creator themself increasingly seeking to appease to their fan base. Even when said fan base begins to become increasingly extremist in their behaviors. It's far easier to appeal to the people who praise you for the hurtful things you've done by continuing to say increasingly more hurtful things, than it is to prove to those who aren't in support of cruelty that you won't behave with further cruelty. So this will either be the event that leads to her putting in the effort to _avoid_ nurturing a fanbase that's a cesspool, or will be looked back on as the event that first outed her as being part of the cesspool herself.
This!! As an online creator, you have the ability to curate a fan base of a certain type of people. If you make a mistake that's bigoted and dont acknowledge it or apologize. You're just creating a space for people who genuinely are bigoted to run free. And at that point you might as well be one of them.
@@goose7215 Honestly at this point who the fuck is listening to twitter? I'm considered to be "woke" and even I'm tired of it. People are never satisfied with anything. If you do smtg wrong, you can apologize, change your act, donate to charity, create a progressive foundation that helps victims and they'll still be mad about smtg you did 15 years ago. A lot of kids there are building up to become the most toxic ppl ever. The type of people who will use someone's mistake to manipulate and overpower them forever. You did something wrong? You will never be allowed an opinion or your wants and needs ever again in ur life. Thats an abusive red flag to me.
I think my biggest problem with kooleen is that she just isn't a good teacher, she's staggering these young artists growth they have to find their own path as artists and not just copy an artstyle, my personal opinion is that you need diversity not just in people, different backgrounds, different features to learn and kooleen only seems to draw one thing all the time.
This is so true, not everyone can be a good teacher, in any field. There are many people who are skilled, extremely knowledgeable, experienced in their field and have 0 clue how to teach or even articulate all of that for people that are beginners or are starting out. And in her case, I would say she's 'qualify' to teach people how to 'draw in her style' instead of just art in general.. if that makes sense.
@@sodapopjam i agree that not everyone was born with knowledge but my point was more so because she's so young, as an artist learning habits can set back years of development, there are tons and tons of experienced artists in tons of industries that make helpful art videos here on youtube and I, personally think that younger artists might have an easier time learning from one of those than someone who's still learning themselves and don't get me wrong i do love her art and i do think she has potential to teach.
It kind of reminds me how young artists (even I did it at one point) kind of brag about how good their pieces are and hype themselves to be better than anyone else, realizing there's flaw with that one painting you did but you're so prideful and full of the moment you kind of reject everyone's criticism.. Sometimes that Art Euphoria I'll call it hits and it's like, "I'm better than everyone. I can be a teacher! You should draw like how I do/ my drawing is the only one that is good because it's what I like!" Like you said she is still young, so maybe she will grow out of this hopefully and probably just learn that you shouldn't probably call yourself an artist JUST yet since you haven't broaden your horizons too much and you can stick with tips, not making yourself seem like the Drawing Messiah. Her art is great, and better than mine 100%, but a the same time, she hasn't branched out of that comfort zone but she should take the time she needs to, just don't push young artists/others to draw like you as if it's the right way
I think the damage channels like kooleen are doing to young artists really showed when spider verse came out and a lot of them had no idea how to draw the characters because most of them are POC
Edit: I realize now it wasn't clowning on her, so I fixed it. I enjoyed Ethan Becker's video clowning on the "racist triangle" while also giving insight on the many facial profiles of people and anime characters alike, electing to add another triangle to fix the "fix" Because Ethan's video was a good watch, while also criticizing the tutorial
In fact I don't like the dude( don't know why) but I respected what he did do really, he acted wisely and showed us many things I didn't know about the topic.
The thing is he wasn’t really clowning her rather the rigid rules that artist have put in themselves (aka Kolleen) he was actually really respectful towards her without naming her or dissing her art (unlike som people on TikTok).
In wasn’t really a clown, it was a moment of teaching which is what we actually need. More teaching than just hate. Just hating and demanding an apology doesn’t work unless the person knows WHY what they did was offensive. That’s why a lot of apologies fall flat, they don’t actually get why they offended people lmao they just want hate off their back Though 98% of racists deserve hate, don’t get me wrong lmaooo
@meriembelguebli7440 he's a very "taken with a grain of salt" kind of humor. I grew up around that type of satirical humor, so I find myself drawn to it. You don't really need a reason to like or dislike someone, and that's valid. :)
@@meriembelguebli7440That's his self-branding now. If you watch his older videos, you'd know he used to have this calmer approach. He's most likely being more aggresive on his approach because that's what the algorithm attracted to
I just want to say, as an artist, you have stunning features. It’s a fucking shame that we are seen through a filter of racism, but there are so many who see our beauty. Light skin, dark skin, big and small, we are beautiful.
As a black woman, what i can say is that what she said was offensive. I don't dislike Kooleen, i find her art to be very nice and unique, yet her comments where racist/ micro-aggressive and not okay. As a black women, i learned at a young age that the beauty of my people is heavily joked about, mocked, and made fun of either in person or over media. At this point in life, I'm glad media is improving- but as we go on this journey of self-love and healing that I see many doing this year, its annoying and insulting to still see ethnic features still being made fun of. We have a right to find her "jokes" offensive. Does she deserve the response of many over what she did? I can't make that decision for everyone- though personally, i think it was deserved to an extent. i hope this backlash is a good learning point for her to take on the art communities criticisms and if she is to continue to draw POC with more ethnic features, that she does the needed research. I wish her the best.
I'm a black man and i keep calling my brother monkey and my brother keeps calling me nigga. For me, the majority of black just love to play the victims and with all that happened in the 1700 they are getting more support from the rest of the world. There was slavery in all over the world, all the folks were racist and racist against everyone. Fortunately it changed. But, every time, "the black" subject or "racism against black" is always much more virulent and touchy, it always makes more noise than the others. Ofc racist is shit and it's totally good that people are turning against it, but rn, victim of racism feels like the whole personality of black people. But well, for the kooleen's case, it's logic, in public it goes less well, even tho i didn't feel offended, it's logic that other people would be. I don't even think she meant it, she's used to making degrading and aggressive content, it's for humourous content but the "black subject" is more risky and touchy. But on another note, i don't even think she's getting all that hate because of the racism accusation. People are partly hiding behind that to express their frustration against her. Since her type of egocentric - sarcastic character generated a lot of haters and ofc since it's a drama, other people will just on it to milk the drama.
A thing that annoys me a bit is calling the characters that she does white and having eurocentric features. Bro I'm European and we don't look like that XD She only draws asian, Korean kpop looking people.
Yeah i'm annoyed at people mistaking what are clearly asian beauty standards and saying these things. I wish westerners were more aware of this instead of projecting their social and political landscape on people from other cultures. However, I think kooleen, If she's going to do these videos in english (clearly aiming for an internacional audience), she should be more aware of those things and leave her own cultural bubble.
Even Korean-pop people don't look like that (and that's after shitload of plastic surgeries and cosmetics) and she is setting a bar that, let's be honest, she herself doesn't reach. She and her audience were rage baiting. She should have been shunned away and forgotten. If she had senses, she would have apologised honestly and shown in her work that she is changed. She continues to "roast" people and her audience is largely too immature to care how badly that is affecting their mindset.
I mean, there are black people who only draw black people and white people who only draw white people. She's philipino and she draws exactly that, most people tend to draw what's around them so I don't see what's wrong about that and it's not even realistic all her characters are semi-realistic. Let's just stop and get the humour and the lesson and leave
Even as a white person looking at this situation, I can tell that this whole thing is absolutely bonkers. Like most of the comments under her crappy “apology” video are crazy 😭 They’re literally hating on the people who called her out for making racist and ignorant remarks, and are praising her like she’s some sort of god… Like yes, she gave a half-assed apology and she claims she has “learned”, but that doesn’t mean that the people who originally called her out are the villains of this situations now?! The comments she made were genuinely gross and I cannot believe so many of her little brainwashed fans just brushed that crap off. Blatantly calling a facial structure that is common among black people (and other races too) a “gorilla looking mf”, calling laid baby-hairs on a black character “extra eyebrows” like bro, anyone can see that those comments are highly-offensive and racist. She didn’t address ANY of that in her apology either, like yea I appreciate the sentiment, but if you don’t clearly state what you’re apologizing for then what even is the point of making one? She literally talked about Miguel O’Hara in her “apology” for like 2 whole minutes! It’s insincere and it leaves MUCH to be desired by the people who took an issue with her previous comments. I cannot, in good faith, support someone like her if she refuses to even make a decent apology after all the crap she has said. Because even though I wasn’t personally affected by her comments (since I’m white), I have plenty of POC friends around me and I have ZERO tolerance for anyone being willfully ignorant or racist, ESPECIALLY when they have already been called out on it and refuse to actually apologize.
i think this really goes to show that you should really be careful who youre taking art advice from on scoial media, not all content creators are qualified to give definitive art advice, ive always been a bit peeved by this but this is the first time i see people actually talk about it! PS this video is my first context to this situation!!
yeah, tbh even putting aside all the racism stuff i feel like kooleen is just not someone you should be taking advice from lmao. she knows how to draw very specific things yet she tries to give broad advice, and her advice ends up just being "draw more like how i draw" she's a pretty good artist, but honestly i don't think she's that good of an art instructor
@@jasperjazzieI've always got those vibes too, I feel like a good art instructor explains their method and the reasoning behind their method. like proko, he will tell you how to draw nose and explain the fornoseplaie nose
Yess! While her videos are somewhat satire, I think she could do a better job at separating satire from real advice. Because the thing is, she gives good advice for her niche art style. Which makes it difficult to call her videos fully satire. And she could definitely do a better job at stating that this is for her style specifically, rather than trying to edit the art of those with a different style. At the end of the day, she chooses what to edit. If she can't draw POC, she shouldn't give advice for art of POC. If she can't draw non-manhwa styles, she shouldn't give that advice. Sure, it's your choice to send. But it's ultimately her decision whether or not she chooses yours. Sorry for ranting, I had a lot to say, but I totally agree.
0:22 I remember watching this video and thinking: "Hey, why didn't she give her acne in the redraw?" However, I didn't think hard on it because nobody was really talking about it in the comment section. Even then, that video made me lowkey a bit uncomfortable...
@@Lee.M.DBecause it is not flattering or look pretty....many people cover up their acne for a reason, so why would we draw it in our art ? Also, it is hard to draw it and make it look right, same with freckles, They often end up looking like measles...at least when I do it...and I have an OC that has freckles everywhere😅
I don't believe that it's an "accident" that she described black features as "gorilla". Like we all know in this day in age what that means. This apology is terrible, she's terrible, and her art is tainted by it.
riiight ppl saying that she apologized but she only posted in her ig, when yt and tt were her biggest platforms.. her apology was too half heartedly and RIGHT after that she posted random art stuff so it stayed behind her feed.
As I see this whole drama unfold, I can't tell people enough to watch Jackie Droujko, she's an amazing character designer, and the black characters she draws shows how you can indeed draw anyone in any style without erasing ethnic features! she also fixes art in an extra positive way like giving actual anatomy tips!
When I look at her recent videos, I see a large group of people commenting that she didn't need to apologize and that we were take the situation.. ‘out of proportion’. I understand that y’all want to commend her for taking appropriate action BUT you could do that without invalidating the feelings of people of color. What she did was wrong, and people got offended rightfully so.
thing is about a third to a half of those ppl commenting on behalf of her were being opeling, blatantly racist. She seens to have real problems of internalized racism, which is way more commom that ppl like to admit in the societies we live in, but a bunch of ppl that follow her no. If you comment would reach them, they wouldn't care, she herself wouldn't neither, at least she would pretend not to. but she knows well she has been reproducing a lot of racist shit for a long time in various manners, but she don't want to admit that obviously, to herself even.
@@user-sc9ht2tb7u Or that Chinese slur.. in all honesty, I can't expect anything else from her, and even if she apologizes I doubt she'll actually take it seriously 😅. I just hope she'll listen to the criticism she received.
Hello, she apologized on Instagram, I though, I do think she should've apologized on RUclips, idc, as a black person myself, I don't really care about what she said, but, I do think she could've handled the whole thing better
Thank you for this in-depth video explaining everything. I had just started watching her videos since a few weeks ago, and then a friend told me she was problematic. I had no idea, so I appreciate the extensive clarification. 😓
I love watching your videos while drawing, your voice is so calm and soothing and u explain the drama so well that u can already picture what's happening with out even having to look at the screen, weeee
This is the first time i watch his video using a headphone. Dang his voice is so velvetty smooth like butter. Have you tried being a radio DJ, Mohammed? 😂❤
as a white person I still just gotta say the apology is weird in a lot of ways, like why hide it in the second picture and not even mentioning what she did that got her fans angry to be it feels like she just wanna hide it so look trough her page in the future don’t see it and the people who isn’t aware on what happen to never even get a glimpse at what she did
Plus, someone said that the "apology' was posted on the platform where she has the lowest amount of followers....I think it was o Twitter, I mean X, at first and she got called out for it and sonposted it on Insta then...(if I remember correctly)
@@schemesthefox1255 because I am not the one who the apology is too, I am not black so I felt like maybe I shouldn’t be the one dumping down on her apology. So I just wanted to say that beforehand
Honestly by drawing people with different body types, hair types, facial features, genders, races, etc you not only improve your art but you also make it a lot more interesting. If you only draw one type of person like kooleen does, it gets boring quickly. I know i can only watch so many of kooleens videos before i get bored because all of her drawings look very similar.
as much as i want to believe it was ignorance, her comments were a little bit too stereotypical against black people to not be at least a little bit on purpose. the fact that her first thought on how to "roast" someone's art of a black person is to call the art gorilla-looking is very odd to me. i hope she learns to grow and improve from her actions
Yes, not only Black people but there are also other people who have the same facial feature. In Thailand, or Indonesia, or even some people in the west
In Asia, where she lives, most people don't know about monkey/gorilla etc being a slur for black people. Asian people make fun of each other for looking like gorillas in a playful way all the time. It is in mainstream comics over there.
@LOVE-510how do you not know in 2023 with access to basically any information you want that calling features, especially on a black person, “gorilla like” is not okay? i get it might have been an honest mistake, we all speak without thinking but just because intent is neutral doesn’t mean the outcome can’t or won’t be perceived as bad…
But isn't that quite ironic since as far as I know Americans call South East Asian as "Jungle Asians" since apparently are the Ugly Monkey looking Asians (brown skin, wide eyes and different facial features compared to the stereotypically know East Asians features) I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't know just how offensive this kind of joke it is to the American Audience (I'm sure she has a hint that this joke is a bit offensive but I guess it flew her mind about the History of Racism in America since it's not taught in Asia) and I personally think that's just unintentional ignorance
@@1faithchick7 this makes lots of sense! thank you, i could do with research into asian cultures as well! it goes both ways, i think we all need to learn more about each other
Honestly the thing I hate most about this situation is her comments. Before she apologized they were like “yass queen ignore the sensitive haters being dramatic” when she apologized they were like “queen you didn’t need to apologize” AND SHE LIKED THEIR COMMENTS. When she “apologized” she didn’t even post it on any other platform and posted art right after so it just blends into her feed. Then she and Sam and Ethan turned into a big joke. It’s actually heartbreaking to witness.
@@nisamae2 they made videos “addressing it” but they ignored all the racist parts and just made it seem like everyone got mad at her for making a “bad tutorial” ig they just didn’t want to address the racist part but the racist part was the main problem and I’m annoyed with how they just pretended that didn’t exist
@@nisamae2 they basically shifted the conversation away from the issue that people had. By focusing on just the advice it both downplays and move the conversation away from racism. While that may seem fine on paper it doesn’t address how Kooleen was racially insensitive at best, it doesn’t address how it took her two weeks to give us a notes app apology, and it doesn’t address her liking comments calling black people haters and sensitive, and ignore people giving honest criticism. So Sam and Ethan made light of the situation and completely moved the conversation away from the core issue and now most people are just gonna think that Koleen was giving bad art advice and this is just petty drama. It’s very frustrating.
i have always, even before all this, commented on her videos about how the whole “fixing your ugly art” thing she did was not okay, that she was straight up weird for some things she would say during her videos and i would always get dogpilled for it. Her fans would reply that people had asked for it and that that made it okay. Overall, I’m glad i was right.
In general I don't think she's a bad person she's just not very used to and informed about darker skinned art pieces (I'm black) (And I rarely draw black ppl)
@@Fishyboi432 I don’t think it was ignorance.. Ignorance is when you have absolutely no knowledge of a particular topic and Mohammed have given examples as to how she must’ve at least seen the features of people of color. If anything, The only way she would remain oblivious is if.. she deliberately ignores it. I believe that she knew what she was doing, but never suspected that much backlash from her audience.
Shes filipino and most filipinos are dark skinned and have these "gorilla lookin mf" features. As a filipino i am dissapointed and she should DEFINETLY know better
@@WobblesandBean it's not like they said she shouldn't be held accountable for it,, quite the opposite really someone can be racist, and can also be unaware, but that still makes their actions racist, i think that's what this comment was saying
Thanks for making this video and explaining the situation! I have been watching Kooleen for some time and I’m often not deeply involved in online dramas so I was confused about what people meant by “the Kooleen drama”. Thanks for clearing things up!
In my opinion, if all she wants to draw is pretty anime/manhwa boys and girls, she can. It's just when it comes to making tutorial, wanting to educate your followers on techniques and anatomy, that it's where you have to start being mindful because, I have no doubt Kooleen knows that her community is mostly consisted of young people, artists who just started out. In fact, I'm sure MOST artists would have a big percentage of young followers. Being a young beginner artist once, you absorb whatever knowledge offered to you, especially the ones on the internet, including bad habits, mindsets, and biases, at least until you grow old enough to decide what's useful and what's not to you. That's where it becomes detrimental to young artists' growth and undoubtedly affects how they think art should be, because a lot would hold those things for years pretty stubbornly. I know this because I've been there, applying frankly bad art advices with no proper guidance, and then got confused when it doesn't look as good. And I was there for years to see artists tearing other artists down because "their art looks cringe" just because they haven't yet learn the proper fundamentals like anatomy, etc., or their art just looking a certain way that doesn't appeal to the masses. Saying they're just "roasting for entertainment" it when really it's just bullying, soliciting unwanted "criticism" where it's not needed. Feeding into fears and insecurities that you already unearthed in your journey as an artist because something will always tell you you're not good enough and you'll never reach a certain level with your art. You can say it's just jokes but it doesn't always feel good when you're the butt of it, right? Even when you know the intent. Like let's be real, unless you're in an environment where people are super supportive of art and/or you got parents like Artgerm, as a preteen artist on the internet you wouldn't have learnt anything about anatomy, color theory, or lighting. Most of the time you might not even care because it's just for fun. Whether you want to eventually learn it or not is up to you. My point is, whether Kooleen is aware of it or not, what she did spread, perhaps cement, certain biases, mindset, and habit about how art should look like to her young viewers, and how her young viewers would look at other people's art, especially with the liquefying face features and "gorilla looking mfer" cases. They look up to her and hold her opinion high, so it's inevitable. The best she can do is to reflect on what really is her goal in making tutorials and fixing her viewers' art. If it's just to mess around, I'll be honest then that doesn't exactly help anyone. If it's just to teach people how to draw in her style, then that should be the asterisk, nothing's wrong with that we have tons of tutorials for specific styles. If she genuinely wants to help her followers grow, then she has to learn to be mindful of what she puts out there when she meant it to be educational.
Confused as to why people think she wasn't being racist intentionally. She compared a black person's facial proportions to a gorilla, like come on now... Edit: The fact that y'all are trying to justify it in the comments just goes to show how ignorant people still are. To the people defending Kooleen, thank you for keeping the division alive, I'm sure your ancestors would be proud :)
What she said may have been "insensitive". But gorillas literally do look like that. Why do all of you keep pretending they don't? Just to prove you're not " racist?"
One thing to note about [portrait] artists that box themselves in one specific face is that they lack experience. I think kooleen is just a beginner artist who grew bigger than her actual skills and that shows in the diversity in her art style. It takes experience and true appreciation of faces and features to see the beauty in each and every one of it and incorporate it into their art. I know I've had similar discriminatory perspectives when I was just starting to draw as a child because the goal was always to draw a pretty [pinterest-style] person. I don't know when it happened but once I've had more experience, only then was I truly able to appreciate different features and I'm still learning more about it now.
I hate how her mentality of “i dont draw ugly people” has stretched onto her fans. Now they’re saying “EWW DRAWING UGLY PEOPLE BAD!! WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DRAW THEM??” Same goes for her motivation to draw(aka clout) now her impressional young fans will try and follow her steps and have immediate burnt out because… what do ya know?? Becoming famous isn’t easy
Here the definition of a joke because you probably don't know: "a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, especially a story with a funny punchline."
@@darkseid121 what you're not getting is that she believes in not drawiny ugly ppl (as you can see in the references she used) but only said it in a form of a joke.
@@HitoLuciustbh any apology nowadays genuine or not will be hated on and if shes real specific and she makes a tiny error in her wording then oof thats not gonna end well
@@cherrilethecherrythat doesn’t stop this apology from feeling a bit disingenuous. She ignored it for two weeks, continued to post as if nothing was happening and made more excuses than anything. Saying she “doesn’t consume much western media” which is hard to believe when you can see it all over her content. Saying “i roast everyone equally” it’s just the lack of acknowledgement of the issue at hand.
I somehow missed all this until just now. I'm an older artist, so i didn't really use her tutorials, but I really liked her sarcastic humor, despite disagreeing with a lot of her comments. I disagree heavily with the idea that drawing "ugly" people doesn't help with artistic growth. I don't think anyone is ugly based off of physical traits. We're all unique, and drawing a wide variety of features is a huge asset.
As a furry artist, I am happily immune to most of this BS, i do feel for other artists that have to put up with it though. I cannot do a human to save my life, and I envy those that can get good skin tones of any color to look right, haha.
A few years ago I made a bunch of furry artist friends to fo trades with and stuff, and I quickly learned it takes just as much skill as any other art "genres"- Like how tf do you draw fur without it looking like model magic. So I respect you guys
Well aave is (now) considered social media slang simply because a lot of people adapted it. So even if you haven’t seen black people you’d still prolly see a white dude using aave online(just to be clear i’m not defending kooleen, I think she is at fault)
@@ScizzoringGirlz that still doesn't change the fact that it's AAVE 💀 What you just described is 'ignorance', bro. If people don't know, that's on them. Reminder that there's history behind it and black people were persecuted and discriminated against for using AAVE. Any non-black person using it as slang should be aware of that.
@@ScizzoringGirlz that still doesn't change the fact that it's AAVE 💀 What you just described is 'ignorance', bro. If people don't know, that's on them. Reminder that there's history behind it and black people were persecuted and discriminated against for using AAVE. Any non-black person using it as slang should be aware of that.
@@sabsain2399 I just explained why the ignorant person is using it though. I don’t know why you’re making my comment a bigger deal than it is. I’m sure by this point a lot of people are already aware cuz google is available.
I wasn’t aware of your channel until it popped up on my feed tonight. I could listen to you read the dictionary and stay rapped at attention the whole time! Great video. Certainly got my thinking about how I draw BIPOC characters in the future.
Her apology on Instagram was just as half-assed as one would expect, she deleted everything obviously racist and essentially just buried everything hoping (new) viewers wouldn't come across it and realize what kinda person she is
@@fionadrawer Yes? Just because I have a short comment doesn't mean I haven't. Kooleen's made insensitive and racist comments, and I genuinely hope she actually accepts what she did wrong and apologizes.
Her gorilla comment was racist and her apology was shit but some ppl are doing too much. Tiktok legit said she whitewashed a White man cuz it wasnt realistic, comments spamming koolean insults in unrelated vids and hyping all nonkoolean artists, even if they had similar artstyles☠️. I also think ppl take artists advice too seriously/personally. An artist on twitter got dts cuz they told ppl how they shade. No matter how good an artists advice is, the internet WILL be mad. Also think its funny the internet was hyping her up during the samdoesart controvery☠️
@@lilnightmare109 it happened months ago, where he drew bella ramsey from tlou too stylized and it didnt look like her but pedros character did. And ppl pointed out a weird joke comment he made about only drawing attractive girls. Ppl also were toooo much for that as well, just attacking artists left and right but ig thats now the art community.
@@Bombonribonno for real the art community is so insanely dramatic sensitive and toxic, it’s nuts and discouraging especially knowing a large portion of the community is young. edit: also as someone from DeviantArt in the early 2010’s… i don’t think it’s calmed down whatsoever.
@@Bombonribon omg that reminds me of the “rendering process” thing and how hateful that was, my heart goes out to beginning artists just trying to share their passion with the world and being met with toxic hateful people
According to SamDoesArt, it’s a general rule of thumb to use the method Koolean used when drawing a side profile. So I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt in that she didn’t know that a lot of the times, facial features can surpass that rule. However, it is infuriating that in her fixing art videos, she tries fixing them based on her own art style. I like SamDoesArt because he is not biased and tries to show what good proportions can look like while also saying that it’s ok to do different. Also, it does seem like Koolean was being racist in more ways then one and I hope she responds to this drama.
When her title says "fxing your art"it's a CLICKBAIT,that means she's just gonna redraw it in her own style and share her methods of drawing/rendering while doing so.
14:58 “you’re whole sense of humor is based around western gen z humor” it’s that part for me… and I’m truly sorry for being so dead set on this but you simply do not call or compare POCs to apes or gorillas or monkeys of any kind particular the black community it is a well known dehumanizing slur and completely unacceptable to joke about. I was never a fan of her type of humor so she lost nothing from me since I was never a fan… but honestly this is exactly why and at least now other people are starting to see how this isn’t funny or ok behavior
I’m with kooleen as in I also never draw ugly people. That being said I’m not a weirdo who thinks POCs, fat people, skinny people, muscular people, old people and whatever else is ugly. I am a professional and I mostly sell traditional art irl and my clients always rave about how I draw so many different kinds of people and body types and ages with so many different features and they all look so beautiful. One of my favorite pieces is of an elderly black woman and she’s beautiful. I love humans. I love how they look. I love how skin wrinkles and folds how light diffuses through peoples skin. I love the interplay of bone and muscle and fat on every single human. I love how light flashes in peoples eyes differently. Humans are infinitely fascinating and infinitely beautiful, and there’s always things to appreciate, in every single person in an aesthetic way. I always want to represent that. there are no ugly people that’s what I’m getting at. Everyone is beautiful and I’m not saying that as some kind of patronizing thing. I love anatomy I love humans I love everything about how they look. I love smooth skin and wrinkled skin and soft skin and skin, aged by the sun. Humans are so unique and different and there’s always more to find and appreciate about how they look. How someone smiles, or holds a cup. The deep shadows and contrasting highlights on angular areas, the softness of fat areas, hard bone and muscle. I love to people watch because people are beautiful. And people moving are the hight of beauty to me. People to me are art and I just want to capture that art So yeah I never draw ugly people because to me, and I genuinely mean it, there are no ugly people.
I find the racism accusations kinda weird because that outline she made for "how you are supposed to draw a side profile" applies to no human on earth I'm pretty sure. Neither black nor white. Just seems like a bad guideline that only works in a heavily anime style. Although if she enjoys drawing in that style I wouldn't fault her for it, I guess. I near exclusively draw characters with a lean body and abs, just cuz that's what I enjoy most. I've been trying to vary up my bodytypes a tiny bit on occasion, but I don't think there's like anything inherently problematic with what I'm doing.
Also I agree with that last paragraph as well, she can draw what she wants. But I mean, if someone draws or doesn't draw diverse characters, could be ammo for internet critics.
The issue was that she called the side profile that is common in black people "gorilla-looking" and "wrong." Even if it was not her intention, it was still a shitty comment to make.
In a video she addressed her mistake, and said that she had been going by one guideline since it was what she knew, she wasn't aware that there were other face guidelines. She even practiced with the "bad" outline
As someone who only ever really makes horror art, none of the critters I draw are ever attractive… i guess I’ll never improve at art to Kooleens standards
6:38 this is something that actually made me feel insecure when she showed it, the fact that people deem acne as "ugly" and erase it from a characters face is just.... I'm someone who has had wid acne growing up and i used to feel horrible about it everyday. Man did this bring back memories.. No matter how much she apologizes, i don't think i ever wanna forgive her tbhrbsmbfks There are even people who DEFEND HER in her newer videos, and i get that she took accountability (for the most part...) But still, she made extremely racist jokes and just... To be honest her art tutorials aren't even USEFUL anyways, she wants everything to look like HER art style
Bro I'm with you sm I'm also someone who gained a lot of pimples at a very early age. Kooleen just made them look like freckles instead of pimples not to mention it doesn't look obvious and reddish enough at the first glance. Plus, her annoying fans kept saying "iT's jUsT hEr StYLe" when they support someone who changes an entire artstyle to look like hers and calls it "fixed". Like girl should just continue her redrawing series instead of criticizing other people's art 🤦♀️
Ikr!! tbh i was never a big fan of her whatsoever, because her artstyle is very cliche and boring imo. But thats just me. And i also think that the "redrawing trend" can be very toxic if not done correctly.
As someone who has had a fuck ton of acne, I would never ruin a drawing by adding that as a feature. I hate it so much. But if it's someone else's drawing, then it's wrong to remove something that's important to the character
what I dislike about artists who do this do and don't and fixing art style is when they fix a perfectly normal face just because they think it doesn't fit the beauty standards.
Kooleen seems to be someone who is deeply affected by beauty standards and most likely thinks that anything outside of it is unacceptable or ugly. I used to think the same way but seeing more and more types of beauty in different people, I started thinking differently. Idk if she is racist or not but growing up in an asian household, a lot of the features in the video shown were taught to me to not be "acceptable" or "wanted" and the standard and heavily manufactured face was what was told to be what pretty meant. I can see how this could be the case of hers as well seeing most of her drawings have heavy asian and anime influence. I dont think we should be attacking and insulting these types of people, but rather teaching them things outside of the "norm" can also be Beauty and its always changing.
Anime Style Fixing: - Remove Any character trait from the face - Remove any character trait from the body, - Add +1000% details to the eyes - Add +1000% details to the hair - Remind people you don't draw ugly people - Profit
I actually feel so much better after seeing this video, Watching people normalize these features makes me feel so much better about myself, I don't hear a lot of good things about my features, so it's really good hearing you say all these things, and seeing the comments too.🤗
I've seen the drama fly by and honestly, I'm really not surprised it turned out this way. When you base your entire ''artist'' persona around being snarky, satirical, sarcastic, edgy and entertaining for the sake of attracting young people, you WILL create an image that's...well, conflicting. That works for comedians, less so for artists. Furthermore, the larger your fan-base grows, the more important it is that you show a level of responsibility towards your image and how you come across to everyone. There's so many people looking up to you at that point, even if you don't realize it yourself. These people will read every word you say, so it's important that what you say isn't going to be taken out of context. Saying after the fact something was a joke is just shunning all personal responsibility, asinine and shows you still have some growing up to do. It was bound to happen, and there's always some new kid who will try this and finds themselves in a similar situation. Ethan Becker found himself in relatively similar waters some time ago and guess what, he decided to change too. Just don't do what she did.
I have this type of side profile. Ive never really liked seeing myself at this angle and im barely learning how not to feel self conscious of it. I dont think anyone is obligated to draw every type of race or face shape, but to consider different types of features, from what you normally draw, as ugly or incorrect that it needs "fixing" is insane to me. I dont think she did any of this out of malice or to hurt people, but its ignorant and i dont know if she understands the type of damage this shit can do and probably already has. (Especially with tiktoks "angel face" and "witch face" shit ive been hearing about)
I have the opposite issue. I have a weak jawline and no one on earth will never consider this as beautiful. I hate my profile for that reason. I feel you :/
Even if we somehow ignore the racism, the idea "don't draw ugly people" is literally the opposite of what most art teachers I had recommend: Drawing wrinkles and details and distorted features is not only a way to learn how to get outside of your box, it can be far more fun to draw a wrinkly old sea captain type dude with two teeth than a smooth and cartoony person. Besides: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so who says what's ugly anyway?
Not entirely about the drama but never base your art on only one artist, as you said you’ll also adapt their mistakes. Like how using the template all faces will look the same, all of your art will look the same. There are so many artists and you should never limit yourself.
So you aren't interested in her being better and actually trying to draw different people. You are just a hater. Got it. At least she only roasts art people want her to roast that the artists sends her themselves.
All this case made me remember (for some reason) of Say Yes To The Dress. There's an specific episode in which Randy has to dress up a bride who's bald due to chemotherapy and she was really emotional. Then she tells him she was scared of not feeling as a bride when dressed up because she was a fan of the show and Randy would always say "a bride without a veil aint no bride at all" (or some variation of that phrase). In the moment he heard that, the guy BROKE because she wasn't addressing him as the wrong one, but rather feeling insecure for not reaching the standard and the possibility of not being a pretty bride since she couldn't wear the veil. Randy (unlike koleen lol) immediately apologised saying he has never thought on that or tried to put himself on the shoes of a bride in that situation, but that's the thing: most people are thought to think according to what media teaches us it's "right"-facial features, body structures, types of dressing up-and none of those are inclusive (it's called standard for a reason, after all). I really wished kollen could have been more like Randy and recognised the internalised search for validation through using techniques and comments full of discrimination, it's quite disappointing tbh...
Yeah, there are a lot of artists who’ve gotten exposed for bad things and have yet to apologize for their actions nor make it up for it. Glad she was quick to respond though.
She didn’t make one singular mistake though, and if you take her apology as acceptance, me personally, I wouldn’t have taken that as anything less than insincerity. She doesn’t address one thing she has done, doesn’t apologize specifically to the people she has hurt (Chinese people, black people/poc), be it intentionally or not (hurting them aka being racist). To me, it seems she just wanted to get out an apology so that she could move on with her bs, while her fans, whenever anything is brought up again, could dismiss it with “oh, but she apologized”.
@@jenice7057 People get offended by fucking everything. You don't have to apologize for weirdos getting offended over literally nothing. Stop trying to cry bully people into feeling bad by claiming it "hurt" people. It's a drawing on a fucking screen. Like I've never seen this many people in need of growing some goddamn balls
Xiao Tong is a asian artist who for starters has amazing are and second of all dosent shy away from drawing black features in her style. So you can adapt diffrent races into your style properly if you try.
I like this guy. He talks about bad people without being toxic. His videos are still somewhat lighthearted and easy to watch. Equestrian RUclipsrs gotta take notes.
Tbh, a lot of the critique toward her is valid, but I do not and never will agree with bullying someone into drawing representation for another group. All the comments of "draw a black person challenge" need to stop imo. Especially since a lot of people saying that are just white knighting. It happened to samdoesarts too and I didn't agree with it then either. It's fine if she doesn't want to, I'm glad she's seemingly learned her lesson and has addressed it (in a newer vid too). So like u said, I think she's a good person and we can just hope to see better from her as she's promised.
seriously artists should be left to draw what they want to! but i think if you’re trying to educate maybe have a few methods/approaches to topics before giving advice- especially basic advice that isn’t inherent to just one style.
Ethan Becker actually had a very good video about this tip of hers and how it can actually be useful. He called it "the racist triangle" lol. Not as a hard and fast rule the way koolean portrayed it, that's ridiculous, but in the sense that it is a guideline to utilize. Being aware of it can help you consciously decide how prominent to make certain features. I mean, there are other general proportion tips that don't apply to everyone, or can be consciously exaggerated for good character design. Like how legs are half the body length, or a person's arm span is the same as their height, or people are 7 or 8 heads tall. These are general rules of thumb, but knowing when and how to deviate from those guides is when you really learn the value of them. I really hope my comment comes across right. I just actually found it helpful in drawing my black characters because it helped me know how to get the features to look prominent enough(more consistently) by giving me a guideline to push past. In other words, I found the "rule" valuable by breaking it, lol.
i have seen much racism from the koreaboos and k-media stans, even trashing their idols for looking 1/8 of a tone more darker in a photo, and it's clear kooleen it's far influenced by ¨non western media¨ as she herself claims, she may need to hide her internalized racism better because she is racist for sure as humour tends to reveal what we think deep within. (also im not saying the k-community it's all racists, im saying i've seen much racism ans superficiality from many members and stans, and that's because the industry push their media in that direction.)
Ah, the fun part about all Internet Drama, once someone actually makes an apology, everyone just gets more pissed. The creator could announce that they'll be donating their live savings to the people who were offended and that they'd flaggellate themselves in penance, and people would mock them for trying to make it about themselves. There will never be a good apology as long as the Internet drama continues like this. The thing that really matters is how the people in question act moving forward, and if they do better or get into drama again is in their hands.
i agree with my fellow Pinoys here. the situation with Kooleen is such a tell tale sign of how toxic this smorgasbord of a culture and our beauty standards. i am reminded of what my 'contemporary world' professor asked us, "what is truly Filipino?". majority of the things we have mentioned are debunked by him because, yes, some of those things can be traced back to the countries that have colonized us. idk if many will agree, but personally, our culture is like that of a sponge that just absorbs and absorbs, and that can be reflected to many things in our life (views, lifestyle, beauty, etc.) perfect example is our new like for eastern asian beauty(not just in beauty, btw, but in general). *we have the preference on whitening our skin to the point that it doesn't even look natural anymore and you look pinkish*. and people will bash you if you have darker skin and will call you "dirty" just because you don't look pasty white. go to a store and look for foundation, and the shade range is little. as in they only cater to people with fairer skin. and so with someone who is dark-skinned like that would be pressured to follow the bandwagon and start buying and using whitening products that may or may not be FDA approved (this ranges to soap or even pills or "collagen drinks"). and this isn't just stemmed from that, but also from western ideologies. let me add our "mythology" as well. if there is any Pinoys that may see this, notice how some of the mythological creatures that we all know and love, like the dewende (dwarves), or tiyanak, or kapre, all share the same description of 'being dark skinned' to the point that they are described as having charcoal-like skin? yeah... they were created as a scare to convert the people to the views that the colonizers have. idk what part do Pinoys see as something that they find cool and therefore replicate it like, in their humuor. anybody who looks to have some afro-centric features, they would comment below saying "oh, it's Jamal"/"never knew Jamal is here in the Philippines". which mind you, we have indigenous groups which shares similarity/resemblance to afro-centric features: Aetas. *sigh*sorry if this was way too long, but im trying to barf out some of the things i have noticed and learned coming from the same nationality as her. anyways, this is just very saddening. as someone who is Pinoy like Kooleen, and an artist. we need to expound and open our minds to most things in order to excel as artist. there was no need for Kooleen to comment something like that (the 'gorilla' comment). just cause you have a certain style that you like to strive through, doesn't mean that you should let other people down, BY QUITE LITERALLY ERASING ETHNIC FEATURES JUST TO FIT YOUR STYLE. if you have a style, go around it and try to find way to integrate it into your art style without offending someone. Kooleen needs to fix her mindset, and so does certain Pinoys that may share the same mindset.
Personally I don’t hate kooleen or anything and I don’t think she’s some evil racist, though she was being ignorant especially with the “gorilla” comment but as long as she learns going forward, i don’t really have a problem with her.
I’m not going to say Kooleen is racist because I don’t know her, but this is why we have to stress that certain art tips are a guide and not a rule. Show examples of when it won’t work and that there’s differences in people. This is the result of a lack of education in my opinion, but I understand if anyone no longer wants to support her. And just so I don’t get a “👩🏼💻” yes I’m black lmao 💀
uhhh- I'm white with eastern european features featuring strong cheeks, thin lips, and weak chin. My eyes are large and shallow set, my brow line is weak, my nose is thin and pointed, and I have an overbite. I don't consider myself ugly, nor do I think people with my features are ugly. Many of my features are common among white eastern europeans, and anything unique to me makes me... well... me. That being said, if I take a picture of myself and trace my face's side profile, I have more in common with the 'gorilla' profile than the 'correct' profile. My face shape largely deviates from the 'correct' shape where my cheeks define the form of my face. My nose hooks downward, and my chin is parallel with its point, breaking the desired inward slope. When it comes to drawing faces, learning from real, living models is the best way to diversify your art. There are many races around the world. 'Asian' isn't a singular race. Just like how 'black' or 'white' isn't a singular race either, and vilifying facial features for not meeting an unrealistic standard of inward sloping is a tad ridiculous. Not to mention the severely racist undertones.
Thank you so much for this video! I don't think that she meant to be racist and I believe that this was all due to ignorance. HOWEVER, her response to this situation was very messed up. She saw my thread, quietly deleted the gorilla clip and did not address a thing when over 400k people, who are mostly consisted of young/beginner artists, had already seen it. I told her that things would get out of hand if she didn't address the situation, and that's exactly what happened. She didn't have the excuse of being ignorant about the topic the second she decided to ignore the issue and act like nothing happened. She DID become aware of her how offensive her vids were but she didn't apologize or explain to her audience why her tips were wrong. Honestly this all makes it seem like she waited for things to die a bit so that she could get away by not having to address a thing bc if she addressed it, she knew that more people would be aware of it and she would lose more of her clout. Hence, 1 week of absolute silence from her. She then tried to test the waters by posting new videos but she saw that people were still asking for her to address the issue, so she wrote the apology (two weeks after she became aware of her offensive remarks) like "ok fine here's your apology now shut up about it". Maybe I'm completely wrong with all of these assumptions but honestly, she makes it hard for us to not assume these stuff. THIS is why it's important to properly address the issues. Her apology was extremely vague, defensive and misleading. She made it seem like people were mad because they couldn't take a joke/ she was making roasting vids with consent. Hence, the comments from her young fans. A lot of them even found the opportunity to be openly racist, as you showed in your vid. She also pretty much called everyone who was still mad at her "irrelevant"... Not something that you'd include in a genuine apology. Following the patterns of Koolen's words/behaviour, it's really hard to find an excuse for her. As someone with a huge platform, she should've known that she needed to address everything properly and apologize instead of worrying about her clout. I hope that this'll be a lesson for all big youtube artists out there. Own your mistakes, or you'll lose respect.
As a Filipino, like Kooleen, I won’t defend her actions, as I believe them to be ignorant. But, I will admit that there is a cultural bias toward becoming “white” or fair-skinned. There are also a lot of people who are ignorant to the nuances of topics like racism especially in a globalized or Western context. Hence jokes like these are, unfortunately, normalized to a degree by some people. Maybe that’s why she didn’t think much of it when posting the original ‘roast’, and why he apology seems so empty. She probably didn’t fully know what she did wrong, or how much she offended people who have been victims of similar comments from actual racist people. I don’t think her intentions were bad, but she was definitely ill-informed.
I do think the “not consuming Western content” thing absurd. I live in the same country. Western content is literally everywhere. Hell, we even have a positive bias toward Western content because of colonialism. That was an unusual excuse, and I genuinely think she just didn’t want to admit that she did something racist and used the weirdest excuse possible.
@@flyingorange2482 I’m sorry, but in her case, especially as a content creator, I don’t buy it. RUclips in itself is a Western media platform. So is Instagram. That in itself exposes you to Western content. I highly doubt she doesn’t know ANYTHING of the racism discourse online, enough that she’d use it as an excuse. Plus again, living here, I can attest that everyone, literally everyone consumes Western media. It even bleeds into our local media here. It would be near impossible to avoid it if you consume any type of media here. To the point that my relatives who live in a literal secluded area with barely any internet has at least a tiny idea on what Hollywood films are.
I really hate how so many big content creators are recently being canceled :/ honestly im scared to watch more RUclips because it feels like everyone I like to watch are being canceled. I really hate this.
I think there are so many people on social media who are just working in that same anime style, and I honestly don't think she even thought about what she was doing/posting until it blew up. The problem is when a style is created from copying another stylistic choice, copied from another person's stylistic choice who learned from another person's stylistic choice, then it's so far from reality that they don't even know where to start when working with another face style. The phrase "touch grass" is used a lot when it comes to telling someone to get in touch with reality, but in the case of artists, it's actually important to get out there and actually LOOK at reality for a while, draw what you see, even if it sucks... Living in Korea, I hear a lot of these racist remarks, and the people don't even know they're being racist. Maybe that's the case. Maybe this can be a learning moment for her. Maybe this will help her explore some other concepts in art. Or maybe it won't. I don't know. I do think it's very easy to find one artist, jump into their channel, and just set up shop there, looking only at them and the artists who draw like them. Can't say I think that's very good for the future of the art world.
how about everyone just stop "fixing" other peoples art, no matter what. if you don't like someones work just keep scrolling, make your own thing, and don't comment on the work. if you do like it great, fanart is one thing but do not ever claim you "fixed" anything. Art is subjective and everyone has their own style. I am slowly getting better at art, am i good? no. am i learning at my own pace? yes.
Just found your channel. I am not into art so I didnt know about the kooleen art fixing disaster, but this video discusses the issues in a really great way. You are also really funny. I like how you describe things; subscribed
Thanks for explaining this without being obnoxious. I just ran across this in another video and I thought...but the original drawings don't look like they need corrections? They look representative? Glad to have this clarified.
One thing you get very wrong here is criticizing her for "eurocentrism," but Kooleen is Asian, and the characters and features she champions are clearly Asiatic, not European.
That like these ppl don’t seem to understand her style is clearly anime and Asian media styles. Literally Ethan and Sam explain the situation a lot better this video was straight up unnecessary
Perhaps he was implying the eurocentric standards of beauty such as lighter skin, smaller noses , lips etc. That can be imposed on both native asian and african features right?
@@MartaW-vc7mcEurocentric as in European features which would include lighter skin, smaller noses, and smaller lips. Of course it doesn’t go for every single person but a majority. But I can understand that it’s also probably heavily influenced by East Asian standards. Also just cus they have lip filler doesn’t change the fact that smaller lips are more naturally found in Europe and it was heavily seen as superior to more Afrocentric features for a long point in history and in some cases still is today. There are still cases of racism in Europe it’s not as if it’s all magically vanished
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
*_if you love kooleen comment here :)_*
I love kooleen
I do but I'm lukewarm rn, I took a break from her (I'll just take a break from youtubers sometimes, no reason) before the drama started. I saw the Instagram post and was super confused and went to the video. She should've not avoided the problem, but I'm not hating her...but I'm not necessarily liking her at the moment.
I have mixed emotions.😭
Here :)
I like her but I dislike her at the same time 😂
Don’t hate her, don’t dislike her. But after all of… This. And seeing her duck even critical comments that tried to be friendly and understanding…
I don’t really plan to go back to consuming her content. That, and I REALLY started disliking some of her fans.
I'm a filipino, and so is kooleen, and this definitely says alot about our toxic culture and super strict beauty standards
Filipinos, despite consuming mostly western media, are usually very ignorant abt societal problems, social issues, and racism. That is why, racist humor is normalized here, because they don't know that it's harmful. Even if it is bad, they are still ignorant, and they need ppl to correct them, but they can't be corrected bc for every knowledgeable person making them aware abt the harm they cause, the fact that its so normalized makes ppl ignore these and keep making very unethical jokes.
Wait kooleen is Filipino?
@@vtuber_shreemp_nekoreviedeathlmao I was surprised to find out too, as a Filipino myself
@@vtuber_shreemp_nekoreviedeath yes, and i think kooleen resides in the Philippines as well
@frankiie I think it's really understandable now knowing she is Filipino. Because our beauty standards are harsh and racism is kinda not a common subject to Vast majority ouf our people
As a professional, I'd argue with kooleen that it actually takes much more skill to draw ugly people. Perfection is easy; there are no flaws to detail. But ugliness? That takes pain, dedication, sickeningly-accurate detail... it is a much more time-consuming and delicate task.
If you want to get better at art, perfect the tasks you want to achieve.
Yea fr I'm learning to draw older men now bc Im trying to get better at drawing older people instead of just teenage boys and girls
But that's literally what she said. She said that drawing "ugly" people with unusual proportions is harder hence she only draws hot people
tru, i wanna draw cute pudgy gorls .. every gorl is epic and perfect for mi!!
Yo you’re making the same mistake she made 😂. You didn’t not just call a certain group of people ugly
Bold of you to assume she wants to strive for that level of greatness. I find her kinda boring and same face syndrome-ish. If you're a newbie in art around junior highschool then sure you're gonna find her art as GODLIKE level. So yeah she's the queen of middle schoolers
"i dont consume western media" she literally drew spiderverse fanart 💀
then again thats not just purely western and showcases itself in many peoples childhoods globally
@@jeb0309wasn’t it western media though, they’re all made in America? The characters, etc?
@@Pish004 not all the characters are american though?
I meant that a studio in America made it, making it western media despite its diversity because it's still western media (because it was made in America)@@jeb0309
@@jeb0309it's still western media, the ethnicity of the characters doesn't change whether or not it's content made in america.
SHE IS FILIPINO (so am i) 😭 if she went outside of her home or to town she's gonna see people who don't fit her template. The fact that she uses the excuse of the lack of exposure to western media is unreal.
That means Kooleen doesn't touch grass 🤯
(I'm also a filipino too 🤭)
(For context: I am also Filipino) Not to mention the fact that the Philippines used to be a colony of the US until the mid-20th century. Our country is one of the few countries in the region with a high exposure to American/Western culture and media. Her excuse does not make sense from a World History point of view.
As a filipino I’m so embarrassed by her omg
same but i live in Ireland LMFAO,
since i live in a white country i kinda draw my character with white skin 😭 bc i see white peoples everywhere, and it’s normal for me
kinda makes me think how whitewashed i am… i don’t know how to speak tagalog or bisaya and im forgetting to bless my elders when were at a party,
and i don’t like how im forgetting our culture 😭 and stuff
i can’t even speak to my cousins in the philippines ☠️✋🏻😭
As a south Asian, we’re barely represented in popular western media lol. And even when we are, it’s a weird stereotypical depiction of a generic North Indian. It’s quite important to acknowledge that humans and culture come in all shapes and sizes; thus art and beauty come in all shapes and sizes.
There is no template for human faces. And there is no single standard for beauty. That’s my mini rant lol.
Fr why isn't Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, and Thai (excluding Anne Boonchuy) culture represented the same way. It's usually Japanese, Chinese, or Korean culture.
As a Filipino, I was surprised to find out she was Filipino even after seeing her face. Not sure if she lives in the Philippines or has been there before, but most Filipinos don’t match her idea of “beautiful people”. Most of us have flat noses (including me) and are darker skinned. My side profile doesn’t follow the “guidelines” that she used lmao. And we’re from the same country.
Unfortunately there is the beauty standard of being as pale as possible (an idea prevalent throughout Asia). And in the Philippines, having straight, bridged noses is something they instil in you when you are young, to the point that parents would tell you to massage your nose to “lift” it. You can see how that influenced her art of Miguel - in my opinion, she has altered his nose to look more “European”. I don’t think it’s a lack of skill that prevents her from drawing him accurately; I think it’s bias. Most actors and actresses you see on Filipino TV are half white or have noses with higher bridges and pale skin. This obsession with European beauty standards is something that really needs to change. I can understand how Kooleen grew up with ignorance, but that doesn’t justify her behaviour.
Another commenter pointed out that she apologised on Instagram and not RUclips, the platform where most of her audience is. While Kooleen may not have had racist intentions, her comments and actions were still hurtful, wrong and need a proper apology.
Yes this is what I'm finding!
@@xkiruo yes big yes! I am also Filipino and tbh I can't help but find it kinda... sad?? when filipinos only draw things that are eurocentric or east asian centric in beauty standards... especially since it's so opposite to what many filipinos look like. Filipino are diverse asf, but my same classmates with Chinese, Spanish, Japanese ancestry and so on... they have cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents who look stereotypically Filipino.
When this drama first came out I looked at the people in the jeepney and saw so many of them had those features she described as "gorilla." It's sad tbh.
@@xkiruoi agree, except that she altered miguels nose to look more european. Not all europeans have straight noses, in fact plenty have sloped or hooked noses. Its just that straight noses are preferred over hooked noses. And Miguel himself is a mostly white latino
I'm not an artist, but "never draw ugly people", besides being morally very questionable, just seems like bad art advice. I had an "anatomy for artists" book as a kid and it was full of sketches of wrinkled, overweight, and old people, because drawing them is great practice for understanding form and light. It's easy to draw what you think everyone should look like, but it's a lot horder to capture someone's actual likeness.
This. I have an art anatomy book as well and it consists of the kind of people that Kooleen and her fans wouldn't draw because they look "old, fat, not yassified enough" etc. This is both not something nice to say in general and horrible art advice. I hope Kooleen really is being satire and she doesn't mean to be racist and all but... yeah. Oh and excuse any typos I might've made, I'm not an native English speaker.
to learn art it's better to focus on the "ideal body type" to simplify learning when having a figure that has little difference to the skeleton, and has clear muscles to learn about them, it's not about hot vs ugly people, as much as some of these people would like it to be
@@엉덩이먹는사람 hard disagree. if you're gonna learn how to draw, learn how to draw real people. Not 'ugly', not 'hot', not not fake unrealistic people. real people. learn the options you have immediately. The tactics you learn to get things right should work for everyone.
You're just advocating for everyone to become korean artists; those people who definitely have talent, but can only draw one specific person.
@@ShaCaro clearly missed the point
@user-cg6ve8wg4g no they didnt ?
"if you draw "ugly" people you'll never get better at art" is such terrible advice for beginners. She is setting people up for failure later in their careers. Learning to draw fat people, old people, people with facial deformities, etc (not that those people are ugly, just deemed so) will massively improve your art, range and character designing abilities. something something, more tools in your toolboxes.
Learning to draw humans normally is already a hecc of a challenge lol, especially if you start off with bones and muscles.
Fat distribution in a human is, let's just say, not often taught (I actually had to hunt down those resources through multiple means just to get an idea of how fats affect the skin).
Np fr. And you get to introduce interesting characters, appreciate the uniqueness and avoid same face syndrome. You know hownmanh "ugly" character I fall in love with! Plus stuff like deformities or body shape can be made a reason in their story!
Ok but like let’s be fr black people are literally so pretty like I need those edges😭
Literally. I feel like people forget there are careers in the art industry besides just portrait illustrations. As a comic artist I was feeling like my panels were falling flat and every character was a replica of the main character with a different hairstyle. It wasn’t until I started practicing different shapes, sizes, and features that a scene really came to life.
@@Hellokittyandfriendsfan-cg9fjyess!! like that one black oc that she “fixed” had such a beautiful side profile i loved the original
Ngl koolen doesnt have to draw black people or old people, but what she said was racist asf☠️
i'm sure she has figured it out by now and would probably not be doing that anymore hopefully
Tbh since she has such a big platform and younger artist look up to her,I feel like she could at least try and draw characters of difference races..
@@Audreyana get what you're saying, but I don't quite feel the same way, if those young artists wanna draw different races and ethnicities etc they could use that as a chance to branch out to different artists, therefore finding out more styles and perhaps educating themselves more on techniques etc rather than getting it ''all'' from one artist y'know?
@@kemonono Some people are REALLY attached to her and is heavily swooned by her manhwa art style which I don’t see many artists have. While she can draw whatever she wants, it’s in her best interest to at least be more inclusive and descriptive in her tutorials. in her free time, she can draw whatever she desires.
@@MohammedAgbadi Her video actually talked about it and she looked at videos from people that showed other techinques (replying to her technique). So she has learned :D
drawing 'ugly' people will make you a lot better than just drawing the same pretty face over and over.
whats important is you know how to draw and manipulate features of the body and face, not drawing ugly people.
This is so real I used to draw the same white boy every day until I started drawing Waluigi. Now I’m much more enthusiastic about different facial features!
@@bendable_clown855😭
@@bendable_clown855 True, but a laughed when you mentioned waluigi 😭
@@bendable_clown855LMAOOO justice for waluigi bro 😭
Im 13 and I loved her. I watched her videos for a long time and applied her tips into my art. I took a break from her videos before this situation. ANd while taking a break, I started observing people's features. THeir face shapes, their skin conditions, their proportions and etc. WHen kooleen said that she doesn't draw ugly people I slowly felt like I should draw stereotypical pretty people. And I applied this to myself. I grew more insecure about myself. And during the break, my art style changed drastically, it looked so much better, more diverse and realistic. Looking back on the drawings I did when I was watching and following kooleens advice, I realize it looks so simple. Nothing different. It looked the same. I feel terrible that I applied such knowledge into the real world and into my art. I think everyone is pretty. EVeryone is beautiful. Everyone should be drawn and seen and painted.
brooo I also have a similar experience. do you have an acc or somewhere to see ur art if you post it i would appreciate it any ways
@@laeebcitycenter is Pinterest ok?
Im glad you moved away from that self destructive mindset, especially on yourself.
I hope your art journey goes well
@@elvingearmasterirma7241 thank you so much
Bruh she joking this is why having kid audience is so hard yaal just maybe shouldn't watch yt without yaal parents
Don't think she's a bad person, or intentionally meant to be racist. She just seems to meme alot, and doesn't take things all too seriously.
this is probably what happened, but you know the internet...
I don't think that means that others shouldn't have thought that her comment was hurtful. Of course there are those that blow things out of proportion.
Yes... But even if it's "just a joke" I think it should be taken seriously. It's not funny when jokes hurt.
I don't think people understand unless they're in, say, my shoes when people call me "Ching Chang Chong" for a laugh. If I retort, they will say I'm too sensitive because it's just a joke 🙄
I was even called a gorilla because of my Asian features while they tried to take a picture of me laughing, by an Asian person as well. So even if I'm not black, that statement hurt like shit
Gorilla mf
I think it's mostly cultural ignorance
Edit: I'm not justifying her actions. Her intentions were obviously not racist, but what she said was still racist
Like for example my grandma 🥲 My sister was listening to japanese music and my grandma legitimately said "Oh is that your ching chong music?" 💀
I’m pretty sure her art suffers from Same Face Syndrome, since her style is just walking Korean beauty standards (same eyes, same v face, same nose)
People with same face syndrome art style can’t draw people outside their preference zone.
While many people face same face syndrome at some point during their journey, Kooleen’s is problematic because she is an influencer, with millions of followers. She portrays as if her way is the correct way. Her main audience consists of beginners, who wanna improve their art so they follow her.
Its easy to draw pretty faces, make them look appealing. But its very difficult to draw “ugly” faces, make them look appealing to the eye. Same with same face syndrome, you won’t know you have this problem until you realise and its very hard to fix that (i promise, I’m going through the same).
I've always noticed this in her art, it seems like her characters only change their clothes and hair
Thank god I wasn't the only one feeling that. All her characters/drawings look almost exactly the same. The " I don't draw ugly people” comments just makes me think that she can't draw other face types.
I think im going through same face syndrome, im tryna fix it 😃
I don't think so. If you have seen most of her videos there are funny times where she does draw unattractive peeps and she also showed her sketchbook once and there was a middle aged man drawing.
She literally admits that in her videos bro 💀
I personally think Kooleen's humor is very insensitive at times. I know it's her brand and all and she probably isn't like this in real life, but the way she presents herself in her content is probably why the backlash was so strong.
I think people in general is more attracted to negative/aggressive thing so that's why her contents go viral (not saying that she IS negative, but her content branding tends to fall into that side of area with her choice of word and stuffs). It works, but it can be a double sided sword
Another artist-youtuber with almost the same way of branding is Ethan Becker, but even he always put out words like "In the end, it is a matter of preference [in terms of stylistic choice]" so that the audiences can grasp what they want/can take from his videos and what they don't
@@meiyosei78 In the case of Ethan Becker he doesn't go out of his way to call people ugly.
It's not just insensitive, it's dry and overused. In other words, not even funny, except if you're 9 years old with brain damage and gullible af
@@tright6true, he does the rude persona way better
@@Doobydoe It actually feels like a persona and I actually learnt something from him-
Dude, I’m white as fuck and I have that “gorilla-looking” jaw. I feel like this problem is actually super broad: all of these art tutorials that go “always draw eyes like this!” or “always draw ears like that!” only serve to alienate people who do not have these features. And, yes, given our ridiculous white-centric beauty standards, the people that end up being alienated are often people of colour.
When I was just starting art, I had one of those “beginner’s how to draw” books, and I remember seeing anatomy tips such as: “the nose is the most prominent feature of the side profile, nothing goes further”, “for young women, always leave a gap between the upper thighs”, “ears never go lower than the nostrils”, etc… and as a young pre-teen girl at the time, with a prominent chin, long ears and no thigh gap, it made me feel really bad about myself. I guess what I’m trying to say is, if I as a white person am feeling like I can’t mesure up to our white-centric standards, then I can’t imagine what it must be like for people of colour.
We really need let go of these ridiculous “art rules” when it comes to drawing people and accept that they come in all shapes and sizes. Of course, when trying to learn the basics, it can be hard to draw the line between “basic anatomy” and “unfair standard”, but I think we should just learn to be more lax, you know?
well artists have to start somewhere. the problem is that the "guidelines" that are meant to help newbies get started end up turning into "immutable rules that should always be followed when you draw something" in some artists' minds.
@@PsycheTrance65
Ahh yes thank you, you worded that way better than I did! ^^
girl same! I'm white AF but got so much chin ... robbie the villain worthy, no nose and way too tiny fucking ears ... I still hate taking side profile picture of me to this day ;n;
@@PsycheTrance65 But isn´t that what viewers take from the tutorials? That art can only be drawn in the one and only certain way?
Than thats its their own fault for not broaden their horizen on different types to draw people.
@@SukeruTengokuyou're so meeee but diff is i keep taking pic of my side profile thinking itll look better and ill feel better...i just felt worse lol and this comment of kooleen pretty much hurts me but not as much as poc
she really tried to excuse it by saying she's never seen ppl of color wtf
there’s no way she said that ☠️☠️
lol apparently she's never looked in a mirror either.
she is literally a person of color as a filipino too, does she think of herself as white?😂
she lives in a bubble of unrealistic Korean beauty standards for her art and now reflects that in how she views the majority of human beings like girl even YOU don’t fit the perfect standard 😭
@@ev_account literally that just shows shes never been outside of her own house😭
As a black person who likes art this is hilarious😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
lmfaoooo
I honestly don’t care what you draw as long as they’re not racist caricatures or if you’re blatantly turning POC characters white. Even then, I don’t go harass them, I just avoid them 🤦🏾♀️💀
Absolutely preposterous 💀💀💀
Same 💀
same. I just think she's ignorant and funny (laughing at her)
She’s used to drawing characters that fit the Eastern Asian beauty standard, and while these aren’t the exact same as Western standards, the similarity is the erasure of prominent ethnic features.
The fact that she calls art outside of those standards ugly is something she should be held accountable for but probably wasn’t a conscious decision. It just means she shouldn’t be giving general art advice 🤷🏽♀️
Edit: Changed 'Eurocentric' to 'Western'
But that's not the case tho, the art which she was critiquing, which caused all the drama was objectively ugly, there is no ambiguity behind it. Unless you think all black people look like crimson chin, in which case you're the racist one.
@@deBrawnyoArt is inherently subjective. How are you going to call it objectively ugly?
@@ps1hagrid786 art forms like abstract, surrealism, pop art etc can be judged subjectively but a huge portion of it lies on the objective spectrum as well, like anatomy which is exactly what this was about. You can't just bend human forms to your will without any stylistic intent behind it and call it good art on subjective basis. Y'all are just trying to grasp at straws to justify your hate brigade at this point.
@deBrawnyo As an artist, I'd say that the anatomical "inaccuracies" in that drawing (I assume you mean the side profile one) lie more in the placement of the eyes/eyebrows, the size of the ears and the shape of the neck rather than the lips or general lower facial area, so that still wouldn't be a justification for erasing its ethnic features.
@@whowhat957 and as an artist myself, let me tell you there absolutely was anatomical errors regarding the chin and the underbite in that drawing along with brow placement. Most human skulls aren't built like that where the chin protrudes past the nose whether it be African, asian, caucasian or Latino, they just don't. The thing y'all are complaining about black people deviating from the triangle law absolutely exists but it does so because of the protrusion of the mouth combined with the fleshy lips, it absolutely has nothing to do with the chin. If you can't see that, sorry but you're not a very good artist.
I never draw ugly people because I think every iteration of the human body is beautiful and miraculous. It can take so many amazing forms! Wrinkles that tell stories, features passed down from ancestors, smiles that show crooked teeth and scars that witness of survival and overcoming and just all of us being HUMAN. It’s beautiful.
if everything is beautiful than nothing is beautiful.
Mother Theresa 2: The rise of LimegreenSnowstorm
Her community just baffles me
Responding to someone feeling offended with "learn to take a joke lmao" is shitty regardless of the situation
A joke made on behalf of someone who is hurt by it isn't a joke, it's just an insult for people who aren't included in it to laugh at
Edit:
Reading some of those replies I'm also really shocked of how little boundaries mean to people
her community is pretty supportive and young so i guess they dont have filters and sensors in their vocabulary and can't wrap their heads around context properly....it seems
Ah yes, take a joke from an Internet person to heart and personally, my favorite thing on the Internet.
@@xcorpionz922 Its not a joke if its more insulting than funny. It may be funny to you if you're looks aren't the bud of the 'joke'😮💨
@@lilnightmare109 I have the features she makes fun off 😐
And even if it was intentionally an insult, you should learn to take if you are gonna be on the Internet. Move on with your life and don't stay inside too much, you gonna grow roots. Try making some friends, which I doubt you have if you get offended by someone you don't even know and wasn't talking about you.
@@xcorpionz922 Nah, bro. A joke is supposed to be funny. Y'all's humor sucks if you think *that's* funny. Not everyone has to laugh, they can dislike the joke.
Tbh i think it was more ignorance than racism, anime art styles end up failing when drawing people of different ethnicities. So her making fun of the different style was just her normal type of roast, although in very poor taste
I think it’s ignorance too. Until you sit down and do some real hardcore research on side profiles it’s easy to not realize how varied side profiles can be.
@@seal8092Exactly. I didn't heard about this drama and fron the miniature of this video I didn't even know what could be the problem. I see some black people when I commute but I try not to stare at them so I've never noticed that their side profiles look so different from white people's profiles
totally agree with you, never really saws much of her content but it seems shes one of those artists that draw similar faces for all her drawings and is just too attached to the conventional beauty standard and cant see beauty beyond those features, which also explains why she only has the anime artstyle and can only really draw anime characters or white people. Im pretty sure its not something she does with malicious intent but just being ill informed of realistic features only sticking to drawing in her own art style for so long. its pretty well known to artists who dance around with art styles when first starting out to only be able to draw a certain X and have troubling straying away from what theyre comfortable with
@@seal8092oh come on 💀 she goes outside doesn't she? You're obviously going to see people with different side profiles even if they're your own race. Not everyone has "juicy smexy lips" or an anime side profile so there's no reason to have a singular guideline for it because it just doesn't work
@SomeBoyHere I go outside too, doesn't mean I'm staring at people's faces so I can indent their side profile into my head
so unrelated but you have the most soothing voice ever
The biggest problem with this that I can see is that by refusing to acknowledge or listen to the comments by people telling her that the things she was saying were harmful, she's basically grown herself a fanbase composed of people who genuinely support the ideas she was 'joking' about.
Which is something that can be best defined as something very difficult to get a hold of once you've allowed it to happen, and has an established tendency to lead to the creator themself increasingly seeking to appease to their fan base.
Even when said fan base begins to become increasingly extremist in their behaviors. It's far easier to appeal to the people who praise you for the hurtful things you've done by continuing to say increasingly more hurtful things, than it is to prove to those who aren't in support of cruelty that you won't behave with further cruelty.
So this will either be the event that leads to her putting in the effort to _avoid_ nurturing a fanbase that's a cesspool, or will be looked back on as the event that first outed her as being part of the cesspool herself.
This!!
As an online creator, you have the ability to curate a fan base of a certain type of people.
If you make a mistake that's bigoted and dont acknowledge it or apologize. You're just creating a space for people who genuinely are bigoted to run free.
And at that point you might as well be one of them.
@@dio_hoestar_4204but if you apologize, twitter would burn you alive. So if you are planning to apologize don't do it on Twitter
@@goose7215 Honestly at this point who the fuck is listening to twitter?
I'm considered to be "woke" and even I'm tired of it.
People are never satisfied with anything. If you do smtg wrong, you can apologize, change your act, donate to charity, create a progressive foundation that helps victims and they'll still be mad about smtg you did 15 years ago.
A lot of kids there are building up to become the most toxic ppl ever. The type of people who will use someone's mistake to manipulate and overpower them forever.
You did something wrong? You will never be allowed an opinion or your wants and needs ever again in ur life. Thats an abusive red flag to me.
@@goose7215 Twitter is awful 😅
This is such a true and well said comment
I think my biggest problem with kooleen is that she just isn't a good teacher, she's staggering these young artists growth they have to find their own path as artists and not just copy an artstyle, my personal opinion is that you need diversity not just in people, different backgrounds, different features to learn and kooleen only seems to draw one thing all the time.
This is so true, not everyone can be a good teacher, in any field. There are many people who are skilled, extremely knowledgeable, experienced in their field and have 0 clue how to teach or even articulate all of that for people that are beginners or are starting out. And in her case, I would say she's 'qualify' to teach people how to 'draw in her style' instead of just art in general.. if that makes sense.
@@sodapopjam i agree that not everyone was born with knowledge but my point was more so because she's so young, as an artist learning habits can set back years of development, there are tons and tons of experienced artists in tons of industries that make helpful art videos here on youtube and I, personally think that younger artists might have an easier time learning from one of those than someone who's still learning themselves and don't get me wrong i do love her art and i do think she has potential to teach.
It kind of reminds me how young artists (even I did it at one point) kind of brag about how good their pieces are and hype themselves to be better than anyone else, realizing there's flaw with that one painting you did but you're so prideful and full of the moment you kind of reject everyone's criticism..
Sometimes that Art Euphoria I'll call it hits and it's like, "I'm better than everyone. I can be a teacher! You should draw like how I do/ my drawing is the only one that is good because it's what I like!"
Like you said she is still young, so maybe she will grow out of this hopefully and probably just learn that you shouldn't probably call yourself an artist JUST yet since you haven't broaden your horizons too much and you can stick with tips, not making yourself seem like the Drawing Messiah.
Her art is great, and better than mine 100%, but a the same time, she hasn't branched out of that comfort zone but she should take the time she needs to, just don't push young artists/others to draw like you as if it's the right way
Welp apparently she is popular with drawing those samey stuff because why? People tend to follow big number artist
I've watched several of her videos, and it's pretty clear her aim isn't to be a teacher; she's trying to be an entertainer.
I think the damage channels like kooleen are doing to young artists really showed when spider verse came out and a lot of them had no idea how to draw the characters because most of them are POC
"i insult everyone equally" people when asked why they only insult certain groups of people. those are the vibes this whole thing is giving off
doesn't change a thing tbh, they seem more of someone you should really stay away from
@@kaome. mhm, agree. Saying insulting everyone isn't an excuse to insult people.
People should never insult who they don't know.
exactly 😭
I hate those “I hate everyone equally” mfs, like just say you hate minorities and go
Edit: I realize now it wasn't clowning on her, so I fixed it.
I enjoyed Ethan Becker's video clowning on the "racist triangle" while also giving insight on the many facial profiles of people and anime characters alike, electing to add another triangle to fix the "fix"
Because Ethan's video was a good watch, while also criticizing the tutorial
In fact I don't like the dude( don't know why) but I respected what he did do really, he acted wisely and showed us many things I didn't know about the topic.
The thing is he wasn’t really clowning her rather the rigid rules that artist have put in themselves (aka Kolleen) he was actually really respectful towards her without naming her or dissing her art (unlike som people on TikTok).
In wasn’t really a clown, it was a moment of teaching which is what we actually need. More teaching than just hate. Just hating and demanding an apology doesn’t work unless the person knows WHY what they did was offensive. That’s why a lot of apologies fall flat, they don’t actually get why they offended people lmao they just want hate off their back
Though 98% of racists deserve hate, don’t get me wrong lmaooo
@meriembelguebli7440 he's a very "taken with a grain of salt" kind of humor. I grew up around that type of satirical humor, so I find myself drawn to it. You don't really need a reason to like or dislike someone, and that's valid. :)
@@meriembelguebli7440That's his self-branding now. If you watch his older videos, you'd know he used to have this calmer approach. He's most likely being more aggresive on his approach because that's what the algorithm attracted to
I just want to say, as an artist, you have stunning features. It’s a fucking shame that we are seen through a filter of racism, but there are so many who see our beauty. Light skin, dark skin, big and small, we are beautiful.
As a black woman, what i can say is that what she said was offensive. I don't dislike Kooleen, i find her art to be very nice and unique, yet her comments where racist/ micro-aggressive and not okay. As a black women, i learned at a young age that the beauty of my people is heavily joked about, mocked, and made fun of either in person or over media. At this point in life, I'm glad media is improving- but as we go on this journey of self-love and healing that I see many doing this year, its annoying and insulting to still see ethnic features still being made fun of. We have a right to find her "jokes" offensive. Does she deserve the response of many over what she did? I can't make that decision for everyone- though personally, i think it was deserved to an extent. i hope this backlash is a good learning point for her to take on the art communities criticisms and if she is to continue to draw POC with more ethnic features, that she does the needed research. I wish her the best.
I'm a black man and i keep calling my brother monkey and my brother keeps calling me nigga.
For me, the majority of black just love to play the victims and with all that happened in the 1700 they are getting more support from the rest of the world. There was slavery in all over the world, all the folks were racist and racist against everyone. Fortunately it changed. But, every time, "the black" subject or "racism against black" is always much more virulent and touchy, it always makes more noise than the others.
Ofc racist is shit and it's totally good that people are turning against it, but rn, victim of racism feels like the whole personality of black people.
But well, for the kooleen's case, it's logic, in public it goes less well, even tho i didn't feel offended, it's logic that other people would be. I don't even think she meant it, she's used to making degrading and aggressive content, it's for humourous content but the "black subject" is more risky and touchy. But on another note, i don't even think she's getting all that hate because of the racism accusation. People are partly hiding behind that to express their frustration against her. Since her type of egocentric - sarcastic character generated a lot of haters and ofc since it's a drama, other people will just on it to milk the drama.
@@blero9089what in the hell are you blubbering about
@@remsipstea my literal reaction 😂😂
@@blero9089such an r/asablackman reply 💀
@@blero9089 does kooleen even have meat to ride cause you jumping on it
A thing that annoys me a bit is calling the characters that she does white and having eurocentric features. Bro I'm European and we don't look like that XD She only draws asian, Korean kpop looking people.
Yeah i'm annoyed at people mistaking what are clearly asian beauty standards and saying these things. I wish westerners were more aware of this instead of projecting their social and political landscape on people from other cultures. However, I think kooleen, If she's going to do these videos in english (clearly aiming for an internacional audience), she should be more aware of those things and leave her own cultural bubble.
Even Korean-pop people don't look like that (and that's after shitload of plastic surgeries and cosmetics) and she is setting a bar that, let's be honest, she herself doesn't reach. She and her audience were rage baiting. She should have been shunned away and forgotten. If she had senses, she would have apologised honestly and shown in her work that she is changed. She continues to "roast" people and her audience is largely too immature to care how badly that is affecting their mindset.
What’s wrong with that? It inspires her and its a part of her art style
@@anonme_agreed
I mean, there are black people who only draw black people and white people who only draw white people. She's philipino and she draws exactly that, most people tend to draw what's around them so I don't see what's wrong about that and it's not even realistic all her characters are semi-realistic. Let's just stop and get the humour and the lesson and leave
Even as a white person looking at this situation, I can tell that this whole thing is absolutely bonkers. Like most of the comments under her crappy “apology” video are crazy 😭 They’re literally hating on the people who called her out for making racist and ignorant remarks, and are praising her like she’s some sort of god… Like yes, she gave a half-assed apology and she claims she has “learned”, but that doesn’t mean that the people who originally called her out are the villains of this situations now?!
The comments she made were genuinely gross and I cannot believe so many of her little brainwashed fans just brushed that crap off. Blatantly calling a facial structure that is common among black people (and other races too) a “gorilla looking mf”, calling laid baby-hairs on a black character “extra eyebrows” like bro, anyone can see that those comments are highly-offensive and racist.
She didn’t address ANY of that in her apology either, like yea I appreciate the sentiment, but if you don’t clearly state what you’re apologizing for then what even is the point of making one? She literally talked about Miguel O’Hara in her “apology” for like 2 whole minutes! It’s insincere and it leaves MUCH to be desired by the people who took an issue with her previous comments.
I cannot, in good faith, support someone like her if she refuses to even make a decent apology after all the crap she has said. Because even though I wasn’t personally affected by her comments (since I’m white), I have plenty of POC friends around me and I have ZERO tolerance for anyone being willfully ignorant or racist, ESPECIALLY when they have already been called out on it and refuse to actually apologize.
i think this really goes to show that you should really be careful who youre taking art advice from on scoial media, not all content creators are qualified to give definitive art advice, ive always been a bit peeved by this but this is the first time i see people actually talk about it! PS this video is my first context to this situation!!
yeah, tbh even putting aside all the racism stuff i feel like kooleen is just not someone you should be taking advice from lmao. she knows how to draw very specific things yet she tries to give broad advice, and her advice ends up just being "draw more like how i draw"
she's a pretty good artist, but honestly i don't think she's that good of an art instructor
@@jasperjazzie exactly!! giving critique and advice is sort of a separate skill
@@jasperjazzieI've always got those vibes too, I feel like a good art instructor explains their method and the reasoning behind their method. like proko, he will tell you how to draw nose and explain the fornoseplaie nose
Yess! While her videos are somewhat satire, I think she could do a better job at separating satire from real advice.
Because the thing is, she gives good advice for her niche art style. Which makes it difficult to call her videos fully satire. And she could definitely do a better job at stating that this is for her style specifically, rather than trying to edit the art of those with a different style.
At the end of the day, she chooses what to edit. If she can't draw POC, she shouldn't give advice for art of POC. If she can't draw non-manhwa styles, she shouldn't give that advice. Sure, it's your choice to send. But it's ultimately her decision whether or not she chooses yours.
Sorry for ranting, I had a lot to say, but I totally agree.
People like her or Samdoesart are rather entertainers than people who give good art tips to actually help people improve
0:22 I remember watching this video and thinking: "Hey, why didn't she give her acne in the redraw?" However, I didn't think hard on it because nobody was really talking about it in the comment section. Even then, that video made me lowkey a bit uncomfortable...
well since most of her critiques are in her style the final images tend to look like her personal art
I, as someone with hella bad acne don't draw acne. Why? Idk how 💀
i didn't even know that was acne 💀
@LOVE-510 yeah but koolen would've known because im pretty sure she commented about it making fun of it 😭😭😭
@@Lee.M.DBecause it is not flattering or look pretty....many people cover up their acne for a reason, so why would we draw it in our art ?
Also, it is hard to draw it and make it look right, same with freckles, They often end up looking like measles...at least when I do it...and I have an OC that has freckles everywhere😅
I don't believe that it's an "accident" that she described black features as "gorilla". Like we all know in this day in age what that means. This apology is terrible, she's terrible, and her art is tainted by it.
riiight ppl saying that she apologized but she only posted in her ig, when yt and tt were her biggest platforms.. her apology was too half heartedly and RIGHT after that she posted random art stuff so it stayed behind her feed.
As I see this whole drama unfold, I can't tell people enough to watch Jackie Droujko, she's an amazing character designer, and the black characters she draws shows how you can indeed draw anyone in any style without erasing ethnic features! she also fixes art in an extra positive way like giving actual anatomy tips!
Love her! One of the few people I take tops from lol
Yes yes
omg i loveeee her vids her critiques are always so positive and her vids are still super entertaining
I love her!! Good recommendation 😊
I love Jackie!! 😭😭
When I look at her recent videos, I see a large group of people commenting that she didn't need to apologize and that we were take the situation.. ‘out of proportion’.
I understand that y’all want to commend her for taking appropriate action BUT you could do that without invalidating the feelings of people of color. What she did was wrong, and people got offended rightfully so.
thing is about a third to a half of those ppl commenting on behalf of her were being opeling, blatantly racist. She seens to have real problems of internalized racism, which is way more commom that ppl like to admit in the societies we live in, but a bunch of ppl that follow her no. If you comment would reach them, they wouldn't care, she herself wouldn't neither, at least she would pretend not to. but she knows well she has been reproducing a lot of racist shit for a long time in various manners, but she don't want to admit that obviously, to herself even.
Not to mention she never apologized for those sa jokes or saying "anyussy"
@@user-sc9ht2tb7u Or that Chinese slur.. in all honesty, I can't expect anything else from her, and even if she apologizes I doubt she'll actually take it seriously 😅. I just hope she'll listen to the criticism she received.
@@carternorth9867isn't she Chinese herself?
Hello, she apologized on Instagram, I though, I do think she should've apologized on RUclips, idc, as a black person myself, I don't really care about what she said, but, I do think she could've handled the whole thing better
Thank you for this in-depth video explaining everything. I had just started watching her videos since a few weeks ago, and then a friend told me she was problematic. I had no idea, so I appreciate the extensive clarification. 😓
I love watching your videos while drawing, your voice is so calm and soothing and u explain the drama so well that u can already picture what's happening with out even having to look at the screen, weeee
ahhaha thankyou so much! i'm glad i can be a voice of comfort in these precarious situations
Fr. His videos make me wanna watch with a cup of a coffee in hand (*´-`)d
This is the first time i watch his video using a headphone. Dang his voice is so velvetty smooth like butter. Have you tried being a radio DJ, Mohammed? 😂❤
as a white person I still just gotta say the apology is weird in a lot of ways, like why hide it in the second picture and not even mentioning what she did that got her fans angry to be it feels like she just wanna hide it so look trough her page in the future don’t see it and the people who isn’t aware on what happen to never even get a glimpse at what she did
Plus, someone said that the "apology' was posted on the platform where she has the lowest amount of followers....I think it was o Twitter, I mean X, at first and she got called out for it and sonposted it on Insta then...(if I remember correctly)
@@Linnzyif she posted it on twitter uhm thats not gonna end well haha
I'm just gonna say, why specifically state that you're white? I feel like you dont need to do that. And yeah, this is a genuine question.
@@schemesthefox1255 because I am not the one who the apology is too, I am not black so I felt like maybe I shouldn’t be the one dumping down on her apology. So I just wanted to say that beforehand
@@Loifey When I commented that I didn’t get to that part, so it’s more understandable now. Fault on my part ^^,
Honestly by drawing people with different body types, hair types, facial features, genders, races, etc you not only improve your art but you also make it a lot more interesting. If you only draw one type of person like kooleen does, it gets boring quickly. I know i can only watch so many of kooleens videos before i get bored because all of her drawings look very similar.
as much as i want to believe it was ignorance, her comments were a little bit too stereotypical against black people to not be at least a little bit on purpose.
the fact that her first thought on how to "roast" someone's art of a black person is to call the art gorilla-looking is very odd to me. i hope she learns to grow and improve from her actions
Yes, not only Black people but there are also other people who have the same facial feature. In Thailand, or Indonesia, or even some people in the west
In Asia, where she lives, most people don't know about monkey/gorilla etc being a slur for black people. Asian people make fun of each other for looking like gorillas in a playful way all the time. It is in mainstream comics over there.
@LOVE-510how do you not know in 2023 with access to basically any information you want that calling features, especially on a black person, “gorilla like” is not okay? i get it might have been an honest mistake, we all speak without thinking but just because intent is neutral doesn’t mean the outcome can’t or won’t be perceived as bad…
But isn't that quite ironic since as far as I know Americans call South East Asian as "Jungle Asians" since apparently are the Ugly Monkey looking Asians (brown skin, wide eyes and different facial features compared to the stereotypically know East Asians features)
I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't know just how offensive this kind of joke it is to the American Audience (I'm sure she has a hint that this joke is a bit offensive but I guess it flew her mind about the History of Racism in America since it's not taught in Asia) and I personally think that's just unintentional ignorance
@@1faithchick7 this makes lots of sense! thank you, i could do with research into asian cultures as well! it goes both ways, i think we all need to learn more about each other
Honestly the thing I hate most about this situation is her comments. Before she apologized they were like “yass queen ignore the sensitive haters being dramatic” when she apologized they were like “queen you didn’t need to apologize” AND SHE LIKED THEIR COMMENTS. When she “apologized” she didn’t even post it on any other platform and posted art right after so it just blends into her feed. Then she and Sam and Ethan turned into a big joke. It’s actually heartbreaking to witness.
What did Sam and Ethan do?
@@nisamae2 they made videos “addressing it” but they ignored all the racist parts and just made it seem like everyone got mad at her for making a “bad tutorial” ig they just didn’t want to address the racist part but the racist part was the main problem and I’m annoyed with how they just pretended that didn’t exist
@@nisamae2 they basically shifted the conversation away from the issue that people had. By focusing on just the advice it both downplays and move the conversation away from racism. While that may seem fine on paper it doesn’t address how Kooleen was racially insensitive at best, it doesn’t address how it took her two weeks to give us a notes app apology, and it doesn’t address her liking comments calling black people haters and sensitive, and ignore people giving honest criticism. So Sam and Ethan made light of the situation and completely moved the conversation away from the core issue and now most people are just gonna think that Koleen was giving bad art advice and this is just petty drama. It’s very frustrating.
@@spilledteaissadtea3037 very well said. Thank you. You understand
Because she really didn't have to apologize. She didn't do anything wrong
i have always, even before all this, commented on her videos about how the whole “fixing your ugly art” thing she did was not okay, that she was straight up weird for some things she would say during her videos and i would always get dogpilled for it. Her fans would reply that people had asked for it and that that made it okay. Overall, I’m glad i was right.
you can tell a lot about a person by just the way they talk, and Koolen’s habit of putting so many things down is common in toxic people.
The people's art whi she us fixing submitted them to her for this exact reason it's not like she is hurting people's feelings
In general I don't think she's a bad person she's just not very used to and informed about darker skinned art pieces
(I'm black)
(And I rarely draw black ppl)
I am too and I barely draw people like me😂😭
understandable..
@@Fishyboi432 I don’t think it was ignorance..
Ignorance is when you have absolutely no knowledge of a particular topic and Mohammed have given examples as to how she must’ve at least seen the features of people of color. If anything, The only way she would remain oblivious is if.. she deliberately ignores it.
I believe that she knew what she was doing, but never suspected that much backlash from her audience.
@@Fishyboi432but yeah- hopefully she listens to the given criticism, and improves herself as an artist and as a person in the future :)
Shes filipino and most filipinos are dark skinned and have these "gorilla lookin mf" features. As a filipino i am dissapointed and she should DEFINETLY know better
What she did was wrong. But i don’t think she meant it.
agreed.
True i wouldn't call her racist just kinda dumb
I don't agree. Even if she's just willfully ignorant, how is that any better?
Edit: She also used a slur against Chinese people.
@@WobblesandBean bruh your sad get a life and you know she’s asian right?
@@WobblesandBean it's not like they said she shouldn't be held accountable for it,, quite the opposite really
someone can be racist, and can also be unaware, but that still makes their actions racist, i think that's what this comment was saying
Thanks for making this video and explaining the situation! I have been watching Kooleen for some time and I’m often not deeply involved in online dramas so I was confused about what people meant by “the Kooleen drama”. Thanks for clearing things up!
In my opinion, if all she wants to draw is pretty anime/manhwa boys and girls, she can. It's just when it comes to making tutorial, wanting to educate your followers on techniques and anatomy, that it's where you have to start being mindful because, I have no doubt Kooleen knows that her community is mostly consisted of young people, artists who just started out. In fact, I'm sure MOST artists would have a big percentage of young followers. Being a young beginner artist once, you absorb whatever knowledge offered to you, especially the ones on the internet, including bad habits, mindsets, and biases, at least until you grow old enough to decide what's useful and what's not to you. That's where it becomes detrimental to young artists' growth and undoubtedly affects how they think art should be, because a lot would hold those things for years pretty stubbornly.
I know this because I've been there, applying frankly bad art advices with no proper guidance, and then got confused when it doesn't look as good. And I was there for years to see artists tearing other artists down because "their art looks cringe" just because they haven't yet learn the proper fundamentals like anatomy, etc., or their art just looking a certain way that doesn't appeal to the masses. Saying they're just "roasting for entertainment" it when really it's just bullying, soliciting unwanted "criticism" where it's not needed. Feeding into fears and insecurities that you already unearthed in your journey as an artist because something will always tell you you're not good enough and you'll never reach a certain level with your art. You can say it's just jokes but it doesn't always feel good when you're the butt of it, right? Even when you know the intent. Like let's be real, unless you're in an environment where people are super supportive of art and/or you got parents like Artgerm, as a preteen artist on the internet you wouldn't have learnt anything about anatomy, color theory, or lighting. Most of the time you might not even care because it's just for fun. Whether you want to eventually learn it or not is up to you.
My point is, whether Kooleen is aware of it or not, what she did spread, perhaps cement, certain biases, mindset, and habit about how art should look like to her young viewers, and how her young viewers would look at other people's art, especially with the liquefying face features and "gorilla looking mfer" cases. They look up to her and hold her opinion high, so it's inevitable. The best she can do is to reflect on what really is her goal in making tutorials and fixing her viewers' art. If it's just to mess around, I'll be honest then that doesn't exactly help anyone. If it's just to teach people how to draw in her style, then that should be the asterisk, nothing's wrong with that we have tons of tutorials for specific styles. If she genuinely wants to help her followers grow, then she has to learn to be mindful of what she puts out there when she meant it to be educational.
Confused as to why people think she wasn't being racist intentionally. She compared a black person's facial proportions to a gorilla, like come on now...
Edit: The fact that y'all are trying to justify it in the comments just goes to show how ignorant people still are. To the people defending Kooleen, thank you for keeping the division alive, I'm sure your ancestors would be proud :)
Ok, glad I'm not the only one who felt that was weird to call an accident
@@orionbarnes1733 fr shes old enough to know not to make these type of mistakes
I mean...not every black person's faces are like that. Like literally all it was was an extended chin and a nose with a different angle.
@@strikingsarcophagus Gorilla is a well known insult for black people. She knows what she was doing
What she said may have been "insensitive". But gorillas literally do look like that. Why do all of you keep pretending they don't? Just to prove you're not " racist?"
One thing to note about [portrait] artists that box themselves in one specific face is that they lack experience. I think kooleen is just a beginner artist who grew bigger than her actual skills and that shows in the diversity in her art style. It takes experience and true appreciation of faces and features to see the beauty in each and every one of it and incorporate it into their art. I know I've had similar discriminatory perspectives when I was just starting to draw as a child because the goal was always to draw a pretty [pinterest-style] person. I don't know when it happened but once I've had more experience, only then was I truly able to appreciate different features and I'm still learning more about it now.
I hate how her mentality of “i dont draw ugly people” has stretched onto her fans. Now they’re saying “EWW DRAWING UGLY PEOPLE BAD!! WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DRAW THEM??”
Same goes for her motivation to draw(aka clout) now her impressional young fans will try and follow her steps and have immediate burnt out because… what do ya know?? Becoming famous isn’t easy
OMGG UR PFP IS MIKADO SANNOJI I LOVE HIM SMMMMMMMMMMMMM
I'm ugly, and I agreed so so fricking much, with Kooleen
Here the definition of a joke because you probably don't know: "a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, especially a story with a funny punchline."
SHE MEANT THAT ITS HARD TO DRAW UGLY PEOPLE
@@darkseid121 what you're not getting is that she believes in not drawiny ugly ppl (as you can see in the references she used) but only said it in a form of a joke.
The thing I found crazy (other than the obvious) was how she didn’t even address things, she kept things so vague which is just… weird
Yeah fr :/
it could prolly be that she does not wanna cause any crazy controversy or something like that
@@RatLordSarah how would being vague in the apology do that? (genuine question)
@@HitoLuciustbh any apology nowadays genuine or not will be hated on and if shes real specific and she makes a tiny error in her wording then oof thats not gonna end well
@@cherrilethecherrythat doesn’t stop this apology from feeling a bit disingenuous. She ignored it for two weeks, continued to post as if nothing was happening and made more excuses than anything. Saying she “doesn’t consume much western media” which is hard to believe when you can see it all over her content. Saying “i roast everyone equally” it’s just the lack of acknowledgement of the issue at hand.
I somehow missed all this until just now. I'm an older artist, so i didn't really use her tutorials, but I really liked her sarcastic humor, despite disagreeing with a lot of her comments. I disagree heavily with the idea that drawing "ugly" people doesn't help with artistic growth. I don't think anyone is ugly based off of physical traits. We're all unique, and drawing a wide variety of features is a huge asset.
As a furry artist, I am happily immune to most of this BS, i do feel for other artists that have to put up with it though. I cannot do a human to save my life, and I envy those that can get good skin tones of any color to look right, haha.
lmfaooo furry artists on top!!
Same bro
A few years ago I made a bunch of furry artist friends to fo trades with and stuff, and I quickly learned it takes just as much skill as any other art "genres"- Like how tf do you draw fur without it looking like model magic. So I respect you guys
Right skin is hard as shit
I think furry art is cool as long as you don't identify as a furry lol
how tf she use AAVE in the damn "guide" itself but then claim you ain't seen black people before.
Bruh what even the fxck
Well aave is (now) considered social media slang simply because a lot of people adapted it. So even if you haven’t seen black people you’d still prolly see a white dude using aave online(just to be clear i’m not defending kooleen, I think she is at fault)
@@ScizzoringGirlz that still doesn't change the fact that it's AAVE 💀 What you just described is 'ignorance', bro. If people don't know, that's on them. Reminder that there's history behind it and black people were persecuted and discriminated against for using AAVE. Any non-black person using it as slang should be aware of that.
@@ScizzoringGirlz that still doesn't change the fact that it's AAVE 💀 What you just described is 'ignorance', bro. If people don't know, that's on them. Reminder that there's history behind it and black people were persecuted and discriminated against for using AAVE. Any non-black person using it as slang should be aware of that.
@@sabsain2399 I just explained why the ignorant person is using it though. I don’t know why you’re making my comment a bigger deal than it is. I’m sure by this point a lot of people are already aware cuz google is available.
I wasn’t aware of your channel until it popped up on my feed tonight. I could listen to you read the dictionary and stay rapped at attention the whole time!
Great video. Certainly got my thinking about how I draw BIPOC characters in the future.
Bro you're so chill, thanks for explaining. I finally know about the situation, I hope she actually apologizes...
Her apology on Instagram was just as half-assed as one would expect, she deleted everything obviously racist and essentially just buried everything hoping (new) viewers wouldn't come across it and realize what kinda person she is
did you actually watch the video...?
@@fionadrawer Yes? Just because I have a short comment doesn't mean I haven't. Kooleen's made insensitive and racist comments, and I genuinely hope she actually accepts what she did wrong and apologizes.
Her gorilla comment was racist and her apology was shit but some ppl are doing too much. Tiktok legit said she whitewashed a White man cuz it wasnt realistic, comments spamming koolean insults in unrelated vids and hyping all nonkoolean artists, even if they had similar artstyles☠️.
I also think ppl take artists advice too seriously/personally. An artist on twitter got dts cuz they told ppl how they shade. No matter how good an artists advice is, the internet WILL be mad.
Also think its funny the internet was hyping her up during the samdoesart controvery☠️
wait, there was a controversy surrounding Sam? When did this happen?
@@lilnightmare109 it happened months ago, where he drew bella ramsey from tlou too stylized and it didnt look like her but pedros character did. And ppl pointed out a weird joke comment he made about only drawing attractive girls. Ppl also were toooo much for that as well, just attacking artists left and right but ig thats now the art community.
@@Bombonribonno for real the art community is so insanely dramatic sensitive and toxic, it’s nuts and discouraging especially knowing a large portion of the community is young.
edit: also as someone from DeviantArt in the early 2010’s… i don’t think it’s calmed down whatsoever.
@@Bombonribon omg that reminds me of the “rendering process” thing and how hateful that was, my heart goes out to beginning artists just trying to share their passion with the world and being met with toxic hateful people
@@blitzie66FR..and the art lore thing is all about the beginner artists
Ik this is unrelated, but your voice is so soothing; I could listen to it for hours
According to SamDoesArt, it’s a general rule of thumb to use the method Koolean used when drawing a side profile. So I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt in that she didn’t know that a lot of the times, facial features can surpass that rule. However, it is infuriating that in her fixing art videos, she tries fixing them based on her own art style. I like SamDoesArt because he is not biased and tries to show what good proportions can look like while also saying that it’s ok to do different. Also, it does seem like Koolean was being racist in more ways then one and I hope she responds to this drama.
When her title says "fxing your art"it's a CLICKBAIT,that means she's just gonna redraw it in her own style and share her methods of drawing/rendering while doing so.
Her actual fans know that fixing your art means drawing it in her style… that’s one no one understands
14:58 “you’re whole sense of humor is based around western gen z humor” it’s that part for me… and I’m truly sorry for being so dead set on this but you simply do not call or compare POCs to apes or gorillas or monkeys of any kind particular the black community it is a well known dehumanizing slur and completely unacceptable to joke about. I was never a fan of her type of humor so she lost nothing from me since I was never a fan… but honestly this is exactly why and at least now other people are starting to see how this isn’t funny or ok behavior
I’m with kooleen as in I also never draw ugly people. That being said I’m not a weirdo who thinks POCs, fat people, skinny people, muscular people, old people and whatever else is ugly.
I am a professional and I mostly sell traditional art irl and my clients always rave about how I draw so many different kinds of people and body types and ages with so many different features and they all look so beautiful. One of my favorite pieces is of an elderly black woman and she’s beautiful.
I love humans. I love how they look. I love how skin wrinkles and folds how light diffuses through peoples skin. I love the interplay of bone and muscle and fat on every single human. I love how light flashes in peoples eyes differently. Humans are infinitely fascinating and infinitely beautiful, and there’s always things to appreciate, in every single person in an aesthetic way. I always want to represent that. there are no ugly people that’s what I’m getting at. Everyone is beautiful and I’m not saying that as some kind of patronizing thing.
I love anatomy I love humans I love everything about how they look. I love smooth skin and wrinkled skin and soft skin and skin, aged by the sun. Humans are so unique and different and there’s always more to find and appreciate about how they look. How someone smiles, or holds a cup. The deep shadows and contrasting highlights on angular areas, the softness of fat areas, hard bone and muscle.
I love to people watch because people are beautiful. And people moving are the hight of beauty to me. People to me are art and I just want to capture that art
So yeah I never draw ugly people because to me, and I genuinely mean it, there are no ugly people.
I find the racism accusations kinda weird because that outline she made for "how you are supposed to draw a side profile" applies to no human on earth I'm pretty sure. Neither black nor white.
Just seems like a bad guideline that only works in a heavily anime style.
Although if she enjoys drawing in that style I wouldn't fault her for it, I guess.
I near exclusively draw characters with a lean body and abs, just cuz that's what I enjoy most. I've been trying to vary up my bodytypes a tiny bit on occasion, but I don't think there's like anything inherently problematic with what I'm doing.
It's because the art she was fixing was a drawing of a black person. Also a derogatory term for black people is "monkey"
Also I agree with that last paragraph as well, she can draw what she wants. But I mean, if someone draws or doesn't draw diverse characters, could be ammo for internet critics.
The issue was that she called the side profile that is common in black people "gorilla-looking" and "wrong." Even if it was not her intention, it was still a shitty comment to make.
In a video she addressed her mistake, and said that she had been going by one guideline since it was what she knew, she wasn't aware that there were other face guidelines. She even practiced with the "bad" outline
@LOVE-510 I never said it made her racist. But you can still say racist things without intending to be racist.
As someone who only ever really makes horror art, none of the critters I draw are ever attractive… i guess I’ll never improve at art to Kooleens standards
"Never attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to ignorance." Or ... something like that
6:38 this is something that actually made me feel insecure when she showed it, the fact that people deem acne as "ugly" and erase it from a characters face is just....
I'm someone who has had wid acne growing up and i used to feel horrible about it everyday. Man did this bring back memories..
No matter how much she apologizes, i don't think i ever wanna forgive her tbhrbsmbfks
There are even people who DEFEND HER in her newer videos, and i get that she took accountability (for the most part...) But still, she made extremely racist jokes and just... To be honest her art tutorials aren't even USEFUL anyways, she wants everything to look like HER art style
Bro I'm with you sm I'm also someone who gained a lot of pimples at a very early age. Kooleen just made them look like freckles instead of pimples not to mention it doesn't look obvious and reddish enough at the first glance. Plus, her annoying fans kept saying "iT's jUsT hEr StYLe" when they support someone who changes an entire artstyle to look like hers and calls it "fixed". Like girl should just continue her redrawing series instead of criticizing other people's art 🤦♀️
Ikr!! tbh i was never a big fan of her whatsoever, because her artstyle is very cliche and boring imo. But thats just me. And i also think that the "redrawing trend" can be very toxic if not done correctly.
As someone who has had a fuck ton of acne, I would never ruin a drawing by adding that as a feature. I hate it so much. But if it's someone else's drawing, then it's wrong to remove something that's important to the character
I didn't even know that was supposed to be acne, It looks like she just ate straberry jam
I think acne is ugly. I have it, doesnt make it less ugly
what I dislike about artists who do this do and don't and fixing art style is when they fix a perfectly normal face just because they think it doesn't fit the beauty standards.
Kooleen seems to be someone who is deeply affected by beauty standards and most likely thinks that anything outside of it is unacceptable or ugly. I used to think the same way but seeing more and more types of beauty in different people, I started thinking differently. Idk if she is racist or not but growing up in an asian household, a lot of the features in the video shown were taught to me to not be "acceptable" or "wanted" and the standard and heavily manufactured face was what was told to be what pretty meant. I can see how this could be the case of hers as well seeing most of her drawings have heavy asian and anime influence. I dont think we should be attacking and insulting these types of people, but rather teaching them things outside of the "norm" can also be Beauty and its always changing.
Anime Style Fixing:
- Remove Any character trait from the face
- Remove any character trait from the body,
- Add +1000% details to the eyes
- Add +1000% details to the hair
- Remind people you don't draw ugly people
- Profit
KOOLEN IS NOT ANIME
Kooleens not anime💀 learn first lil blud
I actually feel so much better after seeing this video, Watching people normalize these features makes me feel so much better about myself, I don't hear a lot of good things about my features, so it's really good hearing you say all these things, and seeing the comments too.🤗
I've seen the drama fly by and honestly, I'm really not surprised it turned out this way. When you base your entire ''artist'' persona around being snarky, satirical, sarcastic, edgy and entertaining for the sake of attracting young people, you WILL create an image that's...well, conflicting. That works for comedians, less so for artists.
Furthermore, the larger your fan-base grows, the more important it is that you show a level of responsibility towards your image and how you come across to everyone. There's so many people looking up to you at that point, even if you don't realize it yourself. These people will read every word you say, so it's important that what you say isn't going to be taken out of context. Saying after the fact something was a joke is just shunning all personal responsibility, asinine and shows you still have some growing up to do.
It was bound to happen, and there's always some new kid who will try this and finds themselves in a similar situation. Ethan Becker found himself in relatively similar waters some time ago and guess what, he decided to change too. Just don't do what she did.
I have this type of side profile. Ive never really liked seeing myself at this angle and im barely learning how not to feel self conscious of it.
I dont think anyone is obligated to draw every type of race or face shape, but to consider different types of features, from what you normally draw, as ugly or incorrect that it needs "fixing" is insane to me.
I dont think she did any of this out of malice or to hurt people, but its ignorant and i dont know if she understands the type of damage this shit can do and probably already has. (Especially with tiktoks "angel face" and "witch face" shit ive been hearing about)
I have the opposite issue. I have a weak jawline and no one on earth will never consider this as beautiful. I hate my profile for that reason. I feel you :/
Even if we somehow ignore the racism, the idea "don't draw ugly people" is literally the opposite of what most art teachers I had recommend: Drawing wrinkles and details and distorted features is not only a way to learn how to get outside of your box, it can be far more fun to draw a wrinkly old sea captain type dude with two teeth than a smooth and cartoony person. Besides: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so who says what's ugly anyway?
Not entirely about the drama but never base your art on only one artist, as you said you’ll also adapt their mistakes. Like how using the template all faces will look the same, all of your art will look the same.
There are so many artists and you should never limit yourself.
And then she tried to draw Miguel O' Hara and everyone (including me) laughed because of just how bad she made him look. He's in his 30s... 💀👹
So you aren't interested in her being better and actually trying to draw different people. You are just a hater. Got it. At least she only roasts art people want her to roast that the artists sends her themselves.
@@1faithchick7^^this 100% there’s criticism and then there’s unjustified hatred. haters are making all the people with good points look stupid
being in his 30s literally means nothing to certain artstyles.
Ik it was terrible
and Ryan Gosling too
All this case made me remember (for some reason) of Say Yes To The Dress. There's an specific episode in which Randy has to dress up a bride who's bald due to chemotherapy and she was really emotional. Then she tells him she was scared of not feeling as a bride when dressed up because she was a fan of the show and Randy would always say "a bride without a veil aint no bride at all" (or some variation of that phrase). In the moment he heard that, the guy BROKE because she wasn't addressing him as the wrong one, but rather feeling insecure for not reaching the standard and the possibility of not being a pretty bride since she couldn't wear the veil. Randy (unlike koleen lol) immediately apologised saying he has never thought on that or tried to put himself on the shoes of a bride in that situation, but that's the thing: most people are thought to think according to what media teaches us it's "right"-facial features, body structures, types of dressing up-and none of those are inclusive (it's called standard for a reason, after all). I really wished kollen could have been more like Randy and recognised the internalised search for validation through using techniques and comments full of discrimination, it's quite disappointing tbh...
At least Kooleen accepted she made a mistake.
yes she did and i'm glad she did!
Yeah, there are a lot of artists who’ve gotten exposed for bad things and have yet to apologize for their actions nor make it up for it. Glad she was quick to respond though.
@@cranburrey yeah! Most of the people who are making mistakes are full grown adults who are yet to act like one.
She didn’t make one singular mistake though, and if you take her apology as acceptance, me personally, I wouldn’t have taken that as anything less than insincerity. She doesn’t address one thing she has done, doesn’t apologize specifically to the people she has hurt (Chinese people, black people/poc), be it intentionally or not (hurting them aka being racist). To me, it seems she just wanted to get out an apology so that she could move on with her bs, while her fans, whenever anything is brought up again, could dismiss it with “oh, but she apologized”.
@@jenice7057 People get offended by fucking everything. You don't have to apologize for weirdos getting offended over literally nothing. Stop trying to cry bully people into feeling bad by claiming it "hurt" people. It's a drawing on a fucking screen. Like I've never seen this many people in need of growing some goddamn balls
Xiao Tong is a asian artist who for starters has amazing are and second of all dosent shy away from drawing black features in her style. So you can adapt diffrent races into your style properly if you try.
I like this guy. He talks about bad people without being toxic. His videos are still somewhat lighthearted and easy to watch. Equestrian RUclipsrs gotta take notes.
Tbh, a lot of the critique toward her is valid, but I do not and never will agree with bullying someone into drawing representation for another group. All the comments of "draw a black person challenge" need to stop imo. Especially since a lot of people saying that are just white knighting. It happened to samdoesarts too and I didn't agree with it then either. It's fine if she doesn't want to, I'm glad she's seemingly learned her lesson and has addressed it (in a newer vid too). So like u said, I think she's a good person and we can just hope to see better from her as she's promised.
seriously artists should be left to draw what they want to! but i think if you’re trying to educate maybe have a few methods/approaches to topics before giving advice- especially basic advice that isn’t inherent to just one style.
@blitzie66 Yeah for sure! Or if you're giving advice that only pertains to a certain art style, gender, race (etc.), at least say so beforehand.
Ethan Becker actually had a very good video about this tip of hers and how it can actually be useful. He called it "the racist triangle" lol. Not as a hard and fast rule the way koolean portrayed it, that's ridiculous, but in the sense that it is a guideline to utilize. Being aware of it can help you consciously decide how prominent to make certain features.
I mean, there are other general proportion tips that don't apply to everyone, or can be consciously exaggerated for good character design. Like how legs are half the body length, or a person's arm span is the same as their height, or people are 7 or 8 heads tall. These are general rules of thumb, but knowing when and how to deviate from those guides is when you really learn the value of them.
I really hope my comment comes across right. I just actually found it helpful in drawing my black characters because it helped me know how to get the features to look prominent enough(more consistently) by giving me a guideline to push past. In other words, I found the "rule" valuable by breaking it, lol.
2:16 is it just me who always thought that the way she draws side profiles makes it look like a person with an overbite?
nobody?..
ok..
i have seen much racism from the koreaboos and k-media stans, even trashing their idols for looking 1/8 of a tone more darker in a photo, and it's clear kooleen it's far influenced by ¨non western media¨ as she herself claims, she may need to hide her internalized racism better because she is racist for sure as humour tends to reveal what we think deep within. (also im not saying the k-community it's all racists, im saying i've seen much racism ans superficiality from many members and stans, and that's because the industry push their media in that direction.)
No. No it does not. Humor is literally the exact opposite. You must have like the lamest sense of humor
They're even more toxic about skin colour than they are about the idol's weights, and that's saying a LOT.
Ah, the fun part about all Internet Drama, once someone actually makes an apology, everyone just gets more pissed. The creator could announce that they'll be donating their live savings to the people who were offended and that they'd flaggellate themselves in penance, and people would mock them for trying to make it about themselves. There will never be a good apology as long as the Internet drama continues like this. The thing that really matters is how the people in question act moving forward, and if they do better or get into drama again is in their hands.
i agree with my fellow Pinoys here. the situation with Kooleen is such a tell tale sign of how toxic this smorgasbord of a culture and our beauty standards.
i am reminded of what my 'contemporary world' professor asked us, "what is truly Filipino?". majority of the things we have mentioned are debunked by him because, yes, some of those things can be traced back to the countries that have colonized us.
idk if many will agree, but personally, our culture is like that of a sponge that just absorbs and absorbs, and that can be reflected to many things in our life (views, lifestyle, beauty, etc.) perfect example is our new like for eastern asian beauty(not just in beauty, btw, but in general). *we have the preference on whitening our skin to the point that it doesn't even look natural anymore and you look pinkish*. and people will bash you if you have darker skin and will call you "dirty" just because you don't look pasty white. go to a store and look for foundation, and the shade range is little. as in they only cater to people with fairer skin. and so with someone who is dark-skinned like that would be pressured to follow the bandwagon and start buying and using whitening products that may or may not be FDA approved (this ranges to soap or even pills or "collagen drinks").
and this isn't just stemmed from that, but also from western ideologies. let me add our "mythology" as well. if there is any Pinoys that may see this, notice how some of the mythological creatures that we all know and love, like the dewende (dwarves), or tiyanak, or kapre, all share the same description of 'being dark skinned' to the point that they are described as having charcoal-like skin? yeah... they were created as a scare to convert the people to the views that the colonizers have.
idk what part do Pinoys see as something that they find cool and therefore replicate it like, in their humuor. anybody who looks to have some afro-centric features, they would comment below saying "oh, it's Jamal"/"never knew Jamal is here in the Philippines". which mind you, we have indigenous groups which shares similarity/resemblance to afro-centric features: Aetas.
*sigh*sorry if this was way too long, but im trying to barf out some of the things i have noticed and learned coming from the same nationality as her. anyways, this is just very saddening. as someone who is Pinoy like Kooleen, and an artist. we need to expound and open our minds to most things in order to excel as artist. there was no need for Kooleen to comment something like that (the 'gorilla' comment). just cause you have a certain style that you like to strive through, doesn't mean that you should let other people down, BY QUITE LITERALLY ERASING ETHNIC FEATURES JUST TO FIT YOUR STYLE. if you have a style, go around it and try to find way to integrate it into your art style without offending someone. Kooleen needs to fix her mindset, and so does certain Pinoys that may share the same mindset.
This one of the most useful comment of this comment section
Personally I don’t hate kooleen or anything and I don’t think she’s some evil racist, though she was being ignorant especially with the “gorilla” comment but as long as she learns going forward, i don’t really have a problem with her.
Personally I'm ambivalent but then again, my corner don't exactly overlaps hers so...
Just started this video, but it seems like a good non biased way to learn what actually happened!
someone who gets it!
I’m not going to say Kooleen is racist because I don’t know her, but this is why we have to stress that certain art tips are a guide and not a rule. Show examples of when it won’t work and that there’s differences in people. This is the result of a lack of education in my opinion, but I understand if anyone no longer wants to support her.
And just so I don’t get a “👩🏼💻” yes I’m black lmao 💀
uhhh- I'm white with eastern european features featuring strong cheeks, thin lips, and weak chin. My eyes are large and shallow set, my brow line is weak, my nose is thin and pointed, and I have an overbite. I don't consider myself ugly, nor do I think people with my features are ugly. Many of my features are common among white eastern europeans, and anything unique to me makes me... well... me.
That being said, if I take a picture of myself and trace my face's side profile, I have more in common with the 'gorilla' profile than the 'correct' profile. My face shape largely deviates from the 'correct' shape where my cheeks define the form of my face. My nose hooks downward, and my chin is parallel with its point, breaking the desired inward slope.
When it comes to drawing faces, learning from real, living models is the best way to diversify your art. There are many races around the world. 'Asian' isn't a singular race. Just like how 'black' or 'white' isn't a singular race either, and vilifying facial features for not meeting an unrealistic standard of inward sloping is a tad ridiculous. Not to mention the severely racist undertones.
She’s ALWAYS been toxic, to be honest. I feel that this was the thing that brought light to her toxicity, and or made people finally fight back.
Thank you so much for this video!
I don't think that she meant to be racist and I believe that this was all due to ignorance. HOWEVER, her response to this situation was very messed up. She saw my thread, quietly deleted the gorilla clip and did not address a thing when over 400k people, who are mostly consisted of young/beginner artists, had already seen it.
I told her that things would get out of hand if she didn't address the situation, and that's exactly what happened. She didn't have the excuse of being ignorant about the topic the second she decided to ignore the issue and act like nothing happened. She DID become aware of her how offensive her vids were but she didn't apologize or explain to her audience why her tips were wrong.
Honestly this all makes it seem like she waited for things to die a bit so that she could get away by not having to address a thing bc if she addressed it, she knew that more people would be aware of it and she would lose more of her clout. Hence, 1 week of absolute silence from her. She then tried to test the waters by posting new videos but she saw that people were still asking for her to address the issue, so she wrote the apology (two weeks after she became aware of her offensive remarks) like "ok fine here's your apology now shut up about it". Maybe I'm completely wrong with all of these assumptions but honestly, she makes it hard for us to not assume these stuff. THIS is why it's important to properly address the issues.
Her apology was extremely vague, defensive and misleading. She made it seem like people were mad because they couldn't take a joke/ she was making roasting vids with consent. Hence, the comments from her young fans. A lot of them even found the opportunity to be openly racist, as you showed in your vid. She also pretty much called everyone who was still mad at her "irrelevant"... Not something that you'd include in a genuine apology.
Following the patterns of Koolen's words/behaviour, it's really hard to find an excuse for her. As someone with a huge platform, she should've known that she needed to address everything properly and apologize instead of worrying about her clout. I hope that this'll be a lesson for all big youtube artists out there. Own your mistakes, or you'll lose respect.
As a Filipino, like Kooleen, I won’t defend her actions, as I believe them to be ignorant. But, I will admit that there is a cultural bias toward becoming “white” or fair-skinned. There are also a lot of people who are ignorant to the nuances of topics like racism especially in a globalized or Western context. Hence jokes like these are, unfortunately, normalized to a degree by some people. Maybe that’s why she didn’t think much of it when posting the original ‘roast’, and why he apology seems so empty. She probably didn’t fully know what she did wrong, or how much she offended people who have been victims of similar comments from actual racist people. I don’t think her intentions were bad, but she was definitely ill-informed.
I do think the “not consuming Western content” thing absurd. I live in the same country. Western content is literally everywhere. Hell, we even have a positive bias toward Western content because of colonialism. That was an unusual excuse, and I genuinely think she just didn’t want to admit that she did something racist and used the weirdest excuse possible.
@@yesenseiLiving in a country with a lot of western media doesn't mean you consume It
@@flyingorange2482 I’m sorry, but in her case, especially as a content creator, I don’t buy it. RUclips in itself is a Western media platform. So is Instagram. That in itself exposes you to Western content. I highly doubt she doesn’t know ANYTHING of the racism discourse online, enough that she’d use it as an excuse. Plus again, living here, I can attest that everyone, literally everyone consumes Western media. It even bleeds into our local media here. It would be near impossible to avoid it if you consume any type of media here. To the point that my relatives who live in a literal secluded area with barely any internet has at least a tiny idea on what Hollywood films are.
I really hate how so many big content creators are recently being canceled :/
honestly im scared to watch more RUclips because it feels like everyone I like to watch are being canceled. I really hate this.
I think there are so many people on social media who are just working in that same anime style, and I honestly don't think she even thought about what she was doing/posting until it blew up. The problem is when a style is created from copying another stylistic choice, copied from another person's stylistic choice who learned from another person's stylistic choice, then it's so far from reality that they don't even know where to start when working with another face style.
The phrase "touch grass" is used a lot when it comes to telling someone to get in touch with reality, but in the case of artists, it's actually important to get out there and actually LOOK at reality for a while, draw what you see, even if it sucks...
Living in Korea, I hear a lot of these racist remarks, and the people don't even know they're being racist. Maybe that's the case. Maybe this can be a learning moment for her. Maybe this will help her explore some other concepts in art. Or maybe it won't. I don't know. I do think it's very easy to find one artist, jump into their channel, and just set up shop there, looking only at them and the artists who draw like them. Can't say I think that's very good for the future of the art world.
how about everyone just stop "fixing" other peoples art, no matter what. if you don't like someones work just keep scrolling, make your own thing, and don't comment on the work. if you do like it great, fanart is one thing but do not ever claim you "fixed" anything. Art is subjective and everyone has their own style. I am slowly getting better at art, am i good? no. am i learning at my own pace? yes.
Just found your channel. I am not into art so I didnt know about the kooleen art fixing disaster, but this video discusses the issues in a really great way. You are also really funny. I like how you describe things; subscribed
13:33 nooooooo the cuts to his side eye are taking me ouuuuuuuutttt☠️☠️☠️☠️
This doesn't have to do with anything but your voice is so soothing
Thanks for explaining this without being obnoxious. I just ran across this in another video and I thought...but the original drawings don't look like they need corrections? They look representative? Glad to have this clarified.
One thing you get very wrong here is criticizing her for "eurocentrism," but Kooleen is Asian, and the characters and features she champions are clearly Asiatic, not European.
That like these ppl don’t seem to understand her style is clearly anime and Asian media styles.
Literally Ethan and Sam explain the situation a lot better this video was straight up unnecessary
Perhaps he was implying the eurocentric standards of beauty such as lighter skin, smaller noses , lips etc. That can be imposed on both native asian and african features right?
@@MartaW-vc7mcEurocentric as in European features which would include lighter skin, smaller noses, and smaller lips. Of course it doesn’t go for every single person but a majority. But I can understand that it’s also probably heavily influenced by East Asian standards. Also just cus they have lip filler doesn’t change the fact that smaller lips are more naturally found in Europe and it was heavily seen as superior to more Afrocentric features for a long point in history and in some cases still is today. There are still cases of racism in Europe it’s not as if it’s all magically vanished
@@MartaW-vc7mc Exactly
@@MartaW-vc7mc so are we just gonna ignore that Asian beauty standards where influenced by Eurocentric beauty standards? Cause ya know colonization?
13:23 my same reaction when she said she roasted everyone equally 😭 she put the quotation marks in the wrong word 💀