Note: this isn’t me asking if I can draw people with dark skin, but if I should use a dark skin character as the face of pieces of art that I could win a scholarship with. 

Hi there, I’m a white artist living in New Zealand and I was wondering this.  In New Zealand there is a character design competiton where you can gain a scholarship, as well as other things, by winning.  When I heard of this, I went straight away into using two of my OCs in this.  

One of them is Ifalya:

  Her design is still a work in progress.  Though I will be drawing two characters, she will be my main focus. 

This is the other character, Gréameile (she is caucasian):

The themes of the two pieces I will be submitting are love and despair.  This is me practicing the love one:

The other one will be despair, with Ifalya mourning over Gréa.

As I said before, I am not asking if it is problematic for Ifalya to exist, but if I should use her for a scholarship as a white person.  I am deeply invested in these two characters so I went straight into using them.  But at the moment, I am worrying that by drawing her as the centrepice for my submission, I am give off the impression I might not be a white girl.

My problem lies in the fact that the people judging the competition may think that I am a poc artist, only to discover that I am a white artist using the depicition of poc to my own gain.  I know personally that this is not the case bc I do love Ifalya and she is one of my fav Ocs.

There is a long history of white people appropriating blackness for they’re own gain and although this isn’t my mindset going in, I’m not sure if that matters. I have but a lot of work into designing these chaacters, but I still have over a month before I need to submit the pieces so there is time to change the characters. 

Is it wrong for me to draw Ifalya to win a scholarship?  Does it give of approprating vibes? Please feel free to give me your honest responses.   And sorry this is not written the best, I‘m really bad at getting my point across