A topless gray-scale drawing of Demi Lovato flaunting her curves in a mermaid tail has caught the singer’s attention, but she was not impressed with it.
Two months ago, Vladimir Serbanescu, a 17-year-old artist from Romania, drew a splendid portrait of the “Confident” songstress, which was inspired by a voluptuous promotional shot for her recent single “Body Say.” He proudly shared his artwork on his Instagram account.
Gleefully, Lovato’s Instagram fan page sexylikelovato took notice of it and shared the portrait on Saturday, earning praise from many “Lovatics.” But to their shock, their idol commented on the snap.
“Is that how my boobs should look? It’s gorgeous but that’s not my body,” she commented.
SCREENGRAB from Instagram
Since then, netizens were divided into two camps—those who sided with Lovato’s frank take on the drawing and those who found her comments “ungrateful” to the Romanian artist.
“[Lovato] didn’t do anything wrong, she’s just saying that it’s unreal to edit her and to draw her differently. She’s beautiful the way she is, and you don’t need yell at her for trying to say that. I agree with her that it’s a beautiful drawing and she didn’t say anything bad about it, she just thinks the drawing shouldn’t look different than how she really is,” one user explained.
“You’re rude as hell..this is a fan who drew you as a mermaid who spent many hours drawing and you can’t even say ‘Thank you,'” another user countered.
The squabble between the camps came to a point where a Twitter user tweaked the portrait in a controversial way. Although it went viral with 41,000 retweets and 62,800 reactions, the photo received backlash from many users.
https://twitter.com/hisillusion/status/781883829942382592
In a separate post on Instagram on the same day Lovato expressed her criticism, Serbanescu clarified that the way he pictured a Demi Lovato mermaid does not imply that she should “look like that.”
“If I make your waist slimmer and your boobs bigger to accentuate the fact that I drew you as a mermaid, a mythological creature, doesn’t mean I say that you should look like that or all girls should look like that. That’s how I imagine mermaids. I worked a lot on that drawing and I was proud of it, but not anymore,” he said. Gianna Francesca Catolico