A Year of Rosies: Ada Lovelace

Bitches love to program.

New project alert! (Don't worry, I'm still working on pirates!)

This was borne of my last ever assignment at MIAD. It sounded totally crazy at first- we had to find an "icon or mascot" .. then put them in a different era and redesign them to suit it. Then, we had to make two illustrations of that redesigned icon/mascot for a calendar.

Errr, what?

But pretty quickly I hit upon the idea of using Rosie the Riveter. I wanted to do two illustrations of women who were doing stereotypically "male" jobs- but I wanted them to be true things. I researched a lot and decided I'd use actual, real women of history. After all, Rosie is based on a real woman anyway!

My concept for the calendar in entirety is to have 12 months - 12 women - 12 different industries typically dominated by men. So far I've done Computer Programming (Ada here) and ruling a country (Hatshepsut - I'll post her soon!). I have plans to do probably Frida Kahlo (for art) and Amelia Earhart (for flying!) .. but the rest are wide open. Here's where you can help! Do you have any suggestions of badass ladies of history? Or industries that would be good to feature? I would especially like ladies of color - my sense of history is embarrassingly white-centric. Please please, comment with suggestions and ideas :)