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Orange and Green

This is another Prismacolor drawing, done while on the phone with my Jungian Analyst. I was forced to use the color pencils that were available (i.e, those that were sharp enough to draw with) as I was unable to get up and find a pencil sharpener. Also, I tried to erase and found both of my Pink Pearl erasers were really crappy. They were new. I think the manufacturer has changed the eraser’s formulation recently; it seems to smear the pencil on the paper instead of erasing it. This unwanted effect can be seen on the top right shoulder and the top right abdominal. The drawing also demonstrates the lack of patience I have in comparison to my early 20’s.

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PrismaColor Drawings of My Youth #10; Mother Trucker ’11

Actually, I did this drawing on December 4th, 2011, while tabling at the second annual Bent Con, at the Bonaventure Hotel, in Downtown Los Angeles, California. I had been scanning and prepping the drawings from my early 80’s sketchbooks for the upcoming Bruno Gmuender anthology: “Fur”, and thought I’d try my hand at doing the same kind of drawing 30 years on. This is what I came up with.

I just don’t have the patience anymore. I cheated, going in with a gray Tombo brush pen and punching up the shadows. I worked quicker, simpler. I dunno. I’ve been working, my whole adult career as an artist, to be simpler. I really admire simplicity. But something has been lost as well. Those early drawings really have a luminous glow to them that I can’t seem to match these days. Oh well…

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PrismaColor Drawings of My Youth #9; Yard Work ’81

I believe I completed this drawing on or about New Year’s Day, 1981. This is how I celebrated the new year. I envisioned a happy magic land where masculine men could be unselfconscious and unashamed in their queerness. I had no idea how it would come about. Maybe it still will, someday.

Again, jesus, look at all the work I put into the background of the drawing. I simply don’t have the patience for it anymore. Although being flat on your back for 2 months helps.

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PrismaColor Drawings of My Youth #8; Rock Wall ’80

So, anyway, my life experience is that there are very few guys who look like this. Most guys, especially as they age, start to sag in predictable ways. It is both a blessing and a curse. I like to fuck guys who look like Ed Asner, Rod Steiger, Ernest Borgnine, etc, etc; but I don’t want to look like that myself. Tough shit, I guess. I’d have to work it alot harder that I am willing to to stay buff (or become buff for the first time in my life). It’s just not a priority, for better or worse. Maybe someday, before it’s too late…

Jeez, I sure put a lot of work into drawing that damn wall. Amazing. I couldn’t or (wouldn’t) do that these days.

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PrismaColor Drawings of My Youth #7; Out House ’80

This seems to be the same guy as in “Artist & Model” and “Call of Nature”.

You may have noticed that all of my middle aged “clones of desire” (to quote Dale Lazarov) are impossibly well built and well endowed. As a 21 year old, I didn’t know any better. I actually had an physical inferiority complex about myself in my early days. I recall, in my teens, hearing a Frank Zappa album (200 Motels, I think it was), where a man sneeringly comments on another man, “Eight inches or less”. Since I was only 6″, I thought I was small. It wasn’t until I started playing the field in my mid 20’s that I realized I was at least average.

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PrismaColor Drawings of My Youth #6; Midnight Snack ’81

I recall, when I joined the Gay Community in Southern California, in 1984, I ran across a stash of Drummer Magazines from the early 80’s. I had seen “Cruising”, starring Al Pacino, in 1980, and thought it was really cool, once you get past the violent murder aspect. “Where do I join?”, was my attitude. But then I read the Drummer Magazines and started going to leather bars, like The Gauntlett II and The One Way. The guys were often attractive to look at, but the sex left me cold. Leather/Bondage/SM is a lot of work to get laid in my opinion. It’s a big world, plenty of room for everybody, but not for me, thanks. The thing that struck me about the fiction in the Drummer magazines was that the guys had to go through all this torture to get elusive flashes of love. Why not just go for the love? That’s what my art is about; going for the love. It took me almost 30 years to realize this: I want love with my sex. Otherwise it doesn’t work for me. This makes casual encounters really messy. LOL (not)

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PrismaColor Drawings of My Youth#5; Hit the Showers ’81

The guy on the left is a super-idealized version of my 7th grade gym coach, Mr. Blasongame (?), the man who did nothing to protect me when I was being repeatedly bullied during second semester. Every day, I was cat-called (“Mrs. Rader” was the favorite), called out for fights after school, etc etc. It didn’t stop until the school year ended and we (my family) went on a summer long car trip around the western half of the United States. For some reason, when I started 8th grade, the bully kids mostly left me alone. My mom’s theory about that was that I filled out, got bigger. But that didn’t protect me the previous year.

I hadn’t hit puberty yet; I didn’t even know what a “fag” was when they started tormenting me with that word. My sin: I was a big (for my age) in-doorsy kid who cried easy. By the time I was done with 7th grade, I vowed nobody would ever make me cry again. It worked okay for a while. However, as I reached adult-hood, I realized I couldn’t cry even if I tried. It’s taken years of work to be able to get to the point where I can cry, on occasion.

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PrismaColor Drawings of My Youth#4; Knock Knock ’80

So, anyway, there I was laid up, with my feet elevated, for the 2 months following Thanksgiving Vacation ’81. I had to drop out of Anchorage (Alaska) community collage, quit my part-time job at Pizza Hut (no great loss) and, generally speaking, cocoon. Denys wasn’t much help during this period. My parents tolerated him, but didn’t really like him. I don’t blame them; in retrospect he was a creepy guy. The man in this drawing in a super-idealized version of Denys. When I met him, he was 46, having just moved from the Yukon territories when he read, in the Anchorage Phone Directory, that our metropolis had a Gay Community Center. We met on both of our first visits to the center, at it’s Saturday Night Co-gender rap session.

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PrismaColor Drawings of My Youth#3; Call of Nature ’80

Actually, it’s not true that I had no access to real flesh and bone guys during this period. I had just gotten laid for the first time in October of ’81, a couple months after my 21st Bday. In fact, my first b.friend, Denys, was on the hiking trip, in the mountains of Alaska, where I frostbit my feet, causing me to be laid up for 2 months, giving me plenty of time to do these laborious, detailed drawings. Unfortunately, I was laid up at my parents house and didn’t have any privacy to make it with Denys during the recovery period.

This seems to be the same guy from “Artist & Model”. If you saw his backside, there would be a ponytail.

Denys, by the way, went through the same trauma I did, but escaped without any frostbite damage. Go figure.

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PrismaColor Drawings of My Youth#2; Artist & Model

Actually, the promp for posting these drawings, 30 years after doing them, was that I was contracted  (back in November or December of ’11, to participate in an upcoming Bruno Gmuender anthology entitled Fur. I scanned these drawings from my old sketchbooks, cleaned them up slightly, and sent them to the publisher. I have heard nothing since. I reviewed the contract I signed and see nothing about exclusivity (in case they intend to use any or all of these drawings), so I’m going to post them on my blog.

This drawing is definitely wish fulfillment. I suppose it’s every artist’s dream, in a way: to have sex with one’s models or fantasy figures. At this stage of my life, I was definitely making love to the paper with my pencils, since I had no actual flesh and bone guys to make it with.