Flaming Artist
Did this one last night. Thinking about what Roberto said at the WeHo Erotic Arts Fair on Sunday about the life models being used were all cut, muscular and hairless. They probably had big dicks too, tho one couldn’t tell during the sits. I’ll have to work on that one… Interestingly, issue 3 of Steve MacIsaac’s “Shirtlifter” magazine has a short comix story with 2 bearish guys with small dicks making love. It’s pretty hot, actually. http://www.stevemacisaac.com/
Today I’m presenting 2 pieces I like by other artists. The first is by Tony Salmons, a friend of mine who recently returned to the public eye with his artwork for the 4 issue mini series “The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft”, published last summer by Image Comics. He did this sketch for me a couple of years back. It’s of a Thark one of the characters from “John Carter of Mars”.
The second drawing is by Domino, my favorite gay erotic artist. This drawing appeared in “Mandate” in 1983, I believe. (I’m not sure; I no longer have that magazine.) The issue the drawing appeared in was the first gay skin mag I ever bought as a closeted young gay man. I bought that issue because of that drawing (not because of any of the photos, which were, as I recall, all of young hairless twinks). I used to buy any gay mag with one of his illustrations in them. Unfortunately, he dropped out of sight in 1985 or 86. He resurfaced again in the late 80’s/early 90’s with a classified ad in the gay press, selling 2 print sets of the best of his drawings. I contacted him, purchased the 2 sets, corresponded with him briefly. Sadly, he died of AIDS soon after.
Recently, I saw the original to this drawing. It resides in the Tom of Finland Foundation Headquarters, in Echo Park, a council district of Los Angeles, California, USA. It hangs, beautifully framed, in the bedroom of Durk Dehner, head of the foundation. I viewed it during a recent open house. I asked him he was selling it for. I got the impression that it was out of my price range.
I attended the Tom of Finland Erotic Arts Fair in West Hollywood Park on Sunday. I went to see some friends and to do life drawings. There were 3 models in the 2 hours I sketched. They were all muscular, but not overly so, and all totally hairless. I found this somewhat annoying; I like body hair. Also, the total lack of body fat on any of the three was… what? alienating? A friend of mine griped about it: “Why don’t they use normal looking guys occasionally?” Looksism, I guess.
Sorry for the long absence, but I haven’t been doing much erotic work lately. I’m posting my latest sketches.
Here’s a new drawing.
I did these drawings recently; I hope you enjoy. I’m trying to develop a style using ballpoint pen. I recently saw the R. Crumb exhibit of his original art for the “Genesis” graphic novel. I’m totally envious of him for having such an iconic style. I’ve been spending my whole career in animation imitating other people’s style; at this point, I’m not even sure what my style is.
My Beautiful Career
Installment 1
This is my story. It’s the tale of a young man growing up in Alaska who has a dream. His life journey is complete with adventures, life changes and career opportunities he never could have imagined. Like most good stories, there are many twists and turns. Here we go.
I’m the fourth child of 6 with 2 older brothers, an older sister, and 2 younger sisters. My family moved to Alaska in 1963, when I was 3 years old. My father followed his older brother, Uncle John, to the land of the Midnight Sun. “It’s the land of opportunity”, Uncle John proclaimed, and he would have known; he was the first Attorney General of Alaska when it gained statehood in 1959, and served as a State Senator throughout the 1960s and early 70s.
Mother was an ex-grade schoolteacher. Father was a Freudian analyst, the only one in the state for several years. I joke with my friends who complain of Catholic or Jewish damage that I grew up with Atheist-Freudian-Skinnerian damage.
As a child, I loved animation, especially Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons, and the Hanna Barbera action adventure TV shows designed by Alex Toth. In 5th grade I wished everything I watched on TV could be an animated cartoon, even if (or especially if) it was the cheapo Filmation kind, where characters would slide across the screen, cut off at the waist to avoid animating walk cycles.
My parents sealed the deal when they gave me the book “The Art of Disney Animation” for my 11th birthday. I decided I was going to be a Disney animator in the footsteps of Milt Kahl and Frank Thomas. The book decried, in its final chapter, the lack of inspiration in the up and coming crop of young animation artists. I vowed to reverse that trend single handedly.
I attended the CTN Animation Expo at the Burbank Marriott, on November 20-22, 2009. It was way cool, surprisingly well attended. I donated 3 pieces of original artwork to the “Help the Hodges” Benefit Auction that was being solicited by C.A.P.S. member and Disney animation artist Chad Frye. The auction will take place on January 21. 2010, on Ebay. To learn more about the tragic curcumstance of Matthew Hodge, and see the art for the auction, go to http://www.helpthehodges.com/
The following is a journal excerpt from my January 2005 trip to Amsterdam for the mounting and opening of my one man art exhibition at Mr. B’s. I will post a new section of the ten-part story each week. Enjoy.
8:25 a.m. Wednesday, February 2, 2005
We’re booked on a 2:00 p.m. tour of the Louvre, which will pick us up at the hotel at 1:45 p.m.
Yesterday morning we found we’d attempted to book the city tour too late Monday night to make the 8:30 a.m. tour. So we took the Metro to the Louvre anyway, to see if we could tour it on our own. In the Metro station, across the tracks from where we awaited our train, I saw an unforgettable, unbelievable sight: a billboard for a joint exhibition of two or my all-time favorite artists: “Miyazaki (Haiyo Miyazake, the Japanese “Anime” director of 4 of my all-time favorite movies in any genre: “Castle Cagliostro,” “Nausicaa,” “Laputa,” and “My Neighbor Totoro”) and Moebius (the alias of Jean Giraud, genius French comicbook artist, creator of “The Airtight Garage,” “Arzach,” and “Lieutenant Blueberry”) at some unknown exhibit hall somewhere in Paris. I forced John to wait, missing one train, as I quickly wrote down the info & resolved to try to get to see their exhibition before we left Paris.
The Louvre Metro station was part of a huge subterranean shopping complex. Everything was still closed (it was only 9:00 a.m.). I saw a shuttered art store, thought I might go in there later to see if they had any info on the M/M exhibition.
We ascended to the Louvre courtyard. We saw the glass pyramid, designed by I.M. Pei. Actually, we saw, while still underground, another, inverted, glass pyramid hanging from the ceiling, not quite touching noses with a much small cement pyramid rising from the floor. We found out later that this was also designed by I.M. Pei. John was tripping out that all of this was in The Da Vinci Code
We discovered that all national museums are closed on Tuesdays, so we were there on our own until the city tour convened at 1:30 p.m. We returned to the underground shopping mall. The stores were now opening, including the art store. The clerk there told me that the M/M exhibit was within walking distance, just the other side of the Seine. So John & I parted company, and I set out, following the clerk’s directions.
These turned out to be somewhat ambiguous, complicated by the fact that, like Florence, the street names changed every couple of blocks. Also, “across the Seine from the Louvre” is a pretty big across. The Louvre, including the Tuileries gardens, is about three football fields long. Eventually I found the building—an ex-government office directly on the Seine. I arrived after 11:00 a.m.—I figured I shouldn’t stay much past noon, not knowing how long my return trek would take. I spent the majority of my time watching a French documentary on Miyazaki & the making of “Princess Mononoke.” Interestingly, it was French subtitles over Japanese conversation. Alot of it I could figure out anyway. There was another docu on Moebius (also in French) running on the other side of the room. I watched the Miyazaki docu until 11:50; then I tore myself away to give the rest of the exhibit a quick once-over. Fuck! Too much to see. Several rooms full of artwork from the breadth of both artist’s long careers. The Moebius parts were illuminating: it showed a large selection of his film design work, both in live action and animation, of which I was only tangentially aware. I stayed on until 12:15 p.m., buying the program book of the exhibition on the way out. I took the metro back to Cadet, stopping by McDonalds for a Big Mac.
The amazing synchronicity of my chance observance of the M/M billboard and the narrow window of opportunity in which to see it was not lost on me. When I arrived in Paris Monday night I had not the slightest idea I’d be blessed with the opportunity to see this incredible exhibition by not one but two of my all-time top ten favorite artists in any medium. Thank you God, Satan, Krishna, Buddha, or whatever.
The city tour was something of a surprise. Instead of one of those big tour busses, we had a little mini-van. Our driver was from Finland, but a French citizen for 30 years. After picking us up, he went to another hotel for a middleaged Irish woman and her 2 young adult daughters. An hour later, the driver swung by the Seine departure point for our later river cruise and picked up a Nisei from Houston, TX and his infant son. It was odd hearing a Texas accent coming from a Japanese guy. I didn’t ask him if he voted for “W” (but wanted to).
I asked the driver if he was going to be dropping us at a larger bus, or if this was the tour. Yes, this was the tour.
We went up to the top of Monmartre, to this really cool church, looking down on Paris. Actually, we saw all kinds of shit, too much to keep track of. By the time the tour ended, and we were dropped off at the embarkation point of our river cruise, at 4:40, we were toured out. We had time to buy coffee & a brownie, and empty our bladders before the river cruise embarked at 5:00 p.m. The cruises left every hour. The boat was less than 1/5th full. Not for the first time, it occurred to us to wonder what our experience would’ve been “in season.” Some of the tour boats had seats on the roof as well as inside. Presumably, most of those seats would be filled during the summer. The departure/return point of the cruise was in the foot of the Eiffel Tower—I convinced John to accompany me there, & we paid €5 each to ride the elevator to the 2nd (out of 3) floor. We walked past the Disneyland-style snakey queues at the base of each of the four legs—in the summer they would all be full. We only had to wait for one elevator up, a blessing with our semi-lame tootsies.
During the bus tour, we had a 20 minute stop at Notre Dame. When I got back on the bus, the driver asked me if it was crowded, I was uncertain, so he said, in the summer there are lines. There were no lines, so I guess that it wasn’t crowded. In my opinion, it has been worth the cold weather (it was cold atop the Eiffel Tower) to miss out on all those fucked lines.
John lit a candle in Notre Dame. I watched silently & said nothing snide.
The following is a journal excerpt from my January 2005 trip to Amsterdam for the mounting and opening of my one man art exhibition at Mr. B’s. I will post a new section of the ten-part story each week. Enjoy.
7:10 a.m. Tuesday, February 1, 2005
We checked out of the Hotel Winston at 11:00 a.m., took the trolley to Central Station in order to catch our 12:56 train to Paris. The day, as all our days have been, was cold, overcast, and humid with occasional showers and even rarer patches of sun. John was almost finished with The Da Vinci Code. In the train station bookstore, he purchased The Da Vinci Code Decoded. I purchased the latest essay collection by David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. I read the first essay. So far, not as brilliant as his work in Me Talk Pretty One Day.
We were booked in first class, When we departed Amsterdam we had the car practically to ourselves. By the time we reached Paris, almost every seat was filled.
When the stewardess came by to check our tickets against our passports, she found a problem with John’s. He was booked as a senior citizen but he would not be 60 for another 2 days. She was unbending. “Two days—it could be one day. It does not matter.” John, of course, was pissed, was muttering under his breath periodically for the rest of the trip. “Happy un-birthday,” I quipped.
We arrived in Paris, at the Gare du Nord train station, at 5:05 p.m., the height of rush hour. We were both tired… train lagged. We were studying one of the wall maps, trying to figure out where we were vs where we needed to go. Also, we were trying to decide whether we should take a cab or buy a 3-day pass & brave the local mass transit. A swarthy young man, in his early 30’s, saw our plight and took us under his wing. He told us to take Line 5 one stop to Gar de l’Est, transfer to Line 7, and go two stops to Cadet (the stop our travel agent, Roberta, had informed us was nearest to our hotel). He then walked briskly across the station floor, beckoning us to follow—a problem for both J. & I—John following some distance behind, calling, “Where are you going?” I turned back occasionally, shrugging. We found the ticket window, purchased our 3-day Metro passes. As we staggered back toward the entrance to Line 5, our self-appointed guide re-appeared, gave us one last once-over, and declared us good to go.
I was paranoid about Parisians. One hears so much about how rude they are. In this case, our first encounter was quite positive. The young man made our negotiation of the Gare du Nord so much easier.
We then had to brave several flights of stairs, some up, mostly down, and what a down it was—I was carrying two 40-lb cases. Both were on rollers but that was no help on the steep, narrow, crowded stairways. As usual, each downward step caused shooting pains up my ankles. Then there was the added pressure of trying to keep out of way of other, more experienced, more hurried commuters.
The trip went quickly. Each time we reached a platform, our train was already waiting for us, and took off soon after our entry. We disembarked at the Cadet station at 6:00 p.m. I asked directions at a nearby news kiosk. I was told some French variant of “two,” and was pointed down the street we were already on. We found our hotel soon after & checked in by 6:30 p.m.
We are only going to be in Paris for two days. As we checked into the hotel, we booked a bus tour of Paris, leaving from the hotel at 8:30 a.m. We napped, woke almost simultaneously at 8:30 p.m., went out to eat at a nearby Italian restaurant, complete with a brusque, impatient French waiter. On the way back, we stopped at a local market, got some booze, some fruit & some water.
I’ve had difficulty sleeping the last 2 nights. The beds in Paris sucked, although they were probably better than those in Amsterdam. It’s reminiscent of the hotel in Rome we stayed at back in ’03—a small floorplan with only one tiny elevator & one narrow staircase. One can only imagine what a bottleneck that would be during the height of the season. It was made even worse by the elevators letting out between floors. In the lobby, one had to descend a half flight to the elevator. From then on it was 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, etc. We had the choice of 2/3 or 3/4—I liked 2/3, as it allowed us to climb (I get shooting pains on any descent), John preferred 3/4 (he finds climbing more painful).