This is how an illustration of mine on paper look first with only acrylics applied, and then finally the piece finished up with colored pencils for details. I didn’t go overboard with pencils this time and put in a bit more effort to create the basic values in acrylic. The big challenge for me is definitely backgrounds, even though pin-up artists rarely draw elaborate backgrounds. But I don’t really consider myself a “pin-up artist.”

Next I will probably try using only colored pencils for an illustration. I’ve seen some gorgeous colored pencil drawings that have inspired me.

One good thing about religion and the constant tension/conflict between their illusions of “right” and “wrong” or good versus evil ideologies is that it increases the sexual perversion in, not just those who are looked upon as ‘pagans’ and whatnot, but in the religious people as well. Perversion thrives the most in societies with the harshes rules. This is why I like to draw devils and angels in old stereotypical roles, because it draws upon this concept in a very sexual way. I actually get more aroused when conservatives refer to our culture as a pagan culture of whoredom and other nonsense than if people respect it.

However, this is not what I wanted to talk about today. Instead I’m going to have to go off on a little rant about how frustrated I am with my own lack of ability to realize the images in my head. Simply put, I feel like I’m not improving.

Internally, I am very perfectionistic and demand a lot of myself and the world, though I may not show it in real life. Once I get an idea in my head I can be excited and passionate about it, but then as I’m about to get to work with it I realize I need to organize the idea and think it through, and it always kills the joy of drawing the picture for me. Everytime I finish a picture, I feel as if it’s not as good as it should have been, but at the same time I’m so exhausted from working on it that I almost don’t want to look at the illustration anymore.
I most enjoy my pictures when a lot of time has passed, and I forget about the pic. Rediscovering an old pic that looks better than I remembered is always a pleasure, but I seldom enjoy my fresh pictures. The last time I remember enjoying I finished picture of mine was when I was still improving; I could tell I had gotten myself up a little higher.

I may appear as if I have a lot of confidence and a lot of other artists on the net have been a little intimidated by my pics and think they look very artistic and professional, but in reality I feel like an underdog who still hasn’t gotten very far from the starting point.

In this image I got seriously stuck on the background. I wanted to draw a burning lake, the biblical hell, so I went with water color and looked at some water references, but all the time I painted it I felt like the 12 year old me from elementary school, desperately trying to not make my drawing look like shit.
(I don’t know why, but everytime I touch my watercolors I feel like I’m back in elementary school…)

When I look at some of the masters in the field of erotic pin-ups, like Sorayama, I still get blown away. To get every single detail so perfect and photorealistic, I used to think Sorayama and similar artists drew on very large canvas or paper, which would make the print look flawless when reduced in size, but now I know from photos and videos of his work studio that his images are exactly the same size as mine:

I want to practice and improve my skills a little, and see which type of tools are most suited to my ability and ideas.

Being busy with other things, it has been a while since I updated this blog (or drew anything for that matter). The erotic art competition came and went, and the competitors and winners were for the most part as uninteresting as ever.

I have been thinking, and honestly, I feel ‘erotic art’ is too soft for me… It is not what fuels my fire to draw. Erotic things can be experienced everywhere: with a partner, magazines, erotic cinema, classical nude art, or the current explosion of ‘erotic art’ photography.

No, when I have a desire to draw something I tend to want it to be really perverse, because that is what’s fun to draw; having the ability and imagination to just go wild and crazy with illustrations and images. To me, what was fun about art was always the crazy stuff, the Nedrum’s and the Giger’s, not the subtle “sensual erotic”. Now, every once in a while I enjoy the subtle as well, but it alone cannot fuel my passion for drawing and painting.

Besides, the main reason I’ve even been developing a subtle erotic streak is to have exhibitions and sell art, but it seems I cannot make much money that way anyway, and the winners of the erotic art competitions haven’t had much better luck selling either from what I can tell from interviews.

That’s why I’ve decided to do works that are a bit more “out there” for a while, possibly going for more of an S&M ‘niche’. This will probably make my art less popular, since it’ll be too dark and hard for average audience, and still not “pornographic” enough for the porn audience, which tend to want really mundane stuff like close-up penetrations, outrageous proportions, and other tacky, predictable, straight stuff. Ah, well. I guess I mostly draw this for my own enjoyment anyway. It is a form of self-expression after all.

Note: the pictures are a couple of older illustrations I drew back in 2008 while experimenting with acrylic, ink and colore pencils.

Right now members on ES can vote for ‘Pick Of The Week’ and the winners gets to enter the competition for free. These first 3 weeks I didn’t bother to vote since nothing really stood out and this does not even concern the real competition of what gets into the 2010 art book. The first weeks winner (June 20) was the digital piece ‘Aurous Dream’ by Jeff Wack; two beautiful naked women models lying next to eachother. It’s a flawless realistic piece that will surely win a place in the book but it’s not very exciting or daring, more like predictable.

The June 27 winner is a Mixed Media piece (photo and digital) called ‘Kim as Eve’ which is a really lame piece. It looks like some not-so-subtle special effects in a digital program was poured onto a photo of a nudist woman (she’s not even completely naked and she’s ‘Eve’?) Pictures taken of naked (or semi-naked) women in nature is by far the most common erotic/sensual photography I can think of and adding some digital effects to that isn’t making it stand out more. I thought we were voting for the world’s greatest erotic art of today, not the world’s most common erotic art of today. Besides, this is more sensual than ‘erotic’. Then again the competing entries have hardly been much better thus far. This is why I can’t be bothered to vote.

This week we got something that was better though. A photograph of a skinny model with awesome body art by the body art artist Paul Roustan. I guess it’s under mixed media due to it being both photography and body art. The black hole in her chest looks digital though, in fact on closer look it looks like an error mistake and my eyes gets fixed on it. Somehow that’s still the best part that completes the pic for me and makes it stand out. I’m hoping it gets to be in the book since I would like to see this pic up close… Though maybe I’m just biased since I love skinny girls (feels compatible with my own body type) and women expressing ‘annihilation’ while still maintaining their beauty.

For next week I did vote for a few pics that actually had male-female interaction.

One of my biggest pet-peeves with erotic art is some of the attempt at humor, which, more often than not is borderline infantile. In fact, I might even go as far as to say that erotica + comedy = porn. The porn industry is famous for making tacky but humorous “parodies” of popular movies or TV shows to appeal to the market with titles like Dexxxter about a young detective named Dexxxter Whoregan from Miami’s Department of Sex Crimes. It gets unsexy real fast. Heck, the real Dexter show is sexier than it’s worthless porn parody. An excerpt from a review:

“Dexxxter is quite possibly one of the worst porno’s you could watch. Not only is it unwatchable from an acting standpoint, the sex scenes are so bad that they’ll cease to have any blood flow to your naughty bits. Aside from Nikki Rhodes, there’s not one person in this movie that you would ever want to watch have sex. It looks like half the actors were hired off the street at the last minute.”
- Movies on Film

Comedy and lazy production is the bane of eroticism in art. It is what we recognize as porn. Even the nudity on cable shows is sexier and more erotic than 95% of all porn. Humor is also a frequent ingredient in cartoon sex that has got a lot of websites devoted to it, but no-one in their right mind would recognize that as good art. It’s tawdry and cheap camp, plain and simple. Of course if you’re happy with our ‘nothing is holy’ post-modern existence then you probably don’t mind eating that stuff up.

One painting I did during art-school called ‘Cinema’ (acrylic on canvas.) Some students thought it was meant to show ‘prostitution’ because it came off as dark rather than erotic. Maybe sometimes it is better to leave things up to people’s imagination.

And finally this years erotic art competition has now kicked off. I’ll be keeping an eye on that and probably comment on it later in the summer.

Tried out my latest colored pencils on a portrait based on a nice and sleazy photograph for practice. Need to think a little more about where I want to take my art. So many ideas, so little time, (and so few that cares)…

So I’ve been looking for dark classical music in the public domain for a project but have been pretty disappointed in what I’ve found so far. I got no shortage of recommendations but almost nothing really came close to that of even an average anime soundtrack. When someone mentioned Hector Berlioz’ ‘Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath’ from Symphonie Fantastique, I really wanted to like it – hoping it would be symphonic music that would paint similar atmosphere as the dark ceremonies seen in Berserk or Bible Black, but of course it had to sound more like something out of an early 20th century broadway musical… Oh well, there’s always Carl Orff’s O Fortuna, but still I don’t know why classical music never did sound majestically dark. I guess they wanted to appeal to the religious masses with ‘lighter’ and positive music. Carmina Burana was written in Germany during World War II after all. I guess Nietzsche was right – humans really do need pain to produce good art.

Continuing with the horror theme, this was the last one I did (last year) mixing goth, dark atmosphere, blood, and lusty girls… acrylic and color pencil on paper.

Somehow I’m more satisfied with these dark artworks from an artistic standpoint than the purely erotic pieces.

I’ve always been drawn to dark and disturbing subject matter. Even as a kid I was attracted to things that disturbed me, in contrast to my parents who would shut out, resist, and avoid anything that would upset their ‘peace of mind’ – which always annoyed the hell out of me. They basically wanted me to be a little angel but I was always more interested in the demonic aspects of humanity. Horror B-movies have always complemented my otherwise esoteric interests and mature deeper films. I drew this dramatic artwork with a gothic/horror theme titled ‘Red Moon’ back in 2007 using ink, acrylic and color pencils on paper. Some feedback I got can be read here:










One thing I found interesting was that the people who commented on my horror artworks were mostly female. It reminded me of a debate I read on a horrorfilm forum some years back where people were discussing why there was so few women getting tortured in movies (though they do get raped alot) and why directors often “pussy out” when it comes to depicting women getting killed in films – to which someone left this reply:

“I disagree with you CB101, women getting tortured is only funny sometimes. Mostly it’s highly erotic.

I love all the beautiful twisted mess we writhe in, and embrace so called “deviancy” as part of what we are as human beings.

- Anonymous

Now I doubt all women have rape fantasies or find women getting tortured highly erotic (if my mother and several art-school students I’ve met is anything to go by) so I would assume that it is a certain personality type, probably similar to mine, and also very passionate people, who have this trait.

But then I also remembered that the infamous women-serial-killer Ted Bundy got hundreds of love letters, after getting incarcerated, from girls who described rape and murder fantasies that they wanted him to do to them – something that almost disturbed the male population as much as Ted’s actual serial killings. So at the least sex and death seems to have some primal appeal to alot of humans, thus it shouldn’t be neglected in art.

Another gory illustration of mine, depicting a kind of ‘female Dracula’, got me some praise from one chick that even called me a “genius”, can’t get better praise than that, even though I feared this pic would scare everyone away from my gallery haha.

On that note, I’ve recently enjoyed the first season of the successful cable show Spartacus: Blood and Sand, a show that really fetishises violence, but it’s appealing to me since it do resonate with a part of my soul and reinforces the fact that behind all the intellectualism I may have I sure do enjoy getting down and dirty in a very animalistic way if I’m allowed.

Drew this one back in art-school using chinese ink with brush. I have not used ink lately since I mess up far too often. I am tempted to try it again though. Unlike alot of other sexual pics I made in art-school, this one was rather well-liked.

Another self-portrait drawing. It’s a homage to Luis Royo’s awesome heavy-metal illustration ‘Communion’, except instead of some fantasy princess fucking a cyborg monster among rats it’s swedish supermodel Elin Grindemyr riding my dead zombie corpse.

I was a fan of classic 60′s-80′s fantasy art growing up. One of my main drives and motivations for learning how to draw human anatomy came from a desire to also work with fantasy themed art when I was a teenager. I kinda lost interest in it after being a member of Elfwood back in 2000-2002, and I found myself becoming interested in more varied themes and expressions instead, not to mention more sexual themes. This erotic fairy themed pic was made in homage to such fantasy art. Acrylic and colored pencil on paper.

Back in 2008 I got a question from Triebel Tattoo – a tattooist wanting someone to draw him “a zombie love scene”; two characters, graphic intercourse. Unfortunately the guy never decided to commission me, and I don’t know if he got someone else to draw it for him, but I eventually went ahead and drew something along the lines anyway since I dug the idea. Tried to make it dirty and yet horrific in a macabre way. Acrylic and color pencil on paper.

Last week saw the end of an online art site which focus was on “original erotica” (later described as “original character erotica”) to combat and provide an alternative to art sites like dA that has become a breeding ground for fanart and other derivative works.

I was a member on this particular site since 2007 but never felt like I belonged there so this news that the site pulled the plug due to lack of money doesn’t really bother me. The problem was that it seemed to only attract various types of geeks who only wanted to draw their own cartoon “characters” – give them a name, draw them in their own “original” Anime “style”, make up a short mundane or cliché story about who this original cartoon character of theirs is, and then expect everyone else to dig it, draw fanart porn of it, and generally masturbate over their boring cartoon characters as if it was no different from the famous commercial characters found in actual comics and video games!

It was awful. I confronted the community about it (especially when they started saying that their “art” had as much value as any fine art painting) wondering why everyone was so obsessed with fucking “characters” and only got pathetic cries of me being “pretentious” shot at me along with other comments suggesting I was somehow offending them. (Seriously, the weaker they are the louder they bark…)

It bugged me that there were no real erotic artists signing up, no pin-up artists, no fine artists, nothing abstract or truly original. I figured it mostly had to do with the site originally being called “HentaiSha” which contained the word “hentai” meaning mainly Anime fans would be attracted to it. True enough, Art with Anime style got the most visitors and comments, but eventually the site changed name and the problem still remained. After some discussion, and me pointing out some flaws in the presentation of the site, the site runners decided that instead of aiming for high erotic content, it’s focus should be mainly on (surprise) “original character erotica” but that other types of art, like traditional media, fine art, etc, type art was welcomed too.

The sad thing is, all those interesting and truly original artists merely got lost in the cartoon garbage, and the site never attracted any genuine sensual people (the few that showed up soon left) and all that was left were video gamers who spent their time reviewing games and anime with very little discussion about art or sexuality. There was never any desire to elaborate their sexuality through their drawings, nor any attempt to express something genuinly artistic. Most of them merely desired to get into the video game business so that one day they’d create their own famous video games with famous characters that kids would draw fanart of and masturbate to. It was so disgustingly hypocritical that I simply couldn’t stand it there any longer, even though I got plenty of comments and positive feedback there.
You can read a few of them here:

The only real erotic art community I’ve come across that isn’t obsessed with cartoon art is ES, but, even though they’ve got new artists signing up constantly, they’ve got almost no casual visitors or people looking through artists pictures. I got more visitors in a day on a cartoon porn art community than I got for 4 months on a professional erotic art community. *Sigh* It’s a sad world we live in.

This pic done in 2008 is sort of a later follow up to my other bondage orgy pic (seen here), except this time the chicks are in charge. It was originally going to be “indoors” but dark backgrounds tend to absorb the leather clothes so I went with red and suddenly it became a painting-like outdoor view, like a bizarre fantasy world of some kind, and I liked it. The composition share some elements with classic painting. I had a hard time with some details that didn’t end up looking quite right, but I didn’t want to risk messing it up further by trying to repaint things.

I decided to give the girls some guns so they would come off as more intimidating. I like peril art and like to mix it up with erotic themes.

Femdom
Contrary to popular belief, women are actually not submissive by nature. They are, in fact, rather equal minded. Which means that they are not naturally more dominant either. Dominating women, or being dominated by women, both are extremely masculine fantasies. Feminists have often criticized that the modern take-charge image of women is not the ideal role they want to fill, but that they should be treated with equal respect without being dominant or submissive. However this is an alien concept to the masculine mind and instinct. If men are not allowed to be subordinate to women, because women claim that men and women are equal, then the only other option men percieve as comfortable, or “natural”, is to dominate women. This is why feminism makes no sense to men, because it is about sexual equality, but most men just wants to know where they stand in the pecking order. “Do they take charge, or should we?”

Matriarchy
In extremely ancient prehistoric times men used to worship women. Men loved women, revered and even obeyed women. This can be determined from the large amount of Goddess statues discovered in prehistoric excavation that humans once held women in very high esteem. With women having control, there was little to no war or conflict. But out of respect for men, women desired equality and let go of their power. When this happened, the males started taking orders from alpha males instead. This comes from a fundamental submissive streak of the masculine sex that they feel the need for someone to take charge of them, as seen with the countless soldiers who follow their military leaders religiously even when it’s madness.

In those days the peoples did not grasp the link between sexual intercourse and pregnancy and research indicates that sexual intercourse occurred from early ages and pregnancy only occurred much later, seemingly unrelated to the sexual activity. Thus women seemingly produced children mysteriously, without necessary links to the man or men with whom they had sex. When realization of paternity occurred, men started acting to claim a power to monopolize women and claim their offspring as possessions and patriarchy began.

Masculine desire for submission, discipline and obedience
The average man could be far better off living in a Matriarchy than the present patriarchal system, simply because patriarchy doesn’t benefit the average man. It only benefits the very small minority of alpha men who ruthlessly exploits the general population and do stupid things like start wars with other countries. Female rulers would care about the people they rule and wouldn’t be interested in fighting wars to settle disputes between countries. However, a clear streak of domination from female rulers would be necessary to make men feel comfortable and obedient, especially after all the patriarchal propaganda which has prevented boys from accepting their submissive behaviour without feeling ‘unmanly’, and women have difficulty accepting that it is natural for them to dominate men. Thus with womens desire for “equal rights” rather than domination, not to mention a strong sexual attraction towards strong assertive men, this system is difficult to implement in reality.

I made this illustration back in 2007 using acrylic, ink, watercolor and colored pencils on paper. It was the first pic of two intended illustrations depicting first men dominating girls, and a second pic of girls dominating boys. (I’ll post the second later. Edit; here.)

Back then I still drew out the contour in ink like one would do in comics. Looking at it now I sometimes miss that style. When I first published it online I got a few comments, so I’ll repost one of them here:
“Well done…you did a great job on the ropework. One could almost learn to rig from that.”
- Anonymous

Maledom
Males have, throughout the majority of history, desired a control over females, which, I guess, can be traced back to a fundamental insecurity about what women would do if they were allowed free reign. After all, they are the only ones who truly knows who is the father of their child, and unless exercising absolute control, men could find themselves at their mercy. At the same time, back in the more violent primitive times, women would often be in need of protection from men, and so ultimately they were dependent on each other. (I guess they could do without each other now though…)

Rape fantasies
Some men would say that only men who are “sick” would have fantasies of rape, but history shows (and most women probably know) that a majority of men’s primal sexual desire will show little regard for the well-being of women. Even the ancient holy texts make this fact blatantly clear;
“Here is my virgin daughter and his concubine. Please let me bring them out that you may ravish them and do to them whatever you wish.”
(- Judges 19:24, Holy Bible)
(Svenska: Domarboken 19:16-30 “Se, här är min dotter som är jungfru och mannens bihustru. Dem vill jag föra ut till er, så kan ni våldta dem och göra med dem vad ni finner för gott.)

For this and other reasons the relationship between men and women will always be filled with tension and conflict.

I’m thinking of making a few illustrations based on biblical stories and anecdotes in the future. The Bible is a good source for sex and perverse stories.

Going to use my own body more in my pictures. Finally acquired a digital camera so I can take loads of reference shots. I have drawn some self-portraits before but it was a long time ago. I didn’t know that I had impossible-to-draw lips. Actually, I probably should have drawn on a larger canvas and skipped the colored pencils, but they’re just too much fun.

Maybe I’ll re-do this one in the future. The photo I took actually came out nicer, maybe I should stick to photography instead? …Nah.

Attempted to draw something on larger paper, and choose a darker motif with witchcraft and ritualistic orgies. I think I went overboard with the colored pencils in this one though, it became much more waxy/crayon-y than I had planned. I guess I need to work more on my acrylic technique or go larger on canvas.
Next time, I think I’ll be mixing the acrylic paint with water and see if I get a better surface to work with. Acrylic dries really fast, hence the reason why I do details with colored pencils in the first place.

Not entirely happy with the colored end result this time, but at least I didn’t draw any cropped men so the scene itself turned out like I wanted.

Since I did a critical review of an Erotic Art book that attempted to have a sophisticated take on Erotic Art, I thought I’d take a look at the other end of the spectrum as well. Here we find something often referred to as “Hentai” which is a japanese word originating in the west from Anime/Manga fans that in japanese basically translates to “abnormal; perverted”.

Since I don’t want to use ‘racist terms’ like “pornography” to denounce certain types of art (given the fact that there is some hentai from japanese artists that I think is incredibly creative and fun) I’ll have to come up with some kind of formula for determining what differs between what I consider “good art” from “bad art.”

I should probably start by mentioning that I do not consider pictures or paintings to be the highest form of art. To me “high art” are expressions or works that induces an almost religious or “spiritual” like experience in the viewer. Although I suppose an old oil painting created by a master painter might induce that feeling, especially if viewed in real life:

“I walked into the Clark Museum, Williamstown, Mass. to see their thirty Renoirs, and after leaving the Renoir galleries walked out into a major hall, at the end of which was a painting that grabbed me body and soul. It was a life-size painting of four water nymphs playfully dragging a mythological satyr into a lake against his will. Frozen in place, gawking with my mouth agape, cold chills careening up and down my spine; I was virtually gripped as if by a spell that had been cast. It was so alive, so beautiful and so compelling. Finally, after about fifteen or twenty minutes of soaking up wave after wave of artistic and spiritual ecstasy, I started to take back control of my consciousness…..my mind started racing with unanswered questions. My first thought was “I haven’t felt this way about a work of art since I stood before Michelangelo’s David.”

- Fred Ross, upon seeing Bouguereau’s Nymphs and Satyr painting.

I would say that Bouguereau’s Nymphs and Satyr is the very definition of both “art” and “erotic”, but ironically this painter has all but been erased from the art history books by modernists since they apparently hate realism and preferred to promote Manet, Corot, Courbet, Renoir and those who led the way to Modern Art instead.

Then there are artists like Giger, who doesn’t make “erotic art” as much as he does ‘art about sex’ and other subjects that may lead to decadence and dystopia in the future. (Or, at least, that’s my interpretation of his art.) This is another type of painting that can connect with people ‘spiritually’.

So here we are in this digital age now where we’ve got everyone and their mother subscribing to DeviantArt and other online art sites, usually painting purely digitally, and the most dominating art of all tends to be “fan art” – works that incorporates famous fictional characters, especially famous ‘cartoon’ characters from various commercial works such as Film, Animation, Video games, and comic books.

‘Hentai’, although not by definition, is known to be the pornographic equivalent of this trend.

One of the most known and visited artists on the net is REIQ, who pretty much makes a living on fan art and hentai. His fans even praise him for being “original and unique” even though it’s pretty much the same escapist cartoon ‘camp’ that boy teenagers have masturbated to for the past century. His illustration style is heavily borrowed from japanese Anime which has a ‘low art’ status both in and outside Japan despite its popularity.

Surface is everything to REIQ; it’s all there is. Like a lot of Japanese artists REIQ is a craftmaster-whiz of flawless visual effects. His digital cartoony paintings are so immaculate you will think a machine made them. Magically vapid, these Pygmalion/Barbie/Sex Toy-things are less than spectacle and more than mere technical accomplishments. But all is not right.

Other people have given him harder critique:

On his personal blog REIQ expressed how he felt making his art:



“I know some will think it’s cool to draw hentai, but frankly sometimes I feel like I don’t want to draw more this kind of stuff anymore, I feel like factory producing art without any personal satisfaction. I ask my self if this is what I really want, I think it’s not, but if I see it as a job then it has some logic”

- REIQ

He says he feels isolated from reality while drawing and ends up feeling lonely. The reason for this is because he is not using erotic art as a means of communication or explore any of its spiritual dimensions. It’s all created for instant gratification, making him self-label as a “pervert artist” who lives life like a secret agent with double personality because of his own self-loathing.

He has missed the whole point of creating erotic art where ‘communication’ and exploring the spiritual dimensions of sexuality is key to make it feel worthwhile.