art

[egypturnash]

"I have occasionally kicked around the idea of doing a coffee table-style book: The History Of Furry Porn." - ursulav
"Dude. This is a perfect opportunity for a group effort. I think Arphalia and me are going to have to battle it out for the Noveau-era porn..." - me
"(link to glamorous noveau porn drawn a few hours later)" - arphalia
"(draws this)" - me

(excerpted from comments on this friends-only entry in pseudomanitou's LJ)


The Seduction of a Metaphor
(bandwidth:vcl)

This is the first time I've done a finished piece with outlines in forever. You really have to have outlines to nail the Art Noveau Hair, and having strong outlines printed in a color besides black is also good for a lot of points of Noveauness.

In case you haven't noticed yet, I like raccoons. They're the only kind of critter I have more than one example of as an active character I play on a muck, unless you count the two sequential variations of a crazy butterfly. This does not mean that any girl raccoon I draw is Me, though this one has much the same arrangement of sexual characteristics I do. I have a nicer ass, though.

The sketch started out as a cheetah, for no immediately obvious reason, and got revised into a raccoon. Weird.

(Addendum, May 27: removed from DA. OH NO PORN. *shrug*)

Comments

[thaily.livejournal.com]

The chapter on cute male gay porn would be huge ;)

[thaily.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, so would the chapter on Doug Winger.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Well, the joke is that it's a fake history - it'd have furry porn styled after assorted movements and methods from history.

But yeah. Gay males, improbably buxom girls, and... gender-bends aplenty.

[thaily.livejournal.com]

Like... Cubist furry smut?
Or furry smut done by Piet Mondriaan.. Hrmm..

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

You got it! Ursula mentioned a few that tempt her, like Kley and old Japanese woodcut prints in the original thread.

And, hell... I've drawn semi-Cubist furry nudes.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

We need a Robert Indiana pop-art raccoon with LOVE all over her! <3 (Or maybe a Charles Demuth vixen with a huge figure five in gold...)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

You've also done Rothko color-field furry portraits.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Good point. I've already done some travelling around art history with a smile and a bad attitude, haven't I? Obviously, I should do more lest I stagnate.

[neillparatzo.livejournal.com]

WINGER-SIZE ME.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Is that like Jazzercize?

*whump flubble whump flubble whump flubble*

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

Dibs on Magritte.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Okay. Ready to do the careful texture and shading that makes so much surrealist work feel Real?

[jenkatb4u.livejournal.com]

I could do the philistine styles. c.c; I've had plenty of practice already!

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

Oh...lord....*grin*

I knew that was gonna come back to haunt me!

It does have a nice visual flair, although for some reason I always associate your work more with Art Deco...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the mechanical precision of my work is more Deco than Noveau. They're interrelated, and there's a lot of hidden Noveau in my work. Mardi Gras in the seventies was chock full of Noveau, after all, and WInsdor McCay's very Noveau Little Nemo was an early addiction.

And... it's such a tempting idea, isn't it? Porn Through History.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

See below. The background, especially, on this piece reminds me of some of the retro comic artists that seem to be referring to old printing processes -- Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan stuff is a big one. Very precise and orderly, not quite Deco but it puts me in mind of 1930's newspaper illustration for some reason. What you have going here doesn't strike me as quite florid enough to be pure Nouveau -- in my very limited knowledge of art history -- but it's a nice hybrid and I'd love to see you do more in this style.

Besides, it'll keep you from doing something nasty like a Daniel Clowes or Peter Bagge homage -- although I will note that if you did an anarchopunk riff, like Seth Tobocman or Winston Smith or Peter Kuper, Rik would probably [brings you in close and whispers lurid details] until you [mumble mumble mumble] and had to do laundry again.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It's somewhere in between. Keep in mind that my biggest conscious Nouveau-slightly-Deco influence is Winsdor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland (the strip ran from 1095 to 1914), which was definitely Newspaper Illustration. I'm aware of Mucha's tropes as the Incarnation of Art Nouveau; the only one I really used was the hair. And yeah, it needs more flowers and vines and stuff. I'm just not enough of a plant-lover to really do Nouveau properly. My initial mental image of the big abstract element included more overtly-floral elements, but it got lost somewhere in the process. I don't know if I'll do much more in this method; using outlines feels like a step backwards in my artistic journey, even when they're an integral part of the image's design.

I have this giant tome of the whole strip's run, too giant to really wrestle with to scan excerpts. Someday you will see it, because McCay is, quite possibly, one of the first artists I was conscious of Being Influenced By. Maybe I should throw it into the suitcase when I come out for Anthrocon...

And there is no way I'd do a Bagge rip! I find all his drawings to be ugly, and unpleasant to look at.

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

Here, I've done a furry parody of Peter Bagge (http://www.conmicro.cx/~kturtle/misc/furrybagge.gif). Now nobody else in the world will ever have to do one!

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

Going back and reexamining the original pic, I've decided I really love that particular style, and I might be forced at some point to keep you captive in my apartment for a month or longer, while you are given/deprived of regular croppings until we complete a psychedelic romantic science-fantasy in this look together...

In short: coongirl needs airships. Coongirl WANTS airships. And a maid with three eyes to provide "local color." And outfits that would make Barbarella howl. You can just see it in her eyes.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I might be forced at some point to keep you captive in my apartment for a month or longer

Okay!

until we complete a psychedelic romantic science-fantasy

Mmm. You can provide story and encouragement and Certain Distractions. And spankings and Certain Rewards. What does coongirl do in this world of the Future of the Early Nineteen Hundreds, modulo the dreams and hopes of denizens of the Early Two Thousands? Does she have a name, a Secret Goal? Does she ever need a gun?

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

Well, how do we reconcile the two of her? How does she get from a scattered, gloating miscreant to an elegant, serene seductress?

I think she's some kind of thief on the Arsene Lupin/Raffles/Rififi model. She eventually gets embroiled in the byzantine interdimensional politics of her world and becomes a secret agent, in something more like the Cate Archer/Modesty Blaise/Emma Peel mode. She's been known to carry a gun, but she's never needed to fire anything but warning shots. She usually conceals a knife on her person -- you don't even want to know where and how, given how she's dressed -- but it usually just hacks through ropes, which seem to end up around her wrists with uncanny frequency.

No ideas about names, but this is a great resource. Something central European? I'd try "Arsenne," because I like the faint cognate with "arsenic," but that'd be too obvious.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I think the very different finishing styles might reflect inner mental states in the character. Or very different states of the world. I've seen people do this to great effect now and then, though almost never in mainstream comics, and I can't think of any examples offhand... I think you'd probably find several in Matt Howarth's work, and you'd likely find more than a few in Sam Kieth's comics, as well. Something's happening in the newer image, either internally or externally.

Fragment I drew last night. Just fooling around and thinking on the artboard. I might do it up and see how quickly I can finish stuff in variant styles with very very simple color harmonies.

Also I thought about it last night and ended up doing worldbuilding rather than character stuff: if her world is the Floating Rocks, I nominate it being an orbital environment, possibly a Smoke Ring, possibly a big bubble of air. That seems like a pleasant place to have retrotech adventures. Although it kinda doesn't work with the Modernist Mega-Architecture thing; little chunks of rock only give room for modest cities, at best. But it does offer lots of opportunities for zeppelins.

Thief/agent kinda works. It might be a little too much playing into the common stereotype of the raccoon in furry fandom as a kleptomaniac prone to conspiracy for its own sake, but I'm not aware of anyone who's done that much with it outside of how they play one on a mu*. And it offers opportunities for all kinds of exotic locales and visual approaches.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

late-night notes. yes, high-end thief with morals works for me.

I did an IM scene with ovon involving her and a high-ranking person on the Other Side who'd just caught her red-handed: she was quite polite about it and let him(? we never even quite pinned that down) cuff her and threaten her most deliciously. they implied this was far from the first time this'd happened, to the point of her making a bet on when she'd manage to escape, after a week or two of being "tortured" and "punished". she's such a show-off that she casually picked the lock holding her hands behind her head, caressed him, then locked herself back up.

the officer/miscreant romance is far from an original element in this sort of tale, but it certainly makes for fun banter. so there's a possible recurring character... a spymaster on another side of politics, who she always seems to get captured by and always manages to escape from, after a few weeks.

sex stays just off-screen, i think. the erection-and-gown drawing might never appear. but insinuating she's a total pervert is fine by me! (i'm not too comfortable with the idea of doing a sex comic...) i wonder if her genitals will ever be a story point, with sex firmly off-camera...

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Wow. The refinements you've made since I last saw this piece have really brought it together -- the clean outlining on her hair, the background. I love it.

I suppose this is within the same period as Kin's Robert Indiana vixen, but I would love to see you do something with a Peter Max/Yellow Submarine/deco-psychedelic style. It would suit your amazing skills with line, although, horror of horrors, you'd have to use a lot of primary colors. ;)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The background took a while to get right. It felt like I spent as much time on it as I did on the figure - though losing a bit of work in the "inking" stage, and a brief flurry of crashes related to that, made it seem like the figure took forever, a few times.

Mm. The odd thing is this: I've tried doing psychedelic-era graphics, and just can't. Maybe I don't have enough material handy; the main things I've seen from the Sixties are, well, cartoons. Sixties cartoons were resolutely apsychedelic. I have a vague glancing idea of psychedelic tropes but no real knowlege of them... I've never really tried drawing in the specific zone of Yellow Submarine's design because I'm loathe to draw "in the style of <movie>". it's such a Fannish Thing, my instincts say.

Primary colors. I've fought so hard against that tendency to go straight to the default, super-saturated palette that all the computer programs give you by default. I clear out the starter swatches, I mute my hues... maybe someday I should deliberately throw myself deep into the abyss of SCREAMING COLOR. Although I'm sure it'd still come out with a pretty limited palette.

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

(I can only wonder about the ref to Pseudo's post...) It's a lovely drawing, Peggy! Linework!!!! I have a weakness for that. Truly lovely, sweeping curves. Usually wonderful, subtle palette, too.

This history you refer to is sort of the tack I've always taken with my own stuff; I don't approach furry art as an outsider, meaning that I don't draw furs as if they're something apart. I try to draw the art furs would have if they were 'real,' hence the abstract, cubist stuff. The recent series I've been working on for "Arro Swimwear" is an even more conscious attempt. I'd personally love to see an attempt at what you suggest, even if porn isn't my thing. :"D There's a very subtle step that I don't think most folks take in assuming the furry 'world.' The book you propose definitely do that.

Don't lines feel warm and fuzzy? :"D

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Linework is something I consider one of my weak spots, to be honest! A while back, I made a conscious decision to give up trying to learn how to do Nice, Controlled, Friendly Brush Inking like every comics-influenced artist does; once I made that choice, it was easy to move on to just abandoning line altogether. (A choice partially influenced by a little bon mot in an nth-generation Xerox of some notes on inbetweening. Something about being concerned with the masses of color, not the lines that hold them in.)

I've had the same attitude referenced in my work. Most people who do this stuff come from a fantasy/SF documentary tradition - they want to make the unreal seem Real, make it plausible and Right. But we treat the "fabulous" content as given, and explore stylization and abstraction. Most of the people whose art I enjoy do this to some degree. It says a lot that the Big-Name SF Artist I'd most like to swipe the style of is the very expressionistic Richard Powers.

Lines feel... weird... to me. They're an additional element to have to manage in terms of color and overlap issues. More paths to pull out, almost doubling the amount of work. I'm not used to lines at all for anything beyond a quick doodle. I have to manage the line-weights, something I kinda botched here - there're certain line-weight rules I see in most Noveau stuff, that I completely failed to adhere to in some important parts.

The palette, however, I think I nailed. It's a nice, simple, faded thing.

(Pseudo's post was some ruminations on the artistic failings of most furry porn. It was locked to, pretty much, Other Furry Artists Who Read His LJ. Ursula went off on a silly tangent with the 'porn through history' idea, and this was a result.)

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

Weakness or not, you can sure do it when you want to! Me? I LOVE lines. I've been told I love them too much and not enough. For me, that's where the drawing starts and a good deal of where it ends as well. The flat, lineless color area thing is an approach I've made few times. And even then, for me, there's lines. I'll admit; working with an old copy of AI, lines aren't as fun as they are in the more recent versions. I'd love to be able to brush digitally as I do manually.

Still, know that you can do lines if you want to!

Thanks for the hints on Pseudo's LJ. I wouldn't have known otherwise. :"D

[shizouka.livejournal.com]

Oh, thats very nice.. adoreable!

[ovon.livejournal.com]

Oh, yum.

That's a very Art-Nouveau cock too, somehow. *nod*

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It is. It's a demure little thing, with the one gradient in the entire picture. A dainty, soft member.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

That colonnade is creepy. Or maybe it just reminds me of Jim Woodring, who is creepy.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

You know, you're right. I didn't think of Woodring, but it reminds me of a lot of other contemporary cartoonists. I don't have the vocabulary or breadth of experience to put it into words or names, but it definitely reminds me of some familiar trends in illustration.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The design she's standing in front of, or the sinuous supposed-to-be-a-railing that snakes behind her? Part of the creepiness in the big design element might be that it's the one intrusion of Flat Abstract Design into this otherwise dimensional piece - here she is, in this loosely-defined but deep space, stretching off to distant mountains, and there's this thing between her and the world that reminds you it's a drawing, that's this weird spirally repetitive Thing.

And I knew from the start that I wanted her standing in front of a big, flat, spirally-flowery Noveau abstraction.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

No, the railing. It's eerie... it fills me with preternatural loathing.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

Wow, love, you work fast! Also... dare I ask... who gets to do whassisname Art Fromm, the panties-around-the-ankles-with-celery guy? :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The scan of the pencils is dated 12:21 PM. The final Illustrator file is dated 11:57 PM. So... about twelve hours from final rough to final image. With some technical digressions, a break to watch and join in on a bit of naughtiness on Puzzlebox, a few bits of lengthy e-mail regarding the freelance I'll be starting soon, and other digressions like, you know. Food.

A little longer than normal, because I had to work out the methods for doing the lines like this, and there were a couple crashes at a crucial point.

---

*climbs on top of you, hissing, and bites hard on your shoulderblade* Dear, Art Frahm is not an important part of the grand sweep of style and technique and technology through the ages. *spanks you with a stick of celery until it shatters*

[wolphyn.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* If this actually happens, I'd love to try one of those "fat, flat chick" Renaissance-type paintings even though that wasn't strictly pornography. Hell, I'll do it anyway when the next round of inspiration/motiviation strikes.

Great hair, cool background elements, and it's always enjoyable for me to see non-typical sexuality in this day and age instead of yet another 'Absolutely' female figure with saline DDs or another 'Absolute' male with 12 inches and so much in the way of hard muscle that it'd be like having sex with a boulder.

Is that imagery of Arphalia's available publically?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was fun to deliberately work in half-functioning memories of a style that's not quite Me. I don't think this really qualifies as PORN either. It's just... a cute girl standing there, looking aroused and inviting. It's not full of motion and fluids and gasps and moans and tension and clawing and stuffing-things-full.

The hair is so easy to do when you have the power of the Appearance Palette at your disposal...

The image she did that spawned this one is half-finished, the last I saw it. If she finishes and posts it, I'll make sure to point to it. I mean, it's a battle for my honor in images! It must be documented!

[chirik.livejournal.com]

Hmm, lots of good comments, so I can't really add anything. Very nice picture, though - I love the way you can do different styles.

Admittedly, porn isn't my thing, though, but it's a nice piece ignoring that. ;-)