Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Quick, close your virgin eyes!


Alright, I know some of my family reads this blog, so I'm asking that you pretend you didn't see this post...okay? Just erase it from your memory-banks right now. It's all much more innocent than it looks, I promise! I wasn't going to post this, but then I thought, "hey, I gotta' express myself, AND the many different facets of my personality!" So here we go...

This past weekend I went to the New York Erotic Art Fair. It was quite an interesting event. It was sponsored by the Tom of Finland Foundation, and held at the NY LGBT Community Center in the West Village. I was expecting to see lots of low, looooow brow art, and possibly some amusing "nephew-art" as well, but all in all, I was impressed by the overall quality of the work on display.

Mind you, it wasn't the Met, but like I said, I was pleasantly surprised by the craftmanship within many of the images on display. Of course, they were all relegated to the theme of erotic art, but it was amazing to see all the diversity within that parameter. I thought several of the artist's were amazing, and it was a fun change from the stuffy, classical antiquity you see in regular museums.

Not only did they have lots of art, but they also had continuous life drawing sessions running all day, free and open to anyone! It was fun. I used to attend (and run) a weekly life drawing session in Atlanta, but I have yet to join a drawing group here in NY, so I took advantage of the free opportunity to sketch some models.

And of course, since it was an erotic art fair, the models were encouraged to pose nude in more...ahem...suggestive poses! Some of them went way beyond the rules enforced in your everday life drawing session, which was fascinating to see, just for the spectacle of it all! I included one of my sketches above. It's from a pose of two burly fellows who, over the course of the ten minutes they were on display, got friskier and friskier with each other. From a technical point of view, it was really challenging to draw figures interacting with one another, especially in such a dramatic way. From a perv point of view, it was JUST FUN!

I plan to go back whenever they offer more figure drawing of this nature again. Heh heh...

6 comments:

Pixie Sprinkle said...

It's very strange how they both kept their shoes on.

JustMe said...

Yeah, I thought it was strange, too. I guess they thought adding feet to the mix would be a little too titilating!

andrea said...

ahhhhh, MY VIRGIN EYES! just kidding. fascinating story (the life drawing sessions always seem to produce the most interesting stories)... anyway, very cool to see this style of drawing from you-- I'm so used to your illustrative and design-oriented work. not that I ever doubted you had the skills.

(I thought those were socks... were they shoes? did they really keep them on the entire time? that is REALLY FUNNY)

MareAmaro said...

nice socks.reminds a bit of kate kollwitz drawings

Anonymous said...

love it! great drawing, great story.

JustMe said...

andrea - Thanks. It's weird for me to post a drawing like this, because it's definitely more "academic" looking, but I wanted to throw something different up for a change. I'm so immersed in my commercial style, day to day, so it's nice to go back to the basics occasionally.

And yes, those are shoes, but they do look like socks, don't they! I guess since I left the shoes unfinished, they look more sock-like. To me, leaving either on while posing nude is funny!

I should've drawn them with really fancy shoes. That would be silly.

piero - I checked out Kate Kollwitz's work. It's amazing! I'm honored to have anything compared to her work! Thanks.

michelle/weaker vessel - Thanks for the compliments. Did you stop by from Andrea's site? I'll have to check out your blog.