The Revenge of Adorable Gwen

I don’t remember when I first saw the drawings of John Willie. It might have been in the eighties as I was getting to know all the kinky greats …Stanton, Bilbrew, Harukawa. I was impressed by the quality of the artwork, sure, but the plot of the stories? …a sleazy cad (Sir Darcy) tying up and tormenting a beautiful maiden (Sweet Gwendoline) ? …no, definitely not my thing! so unfortunately it did not connect with me. I was looking for similar quality of artwork where he would get tormented by her … yes that was it ! a femdom Gwendoline ! but for some reason it wasn’t there.

John Willie’s original cartoon strip “Sweet Gwendoline”

Much later I decided to make a series of drawings of just such a situation with no thought of sales, just as I thought it needed to be done. 

In my rendering Sweet Gwendoline has matured and discovered her dominant aspect and now takes revenge on Sir Darcy for all her previous suffering. There was no idea of a plot at all. I simply added scenes as they occured to me , in each of which Sir Darcy would be placed in a terrible predicament by Sweet Gwendoline aided occasionally one of her friends. These have been published on websites and are quite well-known, but for a few years they were left simply a series of seven paintings.

Then last year I reviewed them all and thought that a story might bind the series together . However an extra scene of the meeting of Sweet Gwendolyn and Sir Darcy after so many years needed to be added to provide an introduction . 

That brought the number of artworks up to eight.

I therefore called on the services of long time colleague and friend Irv O Neil to ‘novelise’ the series …to shape it with his fine literary talents into a story around the artwork, connecting the pictures into a logical story and to evolve the world called Masotopia in which everything took place.

As he writes in his blog…

And so, with a few tweakings I gave to the names, our heroine became Adorable Gwen aka Mistress Gwen; Agent U-89 became Agent 399 aka Mistress Carlotta; and Sir d’Arcy became Sir D’Evious Dalrymple. On a visit to a unique femdom resort in the Carpathian Mountains, which Sardax dubbed “Masotopia,” off went my imagination along with Sir D’Evious to see what happened in a castle compound full of dommes ruling over those members of 1930s English and European male society who craved the firm hand of Feminine Rule!

So well was it was written and so consistently constructed one might almost have thought that it was I who had illustrated his novel. 

So 8 paintings – and now a story – how to publish? a book maybe ? though maybe a little too slim for that, and to be honest I had more than enough problems selling Venus in Furs as a printed book. 

More of a contribution to a magazine perhaps …except magazines no longer exist.

So it would have to be Internet-based , like almost everything .Then I thought about the possibility of releasing each chapter monthly via Mistress Sidonia’s amazing femdom website The English Mansion, in the tradition of the nineteenth century novelists who published in instalments in newspapers and journals.

Mistress Sidonia graciously accepted the idea and allows me a tiny garret at the top of English Mansion and from there she publishes the story one chapter per month.

Join now to see the series developing !

Read Irv O Neil’s blog post about writing to the series…

https://irvoneil.wordpress.com/2022/08/02/writing-a-story-to-the-paintings-of-sardax-in-homage-to-the-great-fetish-artist-john-willie/

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

The first time I saw the internet was a complete revelation.
One summer’s day around ’96 I was at the seaside home of an erotic writer, who also happened to be a pioneer of the web. He had invited me to see his new Apple Mac – “his wonderful machine” and the astonishing  ‘Internet’.
Through a fug of heavy cigarette smoke I gazed at his magic lantern, at something called a ‘website’!
“Surely they can’t show that ??” I gasped as we looked at some dubious page.
I was reminded of the famous lines of Keats poem, ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ :-

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken; 

I could see that the rules had all changed. We could now write and depict virtually what we wished. Oh, sure, the webhost was in between but they were usually quite liberal, hippy and unintrusive . And kinky art was liberated, as was a lot more. No longer did I need to worry whether my drawings would be published because I could be the publisher. (Though I still always self-censor I don’t know why …for reasons of ‘taste’?)

Censorship had almost always existed in some shape or form until the internet. My earliest published drawings were all made with a dark cloud hanging over them – “will the publisher accept this?” “Can I get away with this? ”
There were in fact no clear guidelines, which would have helped enormously. A lot depended on factors such as which party was in power or whom you were working for and we would all try to make sense of unclear directions. A mainstream magazine had to comply with the news vendor’s policies of what they were comfortable to put on sale. Smaller fetish magazines which allowed greater freedom could only be sold in sex-shops which were regularly raided by the authorities and restocked the next day. The extortionate mark-up on the goods meant they were never seriously out of pocket.
So life continued in a haphazard way.

The point of this rambling is that for the past few years we have seen greater regulation coming in as the Internet has taken over our lives and become much more portable, so the content of the web has become a much great concern. This week I was suspended from Twitter for the image above*, one of a series I drew many years ago for OWK.  My fault, as I should not have been using such a “violent” image for my public icon, which is required to be squeaky-clean. Make of that what you will. But it has made me reflect on how much we take for granted. At my age I can compare this to what came before and take it philosophically – oh well, just going back to the way it was.
I don’t know how it will all play out but I remember clearly how one day pre-internet I tore up some drawings in frustration as I thought I was doomed to only ever get a single page in an obscure magazine that would never reach a wider public or earn me more than a few pennies. It is no exaggeration to say that without this disruptive technology coming along when it did, I might never have continued.

* New twitter account is @sardaxs

Namio Harukawa 2

The number of artists who could be classified as a “femdom artist” is quite small,  so when one of us passes it is fitting to mark it in some way.
Namio Harukawa died last month as I reported in the previous post .
So I wished to draw something in memory of him and, much as a composer might take a theme of another late composer, and write his own set of variations on it, I took a representative drawing of his and without copying it, redrew it in my own style. It is important to emphasise that I was not trying to make it look like his art or pretend to make it one of his artworks.
It was simply taking the theme, and re-interpreting it in my own way.

For the model I asked permission to include the likeness of
Ms Ryoko Kitagawa 北川繚子女王様, founder of Kitagawa-pro  films, who was for many years associated with him.

Well, the result was rather strange-quite different from my usual work, but I was pleased with the experiment.
I hope he would be too.

The original Namio Harukawa artwork, which formed the starting point.

Namio Harukawa

Namio Harukawa, who has recently passed away, was always one of my reference points for femdom illustration. In my younger years I was drawn to his art as he was one of the few artists almost totally dedicated to the femdom theme, so I tried to find as much of it as I could. By then his style had developed a distinctive look and in the sex shops of the 80‘s you could occasionally find collections of his art, shabby bindings of photocopies from legitimate Japanese magazines (yes, it happened even then!)
I once found his art published in a more reputable collection of Japanese erotica and wrote to him via the editor to introduce myself. A short friendly correspondence by letter ensued but we then lost touch for many years.

Astonishingly, especially to younger people, I don’t think Namio ever came on the Internet – unless he lurked incognito – so if he knew of his developing fame it must have been only indirectly. I tried to connect with him again a few times in the 90’s but I only really heard about him through the Japanese blogger Homer, who knew him directly, organised an exhibition and produced a DVD devoted to his work. As a tribute to him he asked me to draw my own face-sitting art for the cover.

“Viva facesitting” The model for this cover was the now-retired Mistress Lubyanka

Harukawa’s range was somewhat limited, it has to be said, but magnificently obsessive. Facesitting was his universe and he rarely strayed from that. If he drew whipping or shoe worship, for example, it would seem forced as if he had little interest. Moreover his women were very much of a bulkier type, unusual amongst Japanese, and maybe for that very reason so attractive to him.
It is interesting to track his development of this.  When he started drawing for the SM magazines of Japan in the 1970’s – either by choice or because it was requested – his women were normally proportioned. The line drawings were proficient and charming but unremarkable. As the years progressed the Namio Goddess developed. The buttocks became larger and larger, the settings more confined and claustrophobic, the light and shadow more haunting and the dreamy atmosphere more intense.

They are still recognisably Japanese for all that; this was before the anime cartoon style ruled that every female character had to have huge Western eyes and childish faces.
By contrast the men in his pictures remained largely homogenous and uniform, pathetic and passive in their adoration at their “altar”.
Rather than work under commission for portraiture as I have done, he seemed to be in the enviable position of supplying like-minded patrons with his vision and selling to SM magazines in Japan, a vibrant market which eagerly promoted bizarre artwork and amazing photography (so different to Britain!)
In latter days he supplied Megami-no-ai with previously published works but I understand he was too ill to produce anything new.
Namio stands remembered for his unique vision. I know he would have liked to pass from this earth suffocated underneath one of his goddesses but of course that never happened. He lived to a good age though taken by cancer, and  leaves behind a substantial legacy which will remain one of the pinnacles of excellence in femdom art .

Namio Harukawa 1947-2020

For Irv O’Neil’s remembrance please go here 
It’s a better article as he’s a proper writer!

Sabbatical

As you are no doubt aware if you have followed this blog closely or thought of commissioning, I am now on a sabbatical from commissioned work.
This does not mean that I am idling, lounging on my yacht and guzzling champagne like a spoilt billionaire – as if!
For some years I’ve felt the need to get back to the sort of work I made when it wasn’t commissioned, such as the Venus in Furs book. An artist steers a course between work that his inner inspiration compels him to produce, and work he does to satisfy others – and incidentally feed himself! Ideal if he can do both at the same time, but that too rarely happens. Through a combination of circumstances I have now the opportunity to pursue the former and though no artist likes to refuse work offered, especially when it is as pleasant as the commissions I have undertaken, I felt it was now or never to take some time off. Though I cannot show too much you can rest assured that I am fully involved with femdom art projects as much as ever and the finished work will be revealed later on.
For now though I will show the occasional sketch on this page to whet your appetite.

I decided to take this sabbatical last year. Now with the current situation afflicting us all taking on commissions would actually be much more difficult, not least the difficulty of meeting clients and the headache of delivering any completed work .
One final request.
Many professional mistresses whom I have drawn in previous years have been adversely affected by the lockdown as their work relies on personal interaction now denied to them. To varying degrees online income has become important and so, if you can, please take the time to go though my portraits, follow the links to their sites and give them your support. Almost without exception they have been supportive of my art and so I’m trying what I can to help in the current situation.

Wishing you all well -and stay safe!

 

Meeting a mistress pre-Internet

Iʼd better preface this post by saying that I am not well qualified to write it as my own few attempts were so awful I simply gave up and despaired. I never dreamt then that meeting mistresses would one day become part of my work.

 

So how in pre-Internet days did you go about meeting a mistress? and we mean here a professional mistress as the thought of meeting anyone who was happy to be dominant without charging for it was almost inconceivable. This is my own experience so if your experience differs from mine feel free to comment.

Clubs

So night clubs existed of course and even fetish club nights. Personally I hated dark clubs and their kind of music but it seemed then that to gain entry into a certain lifestyle that was one of the few options. I never understood why I had to dress in a certain way and listen to the right music to find that sympathetic mistress. So I never took that avenue.

Failing that there appeared to be two main methods:

Cards in phone boxes

A cluster of cards with phone numbers in Soho, London. Not the most stylish invitation to an hour or so of pleasure. (unknown photographer)

Meeting your mistress commando-style. Probably not recommended for a lasting ongoing relationship. Adrenalin required.
Find a telephone box and look for the illegally placed cards conveniently at eye level. Ring the number on the card next to the photo/drawing of the mistress. Speak to the “maid”, usually an elderly sex worker who would describe the lady in question -inaccurately of course. Bust size, height, hair colour. Within an hour or so you could be there waiting to be processed after another customer. Where? a dingy basement near to the phone box maybe. Cash only. Explain to the mistress just what you wanted and hope she’d understand. Usually disappointing – from others too so I hear.

 

The contact magazine

 

For those who preferred a more measured approach to meeting a mistress there was the contact magazine. This small A5 magazine, cheaply printed in black and white, was sold in Soho sex shops and if you were lucky – newsagents. With names like Superbitch or Real Mistress the purpose was to provide an introduction by means of personal ads. Unlike today where you are blasted by websites and social media heaving with video clips and all the photos you could ever desire, the magazine would allow you a grainy low-res photo of the mistress which let the imagination weave its own fantasy of how she might look. Seeing these tiny grey photos not just once, but over and over the imagination in the head would supply a glamour which reality would render disappointed. Sometimes it wasnʼt even the face, for people were cautious of revealing themselves even then. A glimpse of a boot, maybe. Equally evocative would be the copy. Very terse and to the point but with enough salaciousness to get you to write the first letter.

That would be sent to the publisher of the magazine in an envelope with the number of the advertiser written outside, not forgetting a stamp addressed envelope back to oneself. It would be then forwarded on to the said advertiser.

And wait for the reply, sometimes weeks. And sometimes no reply to your letter at all. But if a reply came -oh joy! (I heard from one of my contacts his reply letter was opened by a flatmate and considerable hilarity ensued in his college)
The reply would generally be business-like and a point of contact established, maybe even a time of meeting was arranged with a landline number – no mobiles remember.
Did you even dare pick up the phone to make a call?
Once an appointment was made it was definitely kept. After so much effort made in securing the meeting the only thing preventing an appointment from being kept would be death itself. Even a relative’s funeral or a countrywide blizzard would not have prevented the appointment from going ahead.

Trusting to luck

Any sort of verification in either of these was too cumbrous to be considered and people just trusted to their luck, client and mistress alike. Unbelievable the risks taken but the youthful urge propelled you through.

The risks of indiscretions were localised. A mad letter written feverishly at night with all kinds of confessions would merely be discarded in the bin by the other party, not indiscreetly splashed all over social media for anyone in the world to read for ever and ever.
Moreover you could not hope to meet someone who would cater to your exact fetish as easily as today so you hoped you found a mistress flexible enough to understand what you desired. Most were trained to take on all “comers”.

The great difference was that there was so very little information to go on whereas nowadays there is just too much info, with a race to the bottom to provide as much content as possible about the mistress, resulting in jadedness and half heartedness. But that was just how it was..nobody thought it an effort .

This memory of the past is not nostalgia for the good old days but rather the opposite. In a way they were the bad old days. In spite of all the current laws now hemming in free communication on the Net, people can and will communicate so much easier now and are more likely to meet the right people who respond to their own interests. However threatened one might feel these days the Internet has made communication possible in a way inconceivable in the days of my youth. Will those dark days ever return?
I personally donʼt think so.This may be the end of a golden age but not the start of a dark age.
Unless the whole internet disappears?

 

My U.S. writer colleague Irv O’Neil has just written a blog post about his own pre-Internet experiences in New York. And check out his fine femdom fiction while you are there!

The Ice Bath

I have now made it a rule that I will take the last month of the year off from commissions, as much as possible, and make some paintings or drawings just for my own satisfaction. These might be strange ideas that have come to me that would just never be commissioned or revisions of previous artworks that I felt I could improve on.

Last December I returned to an old Leg Show illustration which I thought was a great idea but had always felt it did not hang together well and looked unfocussed.

The Ice Bath (original version)

There were too many elements vying for attention that I felt it needed recomposing and sorting out. So I asked the stunning Ms Rebecca Knox to pose for the profile one day when she was here in London.

The Ice Bath (revised version)

So this is the revision. You may wonder why bother if it is already done – and half-way through I did to – but I do think it is an improvement on the original now. There are quite a few small changes but the most significant is the main light is on her face and human flower pot stand in the background is brought forward for contrast.
I found a buyer for the painting almost immediately.

Well, you choose which you prefer – both have their own qualities.

The Female Gaze

There is a simplistic idea going round in erotica marketing that women respond to words and men to pictures.  This sounds true, judging by the sales of erotic novels to women and videoclips to men, but I think the truth is more complex. From some conversations with dominant women who had taken it upon themselves to tell me what I ought to be doing (bless them), I learnt that they aren’t generally interested in femdom photos or videos simply because it had no “eye candy” for them. Instead of focussing on a good-looking male this media tends to linger on the dominant female actress, which is off-putting for them, and any males in the scene are secondary, certainly not chosen for their looks or acting ability. There are notable exceptions, but as most visual content is produced for men any content designed for women tends to get ignored and women seem to stop even looking for anything appealing.  So it was initially surprising for me but on reflection quite logical that for them gay porn was their choice of viewing. I understood this but could not see how I could do anything to affect the disparity.
But these ladies could be persuasive and so, at their instigation, I tried to address this with a few pieces for what has come to be called “The Female Gaze” – that might appeal to this untapped female market and give a few new subscriptions to the member-site I was running at the time (2004-14).
Drawing in this way was an interesting process, like driving on the opposite side of the road – familiar landmarks and same direction but a different focus and view, through guessing what the female might prefer rather than just knowing. This series was one such -“Down Below”

Down Below 1

Down Below 2

Down Below 3

Down Below 4

My friends expressed satisfaction with this series – they particularly liked the suffering eyes – but I felt no immediate desire to continue working this way.  I knew my core market was men and straying too far from that would alienate them. I put up a few pieces now and then “for the ladies” such as this -“Moonlight”, but let the matter rest as I felt it was for a female artist to develop it further.

Moonlight

So I was pleased recently to get to know about a new venture called Dreams Made Flesh run by a Canadian lifestyle domme. It is run on the patreon system whereby the contributions fund artists and writers who are developing this field. As you can see it’s not just Female Gaze then but Female Ear too, but I believe it’s not just for women anyway. Men can enjoy this focus equally and if they care anything about what women like (I mean-isn’t that the scene ?) then it is something that should be sponsored.

here are a few thumbnails of previous drawings – there will be more in coming months.

 

Update 2020: In spite of best efforts subscriber numbers were insufficient to enable “Dreams made flesh” to continue, so it is now closed.

Patrons

Patrons -those who commission artwork – are the enablers of the professional artist.

Increasingly in the age of instant gratification on the Net we lose sight of the fact that behind many professional images and videos there has been someone, somewhere to finance it happening . This has become obscured by the freedom with which anything now is stolen copied.

Before the web this was self evident. Patrons paid for the services of creatives – not always well – but understood that expenses were necessary or nothing would happen. Throughout history if an artist was not paid, there would be no culture, so princes, popes, etc. would dip into their treasure chests to finance creative projects. Sometimes they paid huge sums to secure the services of the best artists in Europe, like Rubens or Bernini. Others like Vermeer were largely neglected, and had constant money problems. Yet still there was the general understanding they needed to be paid. But still now some do not recognise that artists have bills to pay like everyone else and if they can’t make it pay then the art won’t happen.

I grew up in a creative family and money – or rather the lack of it – was the root of many problems. Our human needs were the same as everyone else, shelter, food, bills to pay and yet art was not considered “real work”, presumably as it didn’t make a profit for any shareholder. Constantly around us our family was met with the same incomprehension. Art was considered a leisure activity, and not expected to earn anything. You’d be right in assuming I was encouraged to do any work but art! 

In my own career I have been paid to contribute to magazines (remember them?), femdom member sites, my own member site (sardax.com 2004-2014) and now mainly working on bespoke portraiture. In all we were reliant on people making a financial contribution. I have been fortunate in mostly having a public (often creative themselves) who understood this. Generally artists do not become professional to earn a fortune. If that happens – fine …but I don’t think many start with that in mind. They soon discover it’s not that easy.

So as a farewell to 2017 this post is a thanks to all patrons who have tried to keep me afloat financially however much they can manage, so I can concentrate on what I do best – doing the artwork. 

This is not a post about my own work but here is a photo of the Last Judgement from the Sistine Chapel for which have to thank not only Michaelangelo, but also Pope Julius II who had the vision to commission it.

(In this post I use the term arts but it could apply equally to any creative endeavour)

 

Venus in Fur

No, not “Venus in Furs” !

It is  “Venus in Fur” without the ‘s’.

It is not a play of the book. Well it is, indirectly.

This is a stage play – and a film now – about a stage director who is auditioning actresses for his own adaptation of the book “Venus in Furs”, and almost in despair of never finding the right one, allows a final audition to an outwardly trashy actress, who not only surprises him by her amazing acting  as the play progresses , but also completely turns his life around.

Confused yet? I was when I first heard of the play. Like many outside the theatre-going public it was when film director Roman Polanski announced he was going to produce his own adaptation in a French translation, with his wife Emmanuelle Seigner and Mathieu Amalric in the lead roles. I naturally assumed it was a dramatisation of the book itself. In fact there are only two actors in the entire play so when I first read about it and then later saw the stills from the movie I was admittedly cool about it.
After all, how could the whole of Venus in Furs be dramatised on stage with only two actors?

Of course I did not make the distinction.

But people kept asking me what I thought of the film (because of my translation and illustrations I was now thought of as some authority, maybe) so in the end I relented, thinking I had to base an opinion and so I sat grimly through the first few minutes. Rather like the director on stage Thomas Novachek (not the director of the play itself, by the way) who gradually warms to the personality of actress Vanda Jordan, I warmed to the script as I realised that the play’s author David Ives really understood the book itself and I started to enjoy the way the two characters reacted to each other and was thoroughly won over as the film ended.

So when the play finally came to Theatre Royal Haymarket in London I was enthusiastic to see it. In company with Mistress Tess and her admirer, we saw Natalie Dormer as Vanda and David Oakes as Thomas in a production directed by Patrick Marber. I was pleased at last to hear it in English instead of subtitled from the French film and it quite lived up to my expectations. Lots of great comic and insightful moments that really reflected the whole dynamic between Severin and Wanda in the original book.