A love of entomology and spiders in particular inspired this commission for Natasha Zare .
“Include something about spiders and a throne please”
So the spider throne was born .
Dressed in a tight fitting costume Natasha teases her bound victims with her bizarrely-shaped heels, ridiculing their attempts to approach her.
In the background the detritus of a previous conquest remains captured within her silk web.
The remarkable Madrid-based world traveller Mistress K8 Morgan is depicted here being worshipped by a queue of admirers. Rather bored by their efforts she twiddles her hair and thinks of what to write…perhaps an appraisal of them, or a letter to one of her closer friends to laugh together at how silly men are?
For this third portrait of She Controls I arranged to meet the lady herself at a London café and after making a direct sketch we had some discussion about the content.
We came up with this surreal idea of her slicing right through her submissive’s body from neck to groin disgorging banknotes and coins. She holds him with her left hand and he leans back in ecstasy, with his right hand holding a credit card.
She Controls thrusts her gloved hand into the money and smiles out at us with a gleam of triumph in her eye.
A literally visceral portrayal of the findom fetish.
See the first two portraits …
The Sardax studio is as busy as ever, though as most commissions are currently private there have been few public updates. There are also some interesting pieces forthcoming – including a personal shrine (!) – but they cannot be revealed just yet.
But I like to get out and about and for various reasons meet up to sketch current mistresses who come in and around London. This might be in connection with an upcoming commission, or for one visiting from abroad and rarely here, or simply I find an interest in drawing them.
Unlike my fully commissioned work I do not make a charge for these – they are a pleasure to make – and once a photo has been taken the sketch is given away freely, but they are made entirely at my suggestion and I cannot accept requests to sketch.
Here are a few of the most recent.
Shortly before Christmas I was fortunate enough to attend a lovely play-party given by Nikki Whiplash, whose portrait I completed recently. My role was however not to play, though I did enjoy myself immensely. During ball-busting events and other intense games with the male guests in the main dungeon, I sat in an adjoining room and sketched four of the stunning mistresses in turn, using a mixture of pencils, pen and red crayon. A messy combination but for working fast it seems to work.
Cate Fury
This is the magic of drawing – of art in general – 20 minutes before there was only a blank sheet of paper and a pen. After 20 minutes an image of themselves which they were (visibly) happy to receive and take home*.
The sketch will remain there and can be looked at whenever they want. Unlike an experience which lasts only as long as the activity causing it.
My mission was complete – I enjoyed seeing their smiles and giggles, like some party magician, and I drank up my sherry and indulged in the mince pies provided.
Thank you Nikki for putting on such a lovely party!
*It’s not always successful. Sometimes I just can’t get it right but generally it works out ok
This nostalgic post will not mean much to most people – except perhaps to men of my generation who had to live through such a deprived era and have seen how the Internet has changed everything we know.
Now in my sixties I am sitting outside a cafe on Old Compton St in London’s notorious Soho district. Or it least it was notorious. Today, much like Times Square in New York – as I understand – it is completely cleaned up and un-notorious with only a few shops remaining of the once prevalent sex trade, now mostly catering for the gay pound. It changed not through any heavy legal crack-down but, like a lot else, through the changes brought by the onset of the Internet removing the need to go out to buy porn magazines, books and movies.
Over thirty years back it was completely different. Then I would never have sat outside a cafe and would have been very cautious of even coming in by daylight – but then I had a guilty conscience. A shopping trip to Soho was a furtive affair usually made under cover of darkness, armed with a shoulder bag, and planned with a clear itinerary so as to quickly move in and out of doorways.
My own particular interest here was for books, magazines and the predecessor to DVDs and videos – Super 8 films.
Moving swiftly inside the shop you’d be pressed against a heaving mass of tightly pressed male flesh with barely enough room to jostle your way through to the shelves. Many men – it was always just men- were simply browsing with no intention of buying. Occasional ineffectual calls from management failed to shift them. Of course I always bought something – even at the outrageous prices they changed. Kink commanded higher prices with 10 pounds being usual for a magazine -a lot for a young man in those days.
With my burgeoning interest in kink and the bizarre I had my own favourite haunts:-
1. Swish publications
My main port of call. CP with a femdom bias selling their own “Madame” magazine, “Sadie Stern” magazines and even a few ripped-off and pasted together collections of Namio Harukawa drawings.
2. Janus Bookshop
Mostly catering to CP erotica with more of an emphasis on subfem, stocking its own magazines including Janus, Roué and others.
3. Lovejoys
Commanding a presence along Charing Cross Road, the ground floor was nominally a book shop but a discreet staircase downstairs led to a wonderful treasure trove. Not so much kink but best stocked general erotica.
4. Unnamed
I cannot remember the name of this one. Cut off in an alley in Chinatown it was one of the first I discovered and may have been Swish before they moved. Can anyone enlighten?
5. Original Soho Bookshop One of the last bookshops now standing, stocked mostly with DVDs and a few magazines or books. Very little fetish and most gay-oriented. In the spirit of “research” I bought one product for old times sake but without much enthusiasm.
It is always a great pleasure when my commissions bring two people closer and this portrait was intended as the ultimate gesture – a proposal of marriage from Joris to his wonderfully ebullient mistress Madame Caramel, who is the founder and organiser of the renowned Femdom Ball.
Originally the idea was simply to show the situation of Madame Caramel being presented with a card, regally seated on the throne in her dungeon – a very well-equipped premises, by the way – but then we came up with extending the idea by adding a message to this and covering it up with a paper flap for surprise.
Joris presented the portrait card to Madame Caramel during a special surprise holiday in May and she tells me that she was very happy with it and better still, unhesitatingly accepted the offer of marriage. I am so pleased that I was able to play a part in this happy event and wish the couple many years of happiness to come.
Having been an artist/illustrator all my life it is not easy to put myself in the mind of someone who cannot draw. You think to yourself, “Why can’t everyone do this?” It has always been a talent I’ve had which was thankfully though inexplicably encouraged by parents. You become ‘top of the art-class in school’ until you go off to art college and then discover you were not that good – all the students are there who were best at art in their school. I can however empathise with unskilled art-lovers as I love music in its various forms and have always wanted to play on a musical instrument, but failed miserably in my attempts, so that I feel astonishment and envy at anyone who is proficient that way. I recognise too that it is not just about talent but about hard work, endless practice, an individual style, knowing when to stick to rules and when to break them, etc. All the skills that any creative artist needs to function at best.
So here are some common things folks say about my work:-
“How long have you been drawing?”
General
If we are talking about actual drawing – since I could hold a pencil and from watching other ‘tops of the art-class in school’ wishing I could do better. Femdom artwork from my late teens . See “The Lightbulb Moment”
“How long does it take to do a drawing?”
General
The classic “how long is a piece of string?” It varies enormously depending on subject, composition and technique. Some take a few minutes, some weeks. I don’t like to come back with “how long is a piece of string?” as it just sounds too abrupt to an innocent question, but really it is exactly that. Every one is different.
“What do you think of this modern art?”
Old guys watching me drawing outdoors
This used to be very common, asked by older members of the society but has tailed off in recent years. Perhaps we no longer care about art we don’t understand. It really is such a broad subject as, like most people I expect, there is some modern art I like and some I distinctly don’t like. But usually the tone of the question suggested I give an unfavourable response and so I obliged quite often with a negative view which led to much satisfied agreement.
“My –insert obscure relation here- is an artist”
Young kids watching me draw outdoors
Well it happens. Those ‘tops of the art-class in school’ have to fulfil their dream somehow – and you go out far enough in any family you’ll find one mad enough to imagine they can earn a living as an artist. How to respond…positively, encouragingly (of course!)
“Money”
Other artists
When two artists meet do they talk about the latest exhibitions and wax eloquent on the refined palettes of the great painters? Do they hell! More often than not they moan about money, payment and the lack of it!
“I like your art – you can draw me if you like”
Vain but beautiful princesses
So drawing is a pleasant way to earn a living, but it is also my work and as such needs to be properly remunerated – a fact which is difficult to comprehend to some people who imagine that just drawing is so pleasurable it should not need any payment. So, vain but beautiful princesses, why not consider a commission of yourself and please the artist too?
Art is a cruel mistress….
Much as I enjoy sitting at my work, escaping from the drawing-board once in a while is always a pleasure and Madame Caramel ‘s long-awaited Femdom Ball was a simply unmissable event . She had been preparing for this event for months and it was really one of the best-organised parties I’d ever attended. At a secret and very opulent location in Central London beautifully dressed mistresses gathered from all over the country to celebrate together with their male submissives/slaves. The rules were that while mistresses enjoyed themselves eating and drinking, the men were required to serve them in any capacity they pleased and were neither to eat nor to drink. As my own contribution I sketched three charming ladies from Mistress Ezada’s House of Sinn , coming all the way from Romania for the event.
(You will recognise Mistress Ezada from other portraits on this site)
Now, on-the-spot portraits are unplanned and a leap in the dark – you never know how they will turn out and can be disappointing if they don’t work out well. But it’s a “party trick” for me by now, having made quite a few at London femdom “Pedestal” club and generally they don’t often turn out too badly. They sometimes miss accuracy but I try to convey the character. In this case I had a little champagne to help things along -which I was not really allowed “as a male” but well – artists need a little encouragement 🙂
Pleased to say that all three were very happy with their portraits and I look forward to the next party when I hope to perform a similar function.
So someone asked me to show how I draw a high-heel shoe.
High-heels are not easy to draw. I’ve seen the most adept artist stumble over them. The problem is the subtlety of the curves and an understanding is needed of the shape of the foot which they cover.
(Understanding foot anatomy needs an article in itself-even a book -so that can’t be tackled here)
Let’s start with a simple sandal.
Find or buy – or beg for -a shoe and examine it.
A high-heel, like any shoe, is a platform for resting on a level surface.The foot rests mainly at two points – the ball of the foot and the tip of the heel.
These two points are a constant distance apart, in the same alignment and in the same plane, whichever position the shoe is in .
Understanding this is the key to drawing a high heel in any position.
The front area itself will be a roughly pointed oval shape, flattened behind following the shape of the foot . It is not symmetrical – rather flattened on the inner side following the shape of the foot.
The back area (the heel tip) is a much smaller round area often squared off in front.
Any drawing of a high-heeled shoe should start with a rough representation of these areas.
1)A line to indicate the direction of the shoe should be the first.
Then place in the two areas in a correct perspective (you don’t understand perspective?-come back when you do!)
2)Then you can decide on how high the heel is to be and draw a line roughly perpendicular from the heeltip, and begin to work out the shape of the heel itself. It tapers gracefully downwards at the back. Then you can start roughly sketching the area where the heel of the leg itself will rest – for now you can make this an oval. On higher-heeled shoes this will need to be steeper sloping.
3) Now connect each side of this oval to the lower ball-of-foot area.
Note that the resultant line is curved differently according to its being outer or inner side. Just like the foot itself , the curve is gentler on the outer, more pronounced on the inner.
So now we are almost there for the foundation. If we are drawing a high-heeled sandal the matter is almost finished-simply show a thickness to the sole.
Follow the same principles for court shoes and other but build up walls from the sole and a covering for the tip of the toes..
Observe the countless ways straps are employed – some very simple, others extraordinarily complex.
(Unless I become a teacher this is the only free lesson I can give – it was a lot of effort to put it together, simple though it seems.)
The Art of Sardax 