Christmas sketching

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.

Domina Araneae

Goddess Sophia

Chloe Lovette

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

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.

Madame Caramel’s marriage proposal

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.

Sketching at the Femdom Ball

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)

Photo by Bobette http://www.crossingtherubicon.co.uk

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 🙂

Miss Tressa

Mistress Lilse

Lady Yna

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.

My labour of love – Venus in Furs

This is a book that almost did not come into the world. A few times. It had a long gestation and very delayed birth. The project often shuddered to a halt as either life took over or I just got discouraged from pursuing it. The day the actual book arrived in boxes was like seeing a new-born child. I felt immensely proud of it.

Venus in Furs, though not the book which awakened my interest in femdom, was always there in the background as a reference to femdom and as an inspiration. It wasn’t even my favourite book either, as I found the ending off-putting, but I came later to appreciate its incisiveness and vision, written at a time when the whole nature of that sexuality was completely misunderstood and undiscussed. Sacher-Masoch was writing in 1870 when feminism was barely making its voice heard, and though he was aware (though dimly) of his own ‘topping-from-the-bottom’, his creation of a woman who really thinks for herself and “does femdom” her own way is remarkable. It’s odd that while it is regarded as an erotic novel, there is in fact no sex portrayed. It’s more about a philosophical outlook which is developed by the author and either spoken by Wanda or more often, Severin. Sacher-Masoch knew the subject he was writing about from the inside, and details all the joys and perplexities that beset the submissive mind. Often I hear of experiences from my friends describing the ups and downs of their femdom relationships and think – that’s ‘Venus in Furs’ all over.

Of course, being one of the few illustrators who specialise in this genre, I was often asked my thoughts on the book and it was suggested I make my own version. My initial thought was simply to illustrate a few scenes from the novel and try to find a publisher who might wish to republish the book, but after a few approaches there appeared to be little interest in a new edition and the rough sketches just lay around for a few years. I sometimes toyed with the idea of releasing them as a set of prints, a portfolio of artwork or even as a graphic novel but it did not seem economically sensible. Previous experience taught me that prints of niche erotic artwork are difficult to sell (how many people would put them on their walls?) so I abandoned that idea and never having had any interest in comic strip could not seriously go down that route either. My interest to develop them remained however and so at last I conceived the idea of making my own book with my own translation. I reckoned that given the broadly popular appeal of the novel a book might be saleable and that perhaps seeing everything put together in a readily marketable form I could also at least approach publishers again.

So throughout 2012 I translated the novel myself. I had been dissatisfied with other translations, especially the copyright-free version by “Fernanda Savage” of 1921 which is rather stiff and old-fashioned in style. I preferred not to license an existing modern translation, nor did I know how to go about it.  How could I feel confident enough to do this translation effectively?  Well, I admit that my German is not that of a professional translator. But I took comfort that in the past translation was a more informal affair than it is today – Thomas Carlyle, for example, translated Goethe without a formal degree in German using only a basic dictionary. More importantly, I could justify that I understood the author’s thoughts better than any other translators and so I overcame any hesitancy in that regard. In parallel I proceeded to work on the ten main watercolours and cover and wrote to literary agents and publishers asking if they would be interested in publishing an illustrated book with completely new translation. Surprisingly or not, depending on your experience of the publishing world, I received only politely phrased refusals.

Early in 2013 all the translation was complete but I felt that to market it as a printed book it needed to have more than just ten paintings. So I designed twenty more line illustrations, and with the aid of a publishing programme laid out the book myself inserting all the illustrations into my own translated text – well, I have a training in graphic design as well as illustration so although it was not a simple matter, it was within my capability. I also received a lot of help from Tim Woodward of Skin Two, who is very experienced in publishing. You’ll be asking now if I printed the whole book by myself. Well, much as I’d like to impress by showing you my own printing operation, in fact I did need to find the services of a printer, but apart from that it was very much self-made.  Thanks to a few ‘angels’ and some good luck financially I was able to fund the printing of the book and the book was eventually published within the imprint of Stiletto Books.

The book has had a great reception and now I am beginning to see the stock approaching depletion. It will not be re-published and stock will not always be available. Now is the time to buy unless you wish to buy second-hand copy for an inflated price later on.

See the dedicated page to Venus in Furs

Internationally renowned Mistress Evilyne reads an extract from chapter 13