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…
The Art of Sardax 