Furtive blow-jobs in alleyways, street hustlers about to enter cars, call boys idling the evening away until the next client arrives — these are the scenes that South African artist Philip Swarbrick needed to paint after 30 years of suppressing the homosexual direction of his art. (more…)
The wonderful bicycle messenger above with his top-to-bottom tire-track tattoo is part Disney, part Tom of Finland and all Glen Hanson.
In fact, the 39-year-old illustrator has worked for both Disney and Hanna-Barbera, as well as for Torso, Inches and Honcho magazines!
You might think that a guy who was busy designing characters for Saturday Morning cartoon shows like Beetlejuice and Daria wouldn’t have a moment to spare to launch a second, equally full-time career. But the way Hanson tells it, his mainstream career was what he did to pay the rent, while his homo-hot fantasy studs (such as the high-fashion hunkeroo at right — Hanson’s witty homage to a very famous Dior ad by Rene Gruau) is what he needs to do for his art. (more…)
With downbeat colors and the lurid Naked City imagery of Depression-era painters like Reginald Marsh, Owen Smith is single-handedly reviving the venacular style of a coarse and brutal America only glimpsed now in the HBO series Carnivale and the shadowy neo-noir film Sin City. His painting “Don’t Ask” (above) is typical of his sweaty, narrative style. Here two male groups are in collision, the grossed-out soldiers clearly overwhelmed by the larger figures of a fleshy gay couple, one of whom looks back with an easy air of desire — but more than that, of challenge. (more…)
"I once took part in an orgy like the ones I draw," says French-Canadian illustrator Patrick Fillion, whose Class Comics has been delivering rock-hard cock and ripped physiques to Superhero fans for the last three years. "But I decided I was more into the 1-on-1 stuff than the 1-on-5." (more…)
Pierre & Gilles have been a source of luridly-colored homoerotic joy ever since they first met at a party in Paris — Pierre, a magazine photographer; Gilles a middle-school art teacher — and became partners in art (as well as lovers), celebrating pop-mythology at its most homosexual and kitsch.
They have been out there since 1976, becoming so wildly fashionable that everyone hip passing through Paris — from Catherine Deneuve to Boy George to Jeff Stryker — sat in some stage of undress for their portraits. Not straight-forward portraits, you understand, but ones touched by whimsy and — dare we say it? – fairy dust. Deneuve, for starters, was re-imagined as a fairytale princess, Boy George as the Indian god Shiva playing a flute, and Jeff Stryker as a shirtless devil in sequined gold horns and sequined gold pants. (more…)
NEW FICTION! NEW JOSMAN! Once again Josman blows us away! When it comes to the fantasy life of gay men, there are not many illustrators who can stand next to Tom of Finland and not shudder in the long shadow of Tom’s impact. But Josman, whose work regularly appears on our pages, stands shoulder to shoulder with the master. You can spot a Josman instantly. The lyricism of his voluptuous line, the heart-stopping impact of his comic-book framing takes the work way beyond the erotic to something hyper-real and visionary.
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Feet, the illustrator Palanca admits, were not always part of his beat-off art.
For 10 years he was more interested in "giant dicks, giant balls and bald, hairy-monkey men." Then in 1995, barefeet, usually with their soles up and right in the viewer’s face, began swelling to sizes that overwhelmed even his humongous fantasy cocks.
"I became very conscious of how delicious it was to imagine a shirtless man in long, black pants, walking barefoot with exaggerated foot arches. To censor the legs with long pants was just to spotlight those feet. In my drawings, foot arches became a roller-coaster of lines" (more…)
