August 26, 2005
The Dragon Lady
When I was young little pervert living in Colorado, my first encounter with a real live dominatrix was with a woman who called herself the Dragon Lady. She was an outrageous underground figure in our little kinkdom. She dressed much as you see her depicted here, with the Chinese dress and the parasol.

The only departure I took from her actual image in my head were the ballet boots, simply because I could see her in ballet boots if she had owned them, and quite frankly, I love ballet boots and shoes, in case anybody hasn’t noticed. She was tiny, just a few scant inches over five feet, but that was all that was diminished about her. She was cruel and creative and completely heartless, or so she appeared. I thought she was wonderful.

Later in life, when I saw her on the street, she was recovering from a heroin addiction, which had taken its toll and her left hand — a sad result of shooting up between the fingers. She wore in its stead a chrome hook device, which made her look even more daunting, and she used it to deliberate intimidating effect. I wanted to draw her as I remember her from our first meeting and preserve her beauty as it was in my memory, in particular her frozen lipstick sneer that made me feel so very small in her presence. This is the result.

When I had first done this piece, I had the idea of cutting her out from the original piece of paper she was painted on, and placing her on an ultra-white pristine piece of paper, to sharpen the lines. The result, when I shot it for the website, was that parts of the painting stood in relief from the paper she was mounted on, and it created a really cool effect.

This technique has inspired me. I’ve been sent in a whole new direction, creating 3D paintings utilizing cut-outs, sculpture painting, and live models, as well as previously unexplored mediums. The first of this new period for me will be up soon on the web site. I just think its fabulous that The Dragon Lady, who had help influencing and shaping my little warped mind so long ago, could reach through time via my art and touch me again, inspiring a whole new period.

Carpe Notcum,
Veronica

August 21, 2005
Heel!
I just think this little piece is cute as all hell. It’s a little homage to a tiny group of fetishists known as Giantess worshipers. Their fantasy is to either encounter really large women, and attempt to serve, or to be shrunk to a size where they can be used and abused by full-sized Goddesses. It’s a power exchange made in dimension.

The poor little tiny man is bound to the heel of the woman’s shoe, serving only as a strap on her shoe, a decorative doo-dad. I think this piece speaks to people with objectification fantasies, and possibly those with shoe fetishes or foot fetishes. What could be more exciting for a foot fetishist, seeing a giant ladies meta tarsus crashing down before them. One gets the impression, however, that once these tiny men get over their shock and awe, they will be running for their lives like the silhouettes in the background. Or will they stay, and experience whatever the wicked giantess has in mind for them?

This is a rather simple pen and ink, drawn on a scrap piece of paper, starting out as simple pencil doodle that ran amok. That happens alot in my work, and many of my doodles repeat and repeat on paper, ‘til I finally render them as finished works. Hard to say if the giantess theme will be recurring, but proportion is a great way of showing who’s on top symbolically if not literally.

Carpe Noctum,
Veronica

August 14, 2005
Darke Masque
This was my first color fetish/erotic piece. To me, it looks rather rough and overly fussy, lacking confidence, but somehow giving effect anyway. I used pen and ink, pencil, and colored pencils to make this piece. It is surprising to me how well they all blended together.

I look at her now and I wonder, why the pose? Should I have drawn something for her to lean on? She is framed in tiny writhing penises, intertwining to provide a Nouveau design. Most people don’t even notice that, which I kinda like. I imagine prudes looking at this piece and not having a clue they just subconsciously splattered there brains with hundreds of tiny little cocks, writhing like worms in their close-minded little skulls. Ooooh, I have a sick mind.

On the outside of this frame, I attempted to draw marble, with limited success. I like marble. It comes in so many fascinating colors, and is cool and hard, yet veined and swirling with patterns of something alive. Staring at marble is akin to staring at clouds. I look for shapes and figures in the surface. It’s also very old, being a metamorphic rock formed by great pressure and rendered very dense. That appeals to me.

I think the face in this work is really good. I like the almost condescending sneer of her expression, like the slave beneath her, out of the picture, is completely beneath her contempt. Hey, you know what, the more I write about this piece, the more I like it. Okay, forget what I said earlier, this work is cool.

Carpe Noctum,
Veronica

June 26, 2005
Black Widow in Ballet Boots
Isn’t she such a wicked little arachnid. When playing with figures and styles, I am constantly aware of anatomy... and though I don’t always get it right, believe me, I’m obsessing about it. I think about bones and muscles and skin, and how it’s all going together, and how it changes shape when viewed from different angles or seen in a different pose. That can drive one a little mad.

This piece is one of the products of this madness. I start to think about things like, what if a girl had four legs instead of two, or in this case six... and how would that go together? What bones would need to be in place, what muscle groupings would need to be replicated and integrated. In this case, I wanted a spider woman, so the thing I’m most proud of in this piece is the complicated anatomy I created for her.

A lot of artists, when thinking of fantastic creatures, don’t apply the rules for life. They don’t consider the rules that would be necessary, if the creature were to suddenly spring from the page. I think about those things, and least try to give it that air of believeability most wouldn’t care about or notice. I want people to wonder where the girl ends and the spider begins, not simply stick a girl’s torso on a spider’s body.

The Black Widow is examining one of her many latex-clad legs, and smoothing her stocking ballet boot with a long-fingered, taloned hand. That’s one of my other concerns for the new femme lifeforms I create. Natural defenses. A spider kills with venomous fangs, but fangs would detract, I think, from this siren’s allure. So instead, she is armed with poison claws to paralyze her victims. A spider depends on the virtual invisibility of its web and cunning stealth. My Widow counts on her sexual attractiveness to lure her victims into her elaborate deadly lair. Beneath her pointy clad feet are her freshly wrapped victims. Hard to tell if they are enjoying the experience.

This piece plays into several fun fantasies: latex, cannibalism, encasement, furries, and, of course, ballet boots. It’s done in pen and ink, and what I like about this piece is the use of negative space to imply highlight, which you can see on her body and the biggest section of the web she’s standing on. If you look closely, you will see that the contour lines for the spider figure on the highlighted side don’t exist. They are comprised of the hundreds of lines in the background; only the shadows define the figure. I love this trick and it’s a mind-blower for me to figure out. But when drawing in stark black and white, one really only deals in light and shadow, without getting into rough-looking hatching and cross hatching. These techniques I learned from poring over as many Virgil Finlay drawings I could find. He was the master of pen and ink. See my bio for more on the master.

Looking back on this piece now, it makes me smile at its archetypical wickedness, and the seeming innocence in the face of the Widow herself. I love this piece, because it’s so much from the more fantastic side of my fetish and fantasy dreams and waking nightmares.

Carpe Noctum,
Veronica

Same with journals and diaries. I never know what to write, without having something to cue a story to tell, or a theme or subject to carry me through. Don’t get me wrong, there are some wonderful blog writers out there. Mistress Barbara Darke writes wicked blogs that read like Pulitzer prize winning articles. That’s not me. I can’t trust myself not say something unrestrained that would make everybody hate me. Yes, it is true, I have an ego... but even I would become disgusted with myself far too quickly, if I simply prattled on day after day about my life, and what I’m doing, and how I feel about it.

But I think I have the answer. Lets talk about the art. That’s what this site is about right? The art. I think so. In talking about the art, I hope you see the artist. Thus I’ll fulfill the function of the blog, and at the same time feel okay about not constantly masturbating in public.

June 13, 2005
Grace and Style

Grace and Style is a very important piece for me, because it eptimomizes my fantasy world, and how I feel about Dominant Women. I see them as regal creatures, above and beyond mere mortal concerns. Ultimately feminine and strong, graceful, stylish and assured.

The ballerina figure is in an arabesque position, balanced precariously on a single ballet boot. Her head is tilted back, with her pony tail flailing around her like a whip. This is a celebration of the lifestyle, in all its beauty – though encumbered by some of the most practically difficult items to wear, she still rises up, swept up in the moment.

The Mistress below is in profile, smoking a cigarette in an extremely long cigarette holder. Her head is also held high, aloof, apart, yet seeming content with herself. She wears an ornate mask, not to hide her features, but to accentuate those which make her so ultimately beautiful. Masks and costume, I think, are one the most critical parts of the fantasy sexual experience. I love the theatricality of the SM scene, the fact that people dress up to go out, to play roles and interact in intense physical psychodramas.

I wanted the back ground to resemble a dance studio in some upper floor of some run-down building in New York, to first hint at the theater aspect, and also to accent the beauty of the ladies. The cumbersome mirror in the background is in a Nouveau style, heavy wood, yet the frame sweeps you around the piece and frames the Ladies. The image in the mirror is of pink globes, circles in circles. An homage to the oldest symbols of the Mother Goddess.

Asymmetrically, the mirror sports like a masthead, a carved wooden succubus. The succubus is an important figure in my work, but more about her later. The models I drew from pictures freehand; the lower lady Is Mistress Georgia Payne, from Lady Laura’s Dominion in LA. I found her pic in a newspaper ad, and instantly fell in love with it. Though I have heavily stylized and changed the original picture, the pose and attitude are still there. The amusing thing is, Mistress Georgia, without ever seeing this work, later contacted me wishing to commission a piece of art. She only saw this painting later, after the fact. Life is strange isn’t it? Or perhaps the world is alot smaller than anybody suspects.

The model for the ballerina I do not know. I found a picture of ballerina dancing in Times Square, stripped off her clothes redressed her and used her pose. Little else were the features of the original subject.

Over the years I have found that this painting, above all others, attracts the attention of more Mistresses. I would say it is my most well-known work. And I’m glad, because I love it too.

Carpe Noctum,
Veronica