Category: gay illustration

Ego Rodriguez

The Illustrative Work of Ego Rodriguez

Born in Gijón, Spain, in 1976, Ego Rodriguez is a self-taught, freelance graphic designer who has been based in the East End of London for the last twenty years. Born into an artistic family and initially trained by his parents in the arts, he began drawing in sketchbooks at an early age. Rodriguez’s work is currently focused on digital media; but he also creates work in acrylics, inks, mixed media, and watercolor.

Inspired by the fashion illustrations of Antonio López and Stefano Canulli, Rodriguez’s illustrative work is predominately  portraiture, done with well-defined aesthetics, clean edges, bold strokes, and contrasting colors, similar in style to the fashion illustrations of René Gruau, one of the best known artists of the haute couture world during the 1940s and 1950s. The central part of Rodriguez’s work has formed around his homoerotic images of male figures and his film world images due to their popularity.

In the beginning of Rodriguez’s art career, commissioned portraits for friends formed the basis of his art. Since then, his current body of work has included postcards, editorial work, logos, websites, wall paintings, and illustrative work for magazines, both online and published. Some of his clients have been Attitude, QX Magazine, Gay Times, and The Advocate. Rodriguez has also contributed work for The Pigeon Hole, an online global book club, and Swide, an online luxury magazine. 

Ego Rodriguez’s exhibition entitled “Macho” was featured in 2012 and 2014 in London, and also has been shown at Pride events worldwide.

More images, information on commissions, and contact can be found at the artist’s site: https://www.egorodriguez.com

Salem Beiruti

Salem Beiruti, “Cernunnos”, 2020, Digiatal Art Print with Watercolor and Gold Gouache

Born in Lebanon, Salem Beiruti is a conceptual artist and illustrator residing in Madrid. Working after graduation as an art director in the fields of advertising, graphics, and fashion design, he has more than seventeen years of client and freelance work. Upon his move to Madrid, Beiruti became a full=time illustrator and artist.

Beiruti’s skillful digital illustrations are unique and inspired by such artists and photographers as Patrick Fillion, Paul Freeman, Issauro Cairo, and Francisco Prato. His project  of mixed-media works “Morphosis” is a result of his personal journey as a man of an Arabic mid-eastern culture and its traditions to the man he is today. The art book was published in June of 2017 by German publisher Bruno Gmnuender.

Salem Beiruti’s “Cernunnos” is based on model Francesc Gascó.

For those interested in purchasing a print, Art of Salem is offering all prints at a 40% discount for Easter 2021. Please reference Ultrawolves when ordering. Thank you.   https://www.instagram.com/artistsalem/

Leo Maximus

Illustrations by Leo Maximus

Leo Maximus is a French graphic artist based in Paris and Montreuil, Ile-de-France. He studied graphic design and illustration in Paris. 

In his initial illustrations, Maximus used a rectangular format with strong shadowing and bold calligraphy which combined the feel of vintage advertisement with eroticism . For his current “Purgatoire” Series, Leo Maximus used a circular format  in his compositions called a tondo. This format, popular during the Renaissance, was used traditionally for religious scenes in paintings and reliefs. In this new series, Leo Maximus has softened his colors and tones to produce a more classical effect.

George Quaintance

Paintings by George Quaintance

Born in 1902 in Stanley Virginia, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, George Quaintance was a gay American artist, famous for his idealized, strongly homoerotic depictions of men in mid-twentieth century magazines. Growing up in a farm family, George Quaintance, showing an artistic potential, was encouraged by his parents to pursue art rather than forcing him into the family business of farming. At the age of eighteen, he enrolled at the Art Students League in New York City, studying painting, drawing, and dance. Quaintance’s first art assignments were producing anonymous graphic work for several advertising firms.

By 1934, Quaintance began to sell freelance cover illustrations to a variety of pulp magazines, such as Movie Humor, Snappy Detective Stories, Gay French Life, Ginger, and Tempting Tales. Using historical settings to justify the nudity or distance the subjects from modern society, his artwork featured idealized muscular, semi-nude or nude male figures; A common motif of his work was the theme of the Wild West, complete with cowboys on the ranch or camping out.

Quaintance later moved to Los Angeles, where his artwork began to gather recognition and establish, in an illustrative form, the stereotype of the gay macho, sexually active man. He used young, attractive athletes as nude models; but he personally often posed nude as a model for his paintings. An influence on many upcoming homoerotic artists, Quaintance was in 1937 the highest-paid illustrator for Gay French Magazine, earning more than fifty thousand dollars for his illustrative work.

In 1938, Quaintance returned to Stanley, Virginia, with his companion Victor Garcia, a handsome, young man from Puerto Rico who became a prominent model for his 1940s photographs, his business associate, and life-long partner until Quaintance’s untimely death. Although Garcia was with Quaintance through the rest of his life, Quaintance also had a series of other lovers, many of whom became models for his paintings.

Quaintance’s paintings and illustrations appeared on the covers and inside most of the seminal physique and body-building magazines of the 1940s and 1950s, such as Physique Pictorial, Body Beautiful and Demi-Gods. In the early 1950s, Quaintance and Garcia moved to Rancho Siesta near Phoenix, Arizona, which became the home of Studio Quaintance, a successful business venture based around Quaintance’s artworks.

In Rancho Siesta, Quaintance articulated a vision that was unique, and that spawned dozens of imitators. He offered idealized male images to a hungry international audience; and he offered them in a context that was rugged, masculine, and romantic, as well as erotic. Quaintance presented Levi jeans as a garment that was sexy and serviceable. He also embraced Mexican, Native American, and Latino cultures and people in a way that avoided caricature and stereotyping. Quaintance realized America’s fascination with the West and gave all those fans a different cowboy role mode. He created a world where queer boys grew up to be queer men without the specter of homophobic intrusion.

George Quaintance died in a Los Angeles hospital of a heart-attack on his 55th birthday. His life-long partner Victor Garcia and long-time friend Tom Syphers inherited his estate. Quaintance’s works can be found in many private collections and museums.

Note: An excellent read on the life of George Quaintance is “Quaintance: The Short Life of an American Pioneer” by Ken Furtado and John Waybright

Felix d’Eon

Illustrations by Felix d’Eon

Guadalajara-born artist Felix d’Eon is influenced by multiple historical art styles, including vintage American comics, Edwardian fashion, illustrations from children’s books, and the prints of Edo period Japan. Doing careful research in costumes, settings, and the style of a period, he gives his work, done on antique paper, the illusion of antiquity, D’Eon’s thoroughness and accuracy allows his illustration to appear taken from the pages of an art history textbook. 

D’Eon uses the vintage illustrative style, with its delicate romance and aesthetics, as a tool for narratives of both marginalized and historically oppressed gay communities. He employs this technique in his illustrations, both erotic and provocative, to challenge the modern-day stigmas, still present, around same-sex relationships. 

Ultimately, D’Eon’s illustrations read as an alternative history for the queer people he draws. None of his characters suffer from tragic endings or acts of injustice like they perhaps might have in the past or even present day. Instead, D’Eon recreates the world not as it was or is, but imagines the world as it can be. 

Felix d’Eon has produced a series of tarot card illustrations and is currently working on a series of astrological signs painted with queer subjects. Many of his illustrations can be found for purchase at the artist’s site at Society6:  https://society6.com/felixdeon

Rodrigo Muñoz Ballester

Rodrigo Muñoz Ballester, “Manuel” Series, 1983-1985, La Luna de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Born in Tangier in 1950, Rodrigo Muñoz Ballester was a draftsman, illustrator and a sculptor. He was considered one of the most representative draftsmen of Madrid’s “La Movida”, a countercultural movement that took place during Spain’s transition after Francisco Franco’s death in 1975. One of Rodrigo’s few works in the comic genre was “Manuel”, an experimental and unconventional work, telling the tale of an nonreciprocal gay love story through an autobiographical character. The “Manuel” series was published in the oversize pages of the monthly magazine “La Luna de Madrid” between 1983 and 1985.

Rodrigo’s technical perfection and his mastery of perspective are evidence of his training as an architect and his study of Fine Art. In his illustrative work, he shows his fondness for realism and the classical paintings in the Prado Museum; he also recognizes the influence of the painters he admires, such as Edward Hopper and fashion illustrator Antonio López.

In 2005, a compilation of Rodrigo Muñoz Ballester’s work, containing “Manuel” and seven other works not published in La Luna de Madrid, was published, entitled “Manuel No Está Solo”, by Sins Entido, a Spanish publisher committed to graphic novels. Unfortunately, this compilation book is currently out-of-print.

Buckhead1111

Buckhead 1111, “Colaboration with Paul Cadmus”, Digital Art Photography

Buckhead1111, born Steve Douglas, is an artist and designer living on Maui, Hawaii. He is a multi-media artist who has produced work in a wide range of media including theater set design, jewelry, sculpture and painting. He is currently working in digital art using multiple apps on his iPad. Buckhead1111 weaves textures that he digitally creates into photographs that he has processed, frequently collaborating with other artists on their work.

Image reblogged with thanks to the artist: https://buckhead1111.tumblr.com

Alireza Shojaian

Alireza Shojaian, “Hamed Sinno et un de ses Frères (Hamed Sinno and One of His Brothers)”, 2018

Alireza Shojaian is an Iranian gay artist, born in 1988 in Tehran. He studied at Islamic Azad University In the Faculty of Art and Architecture center located in Tehran, and obtained his Masters degree in Fine Arts. He now spends time living and working between his birthplace of Tehran and Beirut, Lebanon, a more tolerant country in the Middle East in terms of protection and acceptance for sexually and gender diverse people..

Shojaian’s artwork tries to highlight subjects which society tries to hide from view. His paintings often deal with the intimacy of his characters, sometimes confronting the viewer with a sense of suffering or embarrassment. Shojaian’s Pentagon and Hexagon series deals deeply with the issue of being a gay man in Iran. The two series depicts the final moments in the life of a gay friend, who was brutally murdered in his own home during the final year at the university.

For further information on the life of Alireza Shojaian and his experience within the Iranian culture as a gay artist, I suggest the following article: https://wearequeerhere.com/queerart

Image reblogged with thanks to a great site: https://bloghqualls.tumblr.com

Sadao Hasegawa

Graphic Work by Sadao Hasegawa

Born in the Tōkai region of Japan, Sadao Hasegawa was a Japanese graphic artist known for creating homoerotic fetish art. His first solo exhibition, “Sadao Hasegawa’s Alchemism: Meditation for 1973” was held in Tokyo, Japan, and featured collages, sculptures, and oil paintings. In 1978 Hasegawa’s art was published for the first time in “Barazoku”, a monthly magazine for gay men. Later he would be published inthe magazines “Sabu”, “Samson” and Adon”.

Sadao Hasegawa cited japanese homoerotic artist Go Mishima and artist Tom of Finland as major influences on his work. Hasegawa’s early works reflected European styles,;but after regular trips to Bali and Thailand, his work put greater focus on Asian iconography and mythology. On November 20, 1999, Hasegawa died from suicide by hanging in aBangkok, Thailand, hotel. Ownership of his work was eventually granted to Gallery Naruyama in Tokyo, which holds the majority of Hasegawa’s colledted works.

Hasegawa’s artworks are noted for their extensive detail, elaborate fantasy settings, and  for elements of Japanese, Thai, Tibetan Buddhist, African and Indian art. While Hasegawa focused primarily on depictios of muscular male physique, he oftren incorporated extreme sexual themes and subject matter into his works.

Sadao Hasegawa is regarded as one of the most influential creators of homoerotic art in Japan. Very little of his work was publihed in Japan and only one work “Sadao Hasegawa: Paintings and Drawings”, a collection of his magazine work, was published internationally by the British publisher Gay Men’s Press in 1990.

 

 

Kent Neffendorf

Kent Neffendorf, Title Unknown, (The Park Rangers)

Born in Texas in 1959, Kent Neffendorf is an American gay painter and illustrator living and working in Los Angeles. His art, depicting nude and partially clothed figures as icons of masculinity and sexuality, is done in oil and acrylic paints, pencils, and ink.

Neffendorf has been published in over 100 issues of popular gay entertainment publications, including: Men, Mandate, Playguy, Freshmen, Torso, Honcho, Inches, In Touch, Indulge, and The Advocate. He was included in the 2014 exhibition at the Leslie- Lohman Museum in New York City which showed the rich history of the male pinup in the golden age of gay men’s magazines.

The Bath

The Bath

“How language is webbed in the senses. Out of sand-blazed brilliance into quirky minds such as his, into touch, taste and fragrance. He thought he’d linger just a bit longer, let the bath take total hold, ease and alleviate, before he put on clothes and entered the complex boxes where people do their living.
Nothing fits the body so well as water.”
― Don De Lillo

Alfonso Casas Moreno

illustrations by Alfonso Casas Moreno

Alfonso Casas Moreno was born in Zaragoza, Spain in 1981 and studied teaching and later fine arr, specializing in illustration. For the last seven years, he has lived and worked in Barcelona.

Alfonso Casas has worked as an illustrator for several companies including Vodafone, Reebok, ING and others. He is the author of several books, including “Amores Minúsculos”. He is also the illustrator of “No Without My Beard” , written by Carles Suñé and published by Lunwerg Publishers in 2015. Alfonso Casas’ illustrative work has appeared on the poster for the Teatro Lara Theater  in Madrid.

Jack Balas

Three Paintings by Jack Balas, Oil and Enamel on Canvas

Born in Chicago, Jack Balas earned a BFA and MFA in sculpture from Northern Illinois University. He first began painting in the 1980s and was swept away by the western landscape. After college Balas moved to Los Angeles and worked as a cross-country art-shipper, driving a month-on/month-off route between California and New York that took him regularly through Scottsdale and Tucson.

Eventually Jack Balas moved away from sculpture and began making paintings that recreated the narrative feel of maps, annotated with numbers and texts, and brief stories with images inspired by his experiences as an art trucker. Balas began painting in earnest while teaching figure drawing at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Balas’ goal is to create transcendent images that reveal the fictions surrounding great paintings as well as speak to the present with text and mark making. His current work focuses on the depiction of athletic young men, offered as a counterpoint to the unexamined tradition of equating great painting with the female nude. Balas’ men are presented as Everyman, – variable, philosophical, vulnerable, flexible and eager to please.