SPQR Gallery: Artist's Studio

[spqrblues]

This is the sort of thing that gets comics artists arrested in certain jurisdictions, so it has been bowdlerised. Also, I like using the word "bowdlerise."

Fig leaves are kind of suggestive, actually.


One thing the Metropolitan Museum does have is a surfeit of torso fragments of young men, Roman marbles as well as, if I'm recalling correctly, Greek marbles and bronzes, posed in a sinuous curve perhaps copying the ancient sculptor Praxiteles' Ganymede. The ones in the museum are all armless, legless, and headless, poor things.

Oh, and the museum also has some seriously cool Greek vases, quite suitable for display in one's mansion in Herculaneum, next to one's sculpture of Ganymede. Or next to one's artfully positioned wine-bearing servant. At Speudon's house, the servants might actually serve wine in the altogether.

If I ink this sketch, I'll probably make the background drapery black. And there won't be a fig leaf.

Now that I have a high-res scan, I guess I can be brave enough to ink this. I get so paranoid sometimes about the transition from pencils to inks. And I should be able to post it on my own domain, I suppose.

On a slightly related note (in a sideways way): Have you heard about the Gordon Lee trial, in which a comic shop owner has been brought to court over accidentally giving a Free Comic Book Day comic to a kid in which Picasso is depicted nude? There's been a lot of reportage about the offensive boy-part, but not until googling around today did I see the panels in question (NSFW depending on where you work). No one, at least not in a single one of the articles I've read, mentioned anyone being up in arms and suing the retailer about the woman who is depicted strolling around nude in an open dressing gown.

Comments

[kyleen66.livejournal.com]

Nice.

But you need to move that leaf.

[b2creative.livejournal.com]

Yeah - where's a brisk gust of wind when you need it?

Love the detail on the vase, too.

See? I wasn't just looking at ... that ...

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

I've become oddly fond of the fig leaf... there's a certain aesthetic appeal. Or something.

Isn't that a cool vase? The moment I saw it, I knew I had to draw it.

[ndgmtlcd.livejournal.com]

If you mean the tall vase, I didn't know the Romans did that kind of thing. Is it a silver vase?

Your fig leaf artistry reminds me of the Very Large statue of the anatomically correct David that ended up in the central 2-story hall of Vanier library of Concordia University (formerly Loyola college and Loyola university) when the good people of Pointe Claire (a suburb of Montreal) considered it too anatomically correct for their taste.

http://archives3.concordia.ca/timeline/histories/david.html

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

The Romans did some astounding silver work, and glasswork of surreal delicacy. But this particular vase is based on a Greek ceremonial water vase, just the sort of thing to have in your mansion or villa to show off your refined sense of appreciation for antique art. And the size of your coinpurse.

When I have a villa and a deep coinpurse, I'd love to have a perfect replica of the perfect, perfect David. Along with a Drunken Hercules, maybe a bust of Caligula ;) And no diapers in my garden.

[redknot.livejournal.com]

that's a rather small leaf...

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Menander insists it's just the angle!

Oh dear, now I have a character mad at me in my head. Well, nothing new about that :)

small leaf

[(Anonymous)]

"that's a rather small leaf..." Oh don't worry about that my dear, treat it right and it will grow into a mighty oak.
At least that's what I used to tell my lady-friends. DRW

[barbaricyawp.livejournal.com]

Absolutely gorgeous! Love the pose -- and his left hand too, for some reason.

Hoping for a leaf-less final sketch...

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Now that I have a high-res scan, I guess I can be brave enough to ink it. I get so paranoid sometimes about the transition from pencils to inks. And I should be able to post it on my own domain, I suppose.

On a slightly related note (in a sideways way): Have you heard about the Gordon Lee trial (http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000308.shtml), in which a comic shop owner has been brought to court over accidentally giving a Free Comic Book Day comic to a kid in which Picasso is depicted nude? There's been a lot of reportage about the offensive boy-part, but not until googling around today did I see the four or five panels in question. No one, at least not in a single one of the articles I've read, mentioned anyone being up in arms and suing the retailer about the woman who is depicted strolling around nude in an open dressing gown.

Hmm. I think I'll add this comment to the main post :)

[barbaricyawp.livejournal.com]

Arrrgh! Don't you just hate this kind of double standard?

[kit-the-brave.livejournal.com]

I'm always ready to giggle uncontrollably. :)

Bowdlerise bowdlerise bowdlerise bowdlerise.

See what I mean? :D

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

It's a great word. Sometimes I put fig leaves on my art just so I can use it.

[(Anonymous)]

Helloooooo nurse!

[(Anonymous)]

Forgot to sign the dang thing...

Suzene

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

My aunt used to say "Goodnight, nurse!" a lot, in similar context. I wonder where that expression comes from, anyway? :)

[(Anonymous)]

I encountered it in the Animaniacs cartoons as a young 'un.

Suzene

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Aha.

Somehow I don't think that's where my aunt found her expression :)

[pikku-gen.livejournal.com]

I know a person who honestly thought (as a child) that a man's private parts looked like fig leaves. She was raised in a very artistic but, erm, morally narrow-minded home, and boy was she having some surprises at biology classes in school! If your parents so chose, you really didn't see much frontal nudity even in Finland before the all-encompassing Internet.

Beautiful sketch. I look forward to the autumn-version. ;)

Edit: Missssspelled words. ;)

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Of course, with the Internet, you might get a completely different impression as to physical averages :P

Strange autumn weather, here, btw. The leaves are still clinging to the trees.

[pikku-gen.livejournal.com]

Here the first snow came "on leaf", as we say, and the leaves fell only after it had melted. Now there is a steady frost, the ground is frozen, and the possible snow would actually stay in ground. But: no snow. Nyaah. It's so dark I feel like sleeping all day.

[mummpizz.livejournal.com]

Why would you want to ink that Apollon-like Menander? I think the "Sketch Pad" series has a worth in itself (as it is).
I'd rather see another party at Domitian's with living (yawning) statues, male ones too, if you please ... :-)

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Ah... well, in that case, perhaps I'll leave well enough alone :)

I can pretty much guarantee another Domitian party in the near-ish future.

[cathemery.livejournal.com]

It's a lovely fig leaf, though sadly I don't remember studying the leaves of the fig tree at our last house so that I could judge realism. ..

but . ..

you know . . .

how did they get those things to stick on?

::bats eyelashes innocently::

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

When I saw real fig leaves for the first time, I was impressed by their size, sturdiness, and garment potential :)

I am now trying to formulate some sort of answer to your question involving the words "good balance," but the appropriate one-liner eludes me. Pretend I said something amusing. Hahaha! (Clearly I have not had my morning tea and cookie.)

[cathemery.livejournal.com]

lol

good balance, indeed. Talk about trying to get a photo before the subject moves. .. .

"Wally, would you please shift that fig leaf back to the proper position? And get your arm up a littler higher, your chest muscles are rippling in the wrong pattern."

[cathemery.livejournal.com]

and, garment potential.

"Smayla looked about her at the forest, appraisingly. The garment potential of these leaves was much better than in the forest of her homelands. It seemed a pity to teach the handsome local men about garments, though. Still, they might all enjoy the lessons in garment removal. With that in mind she began collecting leaves.

"This project facilitated the invention of counting, and thus, math, causing some civilizations to dub her St. Smayla of Fashionable Addition and others to curse her as Smayla the Subtractor."

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Best short-short story ever to grace the comments of my lj ;)

[cathemery.livejournal.com]

lol

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

LeSigh yeah...Stupid morons get in all a tizzy about the male nude but don't seem to pay much attention now with nude women, even fully frontal nude. Nice Double Standard. (Gee thanks Britney and all the others, like, real empowering like totally ehheh)

I have to admit, I'M still sort of aprehensious (can't find the right word) about seeing nude male...I don't think it's as much as a homophobic thing as it is a general negativity to male parts. *shrug*

In some ways I think the artist of that comic about Picasso could have obscured the naughty bits in an Austin Powers-sort-of way to make it funny but only slightly shocking...but probably it WAS intended to be quite shocking...But then this is Picasso we're talking about...So I dunno I suppose it works.

I remember in Art History classes at Colludge seeing Titian's "Venus of Urbino" and having us students sort of shuffle in their seats and such...But not nearly as "shocking" as seeing a self-portrait of Egon Scheiller erect and stroking himself...Even the teacher said "This is meant to be shocking as well as utterly real"...And he acknowledged that [we'd] have a more uncomfortable time viewing that painting than the vast majority of nude women (and we did) ...Which is just ironic when you think about it...Even the Venus of Urbino is practically got the cat-scratch fever going on, sometimes I'm still amazed that gets slouched off.

Then on the flip-side you have something like Jean-Honore Framgnard's "The Swing" (1766), that guy is Directly on par with the perverts with camera phones and mirrors chasing after mini-skirted tweens in shopping malls today, but, Oh, it's just a light-hearted good time fun painting Oh Tee Hee....Nooo He's getting some major up-skirt perv action there...Don't let the little shoe flying off distract you. (although I DO love the device of the little Cherub statue just above the perv with that "Ut Ohs" look on it's face.

Man, Art can be so Awesome.

..and I need to Edit!

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Our society has built up all sorts of hang-ups and symbolism around male nudes, all the while accepting gazing at a nude female object as a matter-of-fact thing. This can make portraying Roman decor and Roman matter-of-fact common objects problematic. So it's actually very interesting to see that prudery broken down and dispensed with in boy's love and yaoi comics and the fan art they produce. If I drew naughty bits on today's (Friday's) art, I suppose it could be called yaoi... or maybe it is anyway. Or maybe they've just fallen asleep at the beach after a manly game of Roman beach volleyball. Which I have on good authority was quite popular around the Bay.

Felix's portrait could be in the "Venus of Urbino" pose, as an artistic statement testing the comfort zone of the viewer. This assumes that anyone with access to the internet still has a borders around their comfort zone.

If only I had taken formal art history classes, I would have, well, probably have been very embarrassed, and all the time. But at least I'd have recognised how racy "The Swing" is.

(hurrah for the edit feature. now I can be even more persnickety and neurotic!)