New/Old Art

This series of images was commissioned by author James Craft back in early 2015, using characters I had created for some of my earliest feminzation art.  Though I'd been paid for it long ago, I only finished inking it and added color about five months back.  Even then, I kept putting off posting it online because I'd intended to add dialogue, but I could never find the energy/inspiration.  

What kind of jerk takes half a decade to finish a simple art commission that shouldn't require more than a week, tops?  Well, you see, when I showed James the sketches, he liked them so much that he proposed we expand what was intended to be a one-off "comic" of sorts into a full-fledged illustrated story.  I was actually pretty excited about the idea.  The thought of doing a story involving these characters had crossed my mind before, though I had serious doubts that my ability to write would be as good as my ability to draw.

While I did once win an award for a story I wrote in fifth grade, I think the main reason for that was because the kids who voted for it had liked my illustrations.  To be honest, I struggled so much coming up with an idea for my story, I looked at a bunch of my old Cricket magazines for inspiration and basically ripped-off the premise from one story to use in my own.  In my defense, it was not an original idea to begin with, but rather something of a well-worn trope in fiction (characters panic over a spooky noise than they later discover is something innocuous).  Hey, at least I was more original than the kid who I realized years later had totally plagiarized a story by Richard Matheson.  

I'm afraid that any feminzation story I'd try to write would probably end up being a mish-mash of stolen ideas from other stories.  A collaboration with an established writer would take a lot of the pressure off.  Although the books I've illustrated for James Craft in the past have not been my cup of tea, I figured I could steer him away from any areas I was uncomfortable with.  Besides, I don't have the knack for writing that he has, plus we've always gotten along really well.

Unfortunately, after a few fits and starts, the project never really got off the ground.  I mostly blame myself.  For one thing, I felt ridiculously protective of these characters that I'd never fleshed out or even named, so I shot down all of James' ideas as not being suitable, though he had precious little to go off of when I had failed to establish who they were or what their relationship to each other was.  But even after I came up with an idea that we were both happy with, I felt like we just couldn't get on the same page.  While James and I often seem to have different preferences when it comes to femization fiction, I think a big problem was that I was too shy to articulate what I wanted to see in a story.  Maybe I just don't know what I want.  While I can concoct various feminization scenarios, I'm not sure how to keep it interesting once the guy is fully feminized. 

I stopped working on his commission once we started talking about a collaboration because I didn't know if I'd have to make changes to the art later to suit the story we were going to write.  Even so, once we amicably agreed to put that collaboration on the backburner indefinitely, I should have just finished the commission then and there.  It's been a source of guilt that I let it gather dust for so long afterward.  Just to give a sense of how long it's been, above one of the sketches, I wrote "Ready Player 1," presumably because I heard someone mention that title and I thought it might be something worth looking into later (though it probably wasn't and I never did).  In the time it took me to finish this one stupid commission, Steven Spielberg made a whole movie out of this book I hadn't even heard of when I started sketching.  

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More recently, I've been working on another comic for James Craft, and it's also taking longer than I'd like, but that's partly because it started out being six pages, then turned into twelve, and now it's closer to thirty forty, all because James kept coming up with ideas.  Still, I would have finished it long ago were it not for my laziness and all-too frequent periods of depression.  I would love to do more sequential art in the future, and even maybe get to the point where I could make a living off my art, but the achingly slow progress I've made with this project has made that dream feel less viable... which makes me depressed, which makes it harder to concentrate on my art, etc.   

The comic I'm working on now is something James plans on publishing (which is something he failed to communicate to me at first, to my frustration), so I'm unable to give people the opportunity to see much of what I've done so far, which sucks, as I truly feel that it's some of my best work to date.  However, I have been given permission to share a couple small excerpts at least.

 

The end of that statement is supposed to be, "...it was worth the wait."  Once it's complete, I really hope the same can be said about this comic.  

Castre's Walking the Dog

Has anyone seen this month's artwork by Castre in Petticoat Punishment Monthly? If you haven't, it's called “Walking the Dog”, and it depicts a man in ladies’ clothes walking a tiny dog along a town street, under the watchful gaze of several, equally elegantly dressed ladies. The link to the picture is here.

Castre is, together with Christeen, artist-in-residence at petticoated.com, which publishes a piece of her artwork each month. Yes, I did just assume her gender, but come on, there are no ‘he’s in this business. We’re all girlies here.

In her art, Castre uses photo collage to depict different scenes of men dressed as ladies. Heads of, almost invariably balding middle aged men, are photoshopped on otherwise fully feminine bodies with rather exaggerated breasts, usually in sumptuous, if a little old-fashioned and conservative clothes: full skirts, blouses with billowing sleeves, high heels. The ladies in Castre’s pictures are molded to similar bodily proportions and dressed in similar styles, though leaning more towards emitting an air of authority. The dominance of the female figure over the man is present in each picture. The lady can be either in direct confrontation with the visibly subdued male, or she can be merely smiling knowingly into the camera while the male figure in the background is being subjected to some act of humiliation or other. Beside the submission expressed through their clothes and demeanor, the men in Castre’s artwork are also shown physically more diminutive than the ladies. Often, the men are the shortest in the pictures, despite their very high heels.

The prevalent theme in the transgender / forced feminization fiction genre, both in stories as well as art, is the full feminization of the male, i.e. that the male ends up looking indistinguishable from a female. This does not hold true for Castre’s pictures. On the contrary, the most notable feature of her artwork is that she makes no attempt at concealing the true gender of the men. Except for an occasional pair of dangling earrings or an application of lipstick, the faces of her men – in contrast to their fully feminized bodies – retain their raw masculinity.

While we can say that as Castre steps one step before the full feminization, her men are spared some of the torment and humiliation received by the typical men in the genre, we could as well argue that the very same feature makes the humiliation of Castre’s men even greater than usual as, even when their submission to the females is complete, they are denied the sanctuary of concealing their true gender. (As a side remark – I’m sure readers will appreciate that this is difficult to judge for someone who is yearning to be fully feminized himself ;)

Personally, I have mostly found Castre’s ultra-realistic choice of depicting unchanged male faces too crude for my taste. Yet, despite the ultra-realism, her latest work, Walking the Dog, is, for me, one of the greatest works in the genre, a simply captivating depiction of the feminization of a man.

Starting with the simply fantastic outfit of the unfortunate man. He is the central figure in the picture, walking a dog along a town street and is observed by four ladies, two sharing the same sidewalk, two from the windows of the houses he is walking by. The man looks middle aged, with short dark hair crowning his bald spot. A coat of purple lipstick is the only feminine touch to his face, but it does not so much hide his true gender as it emphasizes the full extent of its inadequacy. Apart from his face, he is utterly immersed in femininity. His billowing white silk or satin blouse, with the usual pair of pointy breast underneath it, is tucked into the high, pink trimmed waistline of a very, shiny white full mid-calf length skirt, likely with a petticoat underneath it, and he is wearing white shoes with a rather high heel. Even the dog is of a miniature breed, to further emphasize the man’s feminization, and the leash he is holding it by is pink, matching the piping of his skirt.

What, in my own humble opinion, makes Walking the Dog stand out from Castre’s body of work is the lady on the left side of the picture, walking towards our hero. With her, Castre introduces for the first time a “true outsider” – a lady which is neither actively involved in the feminization of the man, nor is she an observer, consecrated in the close circle of those “in the know”. Even by her outfit, it is not hard to take her for an outsider of Castre’s universe. She is neither drenched in frilly satins and silks, nor dressed in severely cut skirts and jackets that exude uncompromising authority. Except for the exaggerated breasts and her high heels to match anyone else in the picture, her clothes are rather casual. This is further emphasized with the shopping bag in her hand, with the baguette sticking out. In fact, the least realistic element on her is the store brand – who goes to Lidl on heels like that?

However, what really tells us that she is neither a forceful participant nor an invited and intended observer of the man’s humiliation is the frowning expression on her face as she looks at the man. It conveys both surprise and disapproval of what she sees. We don’t know how much she knows of the man, but whatever the reason he is dressed in women’s clothes, there is something to frown about. If he is dressed like that by his own will, then he is making a mockery of the pretty clothes. If he is forced to do so, he is making a mockery of his sex, by letting himself be forced into the situation. Her sentiments are shared by the lady looking on to the man through the window on the right. With her hair up in rollers and the pussy bow on her white silk blouse, she looks more at home in Castre’s world, but her frown is something we have not seen so far, and it lends a touch of real-world reality to the scene.

The other two other ladies in the picture appear to be taking the hero’s feminization much more in stride. The lady to the right of the man, standing by the open door, is laughing heartily at the sight of him. The brown leather ledger-like handbag in her hands gives her a professional look. She might be just on her way to work and is therefore another chance encounter, though unlike the lady on the left, she is obviously amused by the sight of the feminized man. Then again, she could be the dominatrix that set the man out on his way, dressed as he is. The open door, and the second lady in the window of the same house seem to support the latter story – she is observing the man in the street approvingly, and she does not look the least surprised. Perhaps it is her that has forced the man out on the street, and is now contentedly savoring the fruit of her efforts.

The finishing touch to the picture, again in my own humble opinion, is the look shared by the lady on the left and the feminized man. It looks almost as if the woman witnessing the feminized man is more uncomfortable with the situation as the man himself. His face does not really show any signs of great anguish. However embarrassing and humiliating his ordeal may be, he has already fought his last battle, and – by the looks of it – lost it, too. For all its humiliation, stepping out into the real world in his utterly feminine attire simply can’t have any relevant consequence on his life. His fate is now and forevermore in the hands of the dominant ladies. In the way he looks at the lady walking in his opposite direction, I read not so much shame and embarrassment as guilt and apprehension. As if he was feeling guilty for displeasing her with the way he is dressed, and somewhat fearful of what will happen as they come closer together.

It is a touch that, to me, makes the artwork almost as plausible as a real-life photograph. It is a touch that, to me, makes it so dangerous. It makes me want to run out the building in women’s clothes and high heeled shoes. It instills in my mind the idea that this is somehow a viable lifestyle.