Mitchell’s A-Z of Fetish Artists - Etienne Part 4

In this final part of my consideration of Etienne I have posted a frame from the ‘Marine Training’ Comic. This is a story of a drunken Marine who falls foul of two ruffians but in a dark alley but ends up discovering his inner gay self. By Etienne’s standards this is a relatively humourless piece but full of erotic incident. The artwork is crystal clear and he pulls off (just!) some tricky poses. Men's feet, socks and boots feature strongly once more but play a secondary role to the storyline.

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It would be remiss to leave Etienne without touching on his leather work. This is a world he knew well and I guess that shows in all his work. He knows what he is talking about and he understands the erotic essentials of submission and domination roleplay.

The illustration I have selected shows this quite well. The cute blond we saw in 'Night Patrol' reappears as a sub. With luxuriant hair, he's Not a typical leather character these days but a favourite for Etienne who drew him many times. This scene could easily be the inspiration for Oliver Frey's 'back alley' leather encounters.

Whilst I may quibble about Etienne’s technique, his work will always stand at the pinnacle for me. His exploration of the standard gay sex symbols - sailors, cowboys, leather men etc gives his work a story-telling strength that amply compensates for any visual short-comings. His delving into S&M practices was revolutionary for its time and he went further than his contemporary Tom of Finland in giving them a dark mood despite the facade of fantasy and humour. Like Greasetank, Etienne had an uncanny ability to capture the attractions of adult ‘maleness’.

See also my article on Etienne's sailors
and Night Patrol and Sailor Beware!

The Tom of Finland foundation has published 2 books of Etienne’s Pictures
Etienne Erotica Books 1 and 2

There is also a Google Group for his work

http://groups.google.com/group/exclusively-etienne

Mitchell’s A-Z of Fetish Artists - Etienne Part 3

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Mitchell’s A-Z of Fetish Artists - Etienne Part 2

The first picture in this group is another early image from a set of pictures depicting Military Cadets. Etienne produced a number of collections of standalone pictures with military or sporting themes.

Etienne - Cadets on Parade

 In this sample image the quality of the faces and the uniform detail speaks for itself and the combination of semi nudity and military discipline is very sexy and original. But there's also a subtly-disguised piercing reference that transforms the initial impression of straightforward incongruous nudity into something much more erotic for fetish fans! 

But the bulky legs do jar a bit.

Etienne - Night Patrol

I don’t wish to detract at all from Etienne’s abilities. I rank him at the pinnacle of gay art. My first sight of an Etienne picture was the teenage Romeo caught at it by Cops (above) and for me this remains an outstanding picture and one of his most erotic images. The stunning beauty of the boy and the rendering of the skin texture and clothing is sensual in itself. His powerlessness faced with the menace of the cops is very sexy. The leg proportions are chunky but spot on. 

In the series that follows the lad is put through his paces and earns a reprieve from his traffic violation. The quality of the figure drawing and composition falters at times and the result is not quite as exciting as it promised to be. This inconsistency is remarked upon by Felix Falkon in his book ‘Gay Art’. Any artist is liable to suffer from it but if every Etienne picture had been of the standard above what a master we would have had! Follow this link for Night Patrol in full

More Etienne in my next post

Mitchell’s A-Z of Fetish Artists - Etienne

Lets start with names. Etienne and Stephen are the same artist, real name Dom Orejudos. I believe he used the Etienne name for his paintings and Stephen for his comics but the Etienne name is the more widely used and more distinctive label. He published his work in the 60’s, 70's and 80’s.

Etienne is normally up there with Tom of Finland as one of the all time greats but I know that for some people he misses the mark erotically. His body of available work is so large that it’s difficult to know where to start. He his probably best known for his comics and story telling series rather than individual images (in contrast to Tom whose Kake stories are well known but rarely feature in his top ten as it were).

Etienne - Road Kings 2

The early Road Kings series (above) is painted and was produced at a time when explicit sex and organs could not be shown, hence the slightly incongruous underwear. It still manages to show nudity and bondage disguised as high spirited fun, alluding to anal sex, spanking and golden showers without depicting anything explicitly.

The result of this ingenuity, however, is far from tame. The sexual menace of the biker gang assessing the surfer at their first encounter (above) is fantastic and the faces of the two main bikers are beautifully rendered. However, whilst the situation is hot, there is something fuzzy, almost unfinished about the rendering of the bodies and legs which somehow diminishes the sexuality and the impact of the image.

This picture also shows an interesting feature of Etienne’s drawing - the characters often have quite short legs. If you look at a photograph of a male model the distance from crotch to knee is usually about the same as the distance upwards from crotch to the bottom of the pecs. The two gentlemen below illustrate this point.
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Etienne’s proportions are quite different - even allowing for the ‘unbundled tackle‘ beneath the underwear. Check out the surfers proportions. Most artists start out by painting themselves so this is quite likely a reflection of Etienne’s short stature but I can’t help wondering if this is one of the things that ‘blocks’ his art for some.

More Etienne in the next post

Mitchell’s A-Z of Fetish Artists - Ebisen or Ebisubashi

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Mitchell’s A-Z of Fetish Artists - Etheridge

Etheridge is responsible for many of the humorous cartoons which accompany magazine stores. Cartoons have their limitations as a fetish vehicle but sometimes hit the spot. There is often fantasy involved - superheroes, aliens etc, but spiced up by stripping, male bondage and threatened amputations of endowments.

Not a serious contender but I sometimes pick up useful ideas from these pictures. There are some nice male images at his blogspot
http://anti-heroes.net/home.php
http://jcetheredge.blogspot.com/

Mitchell’s A-Z of Fetish Artists - Esposito

Esposito is one of the ‘old school’ of artists and is quite well known for his pulp fiction covers,

like the detail below.

He employs a variety of styles ranging from softly naturalistic representations to highly stylistic images almost like woodcuts combining hard lines and strong patterns.

He sometimes draws freely on Tom of Finland for inspiration in both his figure drawing (as above) and his compositions which may include complete Tom images as details - sometimes even reworking complete Tom pictures.

However, he does have his own distinctive style as in ‘The Coach’ (below).

The tent is a bit racy for this blog but it is one of those memorable images and shows the power of drawings compared with photos. The fetishism here is mild but Esposito has produced harder stuff - even snuff stuff