Areonna the Elf

Oh boy. Way back in the olden days of 2010 or so I did a webcomic. It was naughty. It started out fairly tame... something you might slap a rated R on. But over time it got significantly more lurid, puerile, and dirty*. The comic was a farcical romp about an adventuring guild taking jobs monster slaying and dungeon bashing. I called it Dungeon Minds**.

One of the many characters of the strip was a blonde elf named Areonna whose adventuring outfit was not exactly the most practical.

Here are some Areonna images. I'm putting some side-by-side because it's interesting to me how I sometimes evolved an image over time. Like... I would strategically remove nipples so I could show the art in more places. Which... WHY THE FUCK DOES IT MATTER? I can show you an entire naked breast and post it almost anywhere as long as I don't show you a nipple.

That is fucked up, isn't it?

Exactly HOW are these clothes clinging??

Let's just clean this up a little for the church crowd.

*Oh, fuck's sake, the damn thing was puerile from the first strip. Who am I kidding? I never really grew up. To wit:

**The adventure guild was called Doomslakers. I kept that name and used it later for my blog. But it started as the name of the troupe of lascivious ne'er-do-wells from this randy and wrong comic strip.

The first official appearance of Areonna.

Mitch Byrd

 Mitch Byrd is a legend and you can read what I had to say about him here. Enjoy these salacious selections as well... the man knows his forms.

Space Ranger

The original post about this pic can be seen here.

In that post, I said the original sketch would be posted below the text... but I didn't post it. Because sometimes I write words and make promises and forget to keep them. So here's the old sketch I was referring to at long last...

A Much Needed Respite

 

A Study in Spring

A Study in Spring. Started out a doodle, like most drawings. Here I wanted to draw a figure that was different than what I normally do, kind of embracing elements I (we, speaking for typical artists of my peer groups) tend to ignore or gloss over. Like bellies. People have bellies.

Duane Bryers

I'm linking some of the content from my regular blog, Doomslakers, here.

Duane Bryers s a legend. Read my post about him here and enjoy this delicious selection of Hilda pinups. Queen of pinups!

Vaughn Bode

 Vaughn Bode is a god damned legend who died far too soon. Read what I wrote about him here, then enjoy these wondrous images.

While you're at it, go check out Vaughn's son Mark Bode because he ain't no slouch. To wit:

Purple Girl and Pretty People

This was originally posted here. I reposted the entire thing on this blog because it is highly relevant.

Another in a series of pinup style art. Here I question the term "pinup" only to the extent that there's nothing parciuarly salacious here. I'm not making a Playboy Magazine joke. It's just a drawing of a woman in a dress (I called her "Purple Girl" for some reason... is that a purple dress? Not really.). Sure, there's cleavage. And she's hot. But y'know...

So here's the thing about this one. I want to draw more like this. And I'm not just talking about "fat chicks"*. I'm talking about drawing people that aren't constrained by social expectations of beauty. Which is, in my opinion, about 99% of everyone you have ever met in your life. Seriously, when was the last time you knew someone personally who looked like the average person on a TV show? Television and movies skew our perceptions, they lie to us about what people are really like. Sure, there are nods to diversity of appearance beyond the diversity of race and sex and gender. There are the token fat chicks, for example, who almost always play the role of best friend or helper. But where are the cool as fuck fantasy action movies wherein the actual protagonist is a fat chick, fat man, someone with a huge nose, a person with an overbite, or just someone who looks like they came from someplace other than a Hollywood casting call?

People are beautiful. I mean, people are bastards, but they are also beautiful. Flaws are not ugly, fat is not ugly, moles are not ugly. I actually have a hard time just sitting and watching any TV shows because if feels like the equivalent of listening to an over-produced metal album with all the rough edges smoothed out. I hate that shit. Give me something real, even in my fantasy.

The root of all this is pretty simple, though. Men (I can't speak to the experience of women) love to look. And when we look, we judge. We are either attracted to a woman or we are not or it is somewhere in between. Then two important things happen that causes the whole god damn problem. First, we assume that the job of the object we look upon is to please our senses. When a woman is in a role that isn't inherently meant to be sexy, such as the frumpy fry cook or busybody, then we don't have much to say about her appearance. But in other roles, especially love interests, we have a LOT to say. And that brings us to the second problem: social expectations. Advertising, TV (which is advertising), Movies (which is advertising), etc, all inform what we collectively learn about beauty. We are told that Gwyneth Paltrow is one of the most beautiful women in the world. OK. She's a pretty lady, but not my cup of tea. So I don't crush on her. Go back a few years and maybe I'm younger and the woman is Cindy Crawford. I have no problem with Cindy, but I don't find her attractive at all. But if I said that in front of a bunch of guy buds I'd get flack for it. I'd be the odd man out. I'd be the butt of the joke. EVERYONE loves Cindy because she's the ideal form.

Fuck the ideal form. Fuck the commercials. Give me real or fuck off.

So... ranting aside... I want to try to keep this in mind much more explicitly when I'm drawing. I want to draw what I want and I want to be fearless about it. It's hard, though. That judgmental eye feels like it's always upon me. If it's not the eye of the twat who thinks fat = ugly, then it's the eye of the prude who thinks the boobs are too big. Fuck 'em.

I wanna be more like Dave Cooper. I don't know the guy at all, I have no idea if he's a total dickhead or a saint. But he god damn well draws what he wants.

*I use the term "fat" often when describing the characters I draw who are not skinny. I don't see a problem with that because I don't stigmatize the word. "Fat" isn't code for "ugly" in my world and it makes me sick to my stomach when I hear people use it that way. For example, I get physically uncomfortable when watching movies in which fat = ugly. It pisses me off. It's the dumbest shit in the world and it reduces human beings to nothing... including the men who weaponize the word. So stop fucking doing it, asshole.

The Art of Salacious Bawdry

Hello. This blog is all about pinup art, which means you're going to see a bunch of nude, semi-nude, and badass chicks, usually brandishing swords, skulls, and kisses. What follows is a post I wrote on my other blog, Doomslakers, that sums up what Blood Red Pinups is all about.

Read on, dear reader...

Ice ninjas? Fuck yeah.

Ah, the scantily clad femme fatale of fantasy. Long have I viewed and dreamed of her. I fondly remember being an adolescent boy and picking up the Savage Sword of Conan each month from a local mini mart shelf. I grabbed issue #104 and spent far too long looking at the delicious Joe Jusko cover, complete with redhead chick dangling from Conan's sword belt showing all kinds of underboob.

Sexist? Oh yeah, no doubt about it. Conan stories in general are sexist as fuck. If you don't believe me, try reading Howard. Check out The Jewels of Gwahlur and note how many times the damsel breaks down in tears or faints. It's classic 1930s hard man storytelling.

Anyhow... I appreciate a good chainmail bikini. There's a rich aesthetic to it... a kind of metal-and-flesh eroticism that stirs the imagination (and loins, natch). You can do it right. You can do it without being toxic. I have preached about this before. A chainmail bikini image does not a misogynist make. Having your female characters constantly faint and cry... well, that's a different story.

So for me it's really a matter of honesty. Own what you are doing. Don't give me 60 pages of tits and ass and market it as a serious adventure story. It isn't. It's a tits and ass story. Own it.

Erotic, chainmail chick, pinup, R-rated... whatever you want to call it. Just eat the god damned cheesecake and stop calling it caviar. And if you want to do a story that is taken seriously, you need to cut way the fuck back on the cheesecake.

MY NEFARIOUS PLANS FOR THIS BLOG SPACE

First, owing to the fact that I'm at least a little bit obsessed with pinup art, I needed a place to put it all. Images like the one to the right simply don't fit very well into my other venues. I have friends who don't enjoy this kind of work and since it is qualitatively of a different stripe than maybe Cozmic Metal Heads or even Black Pudding, I wanted to give this part of my creative life its own space to breathe. If you aren't into this, click away with my best wishes. This isn't for everyone, I understand.

Which leads me to another thing I'd like to do: explore the entire enterprise of pinup art. It has a long and storied history and I'd love to explore it, understand it, critique it honestly, and celebrate it passionately.

Which leads me to the other thing I want to do: present and explore various artists who have been or are currently doing pinup art. Also, to celebrate other media, such as music and movies, in which the female form is presented in a bawdy mode.

If this sounds good to you, then put this blog on your radar and I'll try to post something as often as I can. You can also follow me on Instagram where I post my pinups @bloodreddm.

Let's rock and roll.