Contrasts

Often I find the best images are the ones that use fetish elements sparingly. Like a lot of things in life, it’s the relative change rather than the absolute value that’s important. This image for example has a beautifully composed lady, wearing a light summer dress, sitting in what looks like a normal room, while sporting a giant veiny black strap-on. That’s so much more erotic in my mind that more usual leather, buckles and boots.

Strapon With SundressFound on piotrushka’s tumblr site.

Bruised Slave

This struck me as an unusual image. When body marks are shown in femdom artwork (or in any BDSM artwork for that matter), it’s usually the stereotypical cane or whip stripes. It’s rare to see actual bruising or more general signs of physical harm. The contrast in this case between the composed elegance of the mistress and the battered appearance of the slave is quite beautiful.

In terms of the backstory here I’ve no idea what the original artist intended. But with the careful pose and the photographic studio style backdrop, it comes across as a formal portrait session. Perhaps she’s preparing the shot for her annual Christmas card?

Formal mistress and bruised slaveI’ve no idea who the artist is. It looks like something from renderotica and has some similarity to xrenderer, but I don’t think it’s quite his style. It’s an amazing piece of work, so if you do know the artist then please drop me a line.

Happy Faces

After the oddness of this post, I thought some more straightforward artistic Japanese femdom might be in order.

I love this image for the expressions on their faces. She has a wonderful smug look, and is clearly enjoying every moment of his torment. In contrast he’s balanced between pleasure and pain, enjoying the momentary pleasure of her foot, but anticipating the worst…..

Dirty Work

There’s a fairly unique dynamic invoked by a mistress pulling on a pair of black leather gloves. It’s very different to the mood created by surgical gloves. The tougher, more workmanlike black leather brings to mind nefarious behavior. The need to avoid leaving fingerprints. That it might get messy and she doesn’t want blood on her hands. And that if a physical beating is required, some hand protection would be useful.

Leaving femdom aside for a moment, they make me think of this sequence in the first Dirty Harry movie. Whoever shot that scene knew something about this power dynamic.

I believe I found this on usenet. It’s obviously from a cruella set based on the logo, but I think it’s a very old shot.

Grigbertz

This is an image taken from the Grigbertz fetish gallery. There’s a whole host of fun images there, and it’s well worth checking out, although there’s clearly a lot of context and subtext around the characters and scenarios that I’m just missing. But regardless of the who/what/why, this image really caught my eye as a very sexy femdom (plus mouse!) scene.

It’s titled ‘In the basement’ and is from this Grigbertz gallery.

Chastity and Denial

Orlando has both an erotic and a thoughtful new post at his blog In Scarlet Ink.

The erotic bit comes (sorry) at the start as he describes getting to orgasm for the first time in two months.

“Murre just let me come, a few days ago, after two months or so of waiting.  And it was this earth-shattering moment.  She announced her intentions as I was waking up, and caressed me, and counted me down from seven (which seemed frighteningly abrupt), and I came for her.  It went on a long time, and I trembled, and she held me and it felt like she had taken me apart and put me back together….and then the long wait began again, fresh.

So, uh, yeah.  Ummm.  I like orgasm denial.”

Ummm, wow. Descriptions like that tempt me to break out the credit card and the tape measure.

Then, having grabbed your attention with that opening, he goes on to muse on the reasons why orgasm denial is largely a male fantasy. He’s got a number of interesting viewpoints which are well worth reading, and all of which probably tell some part of the story.

Personally I’d advance an argument that’s a slight twist on his point (I). Men (massive generalization on it’s way) tend to see orgasms as a bodily function like breathing, pissing or eating. From the moment a man hits adolescence he starts producing semen, and jerking off to expel it just becomes another necessary regular event. The body will even do it automatically at times with a nocturnal emission. This isn’t to say sex for men is a requirement like eating or drinking – see Emily Nagoski for interesting comments in that area – just that there is a perception that regular orgasm’s (however achieved) are a normal requirement of life.

If you’re wired to enjoy playing with power and control, then giving up control over something as fundamental as a ‘bodily function’ is obviously going to be a hot button. The artwork of Augustine is a good example of this kind of play, heavily populated as it is with lots of catheter, enema and tease/denial scenes. Women, even if they orgasm every day and three times on Sundays, may not perceive them in that very basic biological way.

Dewey Decimal Domination

I’m constantly amazed by the quantity and quality of the erotic artwork that comes out of Japan. Browsing any of the archive or chan sites will show a multitude of talented artists producing some really imaginative work. And sometimes it’ll be so imaginative, I’m left wondering exactly where the inspiration came from….

This image is taken from a collection of drawings entitled Bizarre Nightmare, by ‘Annmo Night’. It’s a beautifully drawn series, with lots of buxom women doing wonderfully sadistic things to weaker men. Most of the drawings are based on fairly conventional femdom themes, with added daliesque twists to represent the nightmare element. But this one is particularly puzzling. Who fantasizes about being attacked by books in a library? And what exactly is the role of the woman here? Is she controlling the books? Or are the books trained to attack men? Or are they all just swirling in a vortex beneath her? I can’t say that I find it erotic at all, but it’s certainly striking.

(Amusing side note on the title to this post. Having come up with what I thought was a fairly unique phrase, I googled it just to see how rare it really was. Not only has it been used before, it’s actually the title of a blog. The blog of a librarian and dominatrix no less, which sounds like my idea of heaven. Sadly it looks like it’s now dead after a very short life).