About The Illustrations

Barbi Benton (watercolor)

Hello again, my dear reader.  Serafina and I would like to thank you for taking a moment of your time, allowing us to share our journey.

If you enjoy the "watercolor" that begins this post, it was created by a program called PhotoSketcher from the photo that I've attached to the right.

I'm very much enjoying altering photos to give them the appearance of being watercolor or oil paintings.  There are times that I prefer the artistic feel of illustrations rather than the sharp reality of photography.

As with most of the altered photos I've been using lately, the original came from tumblr without any real source information.  It's rare to even have model information, but here the model has been identified as early '70's Playboy model, actress, comedienne, and singer Barbi Benton.

Our original intent here at our Spiritual BDSM blog was to illustrate our posts primarily with our own photos.  It's pretty obvious we've never fulfilled that intent.  While there are a number of our own (mostly Serafina's) photos scattered here and there, they are predominantly found associated with posts that are reviews, or with Serafina's own musings on submission.

suitable for framing?

I even gave Serafina a new digital camera for Christmas.  No matter what white balance or other color setting I adjusted, I absolutely hated the skin tones produced by our old digital camera.

Our new Nikon produces marvelous images, as you might have noticed from Serafina's Saturday Evening Caning post.  I was thrilled that my first effort with the camera reproduced her pale (but not quite porcelain) skin, not to mention her nice "stripes".  What a good girl she was for her first caning!


With that said, I am 48 and Serafina's about a decade older, so while we do our best to preserve ourselves, we've passed the stage of living fast, dying young, and leaving behind moderately good looking corpses.  We don't always feel as photogenic as we might have in times past.

And, if nothing else than for variety's sake, when I want to create a lavishly illustrated internet guide on a topic like gags in BDSM, I can't get tremendous results just shooting a few quickie shots of my Serafina.

She's not a huge fan of gags to begin with, one of her objections being that she feels they make women look ugly.  I haven't even dared to ask, but knowing my Serafina the way I do, I'm sure that flooding the internet with her in "ugly" gag pictures would be a major league Bozo-No-No!

So, using the plethora of images available from the feeds of mutual followers on tumblr.com, I illustrate lavishly, converting images like the wiffle ball gag photo (right) into the more artistic representation that   concludes this post.

I strongly believe that representations of BDSM are capable of becoming outstanding topical material for "fine art" (whatever that might be) - and this new twist on illustrating our blog is just one way I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve.

I'm open to feedback too.  If the majority of readers absolutely hate the illustrations, they aren't essential to the message.

Finally, I'd like to close by saying that I apologize in advance for what anyone might consider to be an inadvertent copyright violation on my part in creating this BDSM styled "art".  Tumblr is like the wild wild west of image sharing, and while I do my best to create my art from images that are copyright free or creative commons, I know that I can make mistakes in judgement when "guesstimating" a picture's true source.

If there's ever any problem with a photo you authored, or for which you have copyright claim, and you'd like my derivative illustration removed, simply send an email with the word "copyright" in the note's title to master(at)spiritualbdsm(dot)com.

Thanks,
Michael