Wow, isn’t this the best Fantasy ever produced?
No. I’m of opinion that the legendary Boris Vallejo is overrated.

Here’s Frazetta:

I was puzzled, was aghast
the morning fart of some mad hatter
changed clothes and backpack and all matter
into crude peasantry, and fast!

Behind each tree I seemed to see
an ugly nose-drip, grim-grin witch
eager for a medieval stitch, I
wanted to shriek like a banshee

But it was dwarfs who came into sight
they pleaded help, gave me a tiny sword
to slay the dragon called ‘Bad Breath’ Gaylord
who fed on forests theirs by right

A sword, I protested, I cannot yield!
I want back my mobile phone
I’ll report this dragon’s home
I’m only a hero in my own field!

The full fledged fantasies stared up at me
and ran off, I expected to wake up
after I gave my eyes a vicious rub
I swore: no more day trips on XTC

Right that moment I should have fled too- a Roar!
the giant beast crushed rocks and trees
I swooned and fell on weakened knees
no mistaking this for a protected boar!

My holiday beard got seared, I screamed
this fairytale became far too grimm
my comprehension ran to the brim
the ground heaved shook cleaved boiled and steamed

Save all your captured dames, I begged
I’m a software pedlar from beyond
my sole believe is in Bond, James Bond
your horrid world just got me pegged

The dragon stared, and, just like that
said, Bloody hell, well well! a nice bloke
Ay knight, can you spare some of that dope
If not, I will smoke you to death!

I said; how d’you fare at arm wrestling
he said: Lo and behold, I have short arms
unfit even for work at funnyfarms
and don’t spread this: I got one false wing

He welled up lukewarm tears right then and there
his p.r. sucked, no confidence
screwed up his act in arrogance
he even invited me to his lair

There he served me Princess tea
more and more I grew suspicious, he
seemed to find me quite delicious
asked me; Fish and chips, or me?

So…as it comes and goes in old fairy tales
I killed that dragon, freed the beauty
my life as Prince got rooty-tooty
for me no more 21st century ails!

Robert Wayt Smith paints not only fiery dragons; he paints
dragons with a character.
They can be viewed here, two pages of them. Delightful!

To clear something up: I never (my Darfur poem ‘Diafragm’
is an exception) write poems to illustrations. It’s the other
way around, I find, or search for, illustrative art that I feel
fits the poetry. In some cases I adapt the poem a bit, like
here, where I turned the woods into winter(y) woods.
Robert’s dragon is a far better creation than my poem,
nevertheless he is perfectly cast.

©2005dedeurs

A dragon must be quite kinky if he wants to snuggle up with a female human and even copulate with her. Humaniality- bestiality in reverse.
So it’s no wonder that they hump anyone and anything. One may be a fantasy creature, but that’s no excuse to misbehave.

I have a feeling that DreamWorks won’t appreciate these leaked videostills from their beloved dragon Toothless. His fans ralso don’t want to know that he has a past of abusing minors, I guess.

Despite their untidy appearance and their perverse nature, there is one dragon I’m in love with. Robert Wait Smith created him in visual art and I created him in a poem and the two made a more than good match…

- 2b continued -

©2012dedeurs
Images were borrowed without consent of the author(s).
Him or her who objects cometh forward and object.
Illustrations/photos will then be withdrawn.

…And where were you, testosteron-loaded warriors, when your female colleagues started having affairs with dragons?

Ah, yes…

…What do you mean; ‘No gay phallus symbols and no homoerotic SM undertones in Fantasy art?’

Anyone who read Stephen King’s Firestarter knows that even at a tender age, dragons are killers for your curtains and furniture.  But once they have reached the adolesent phase, they become a real social nuisance.  They start to collect damsels, maidens, princesses.

One day, the wife of an alcoholic bum of a warrior got fed up with the situation, and decided to chop some dragon wings off herself.

Others followed. But one made a mess of the war against dragons. She tried to stun him into submission  with her amazonesque nudity.

Wrong! He forgot to torch her to a cinder, as he got distracted by his instant erection. The rest is history.

Lovely dragon armor.
Women are not only capable to find the soft spot in a dragon, they have a soft spot for dragons themselves. Same as with unicorns. Although a female warrior never rides a unicorn when she’s the type who’s been places. In other words; no longer a virgin.

A dragon is a rather standard Fantasy accessory. Like old wizards with long white beards who emit white hot light from the tips of their fingers. Boring. Dragons belong to the family of reptiles; lizards, salamanders, gecko’s.  They’re scaly, almost always sport long spiked tails, have crocodile snouts (some bird’s beaks), evil yellow or blood red eyes with vertical pupils and let’s not forget the leathery wings.

A handful of late-Cretaceous dragons survived the extermination by adopting wings. A dragon without wings is a loser. Not worth to use your nail file on. Some beasties take so much pride in their flaps that they eye-shadow them with mother-of-pearl…

Well done, whoever did that one.

The dragons underneath the babes. Are they a distinctive species?  Are there dragons for boys and dragons for girls? There are by far not only female dragons that cooperate with female warriors and princesses and lady sorcerers, as we are going to see.

Let’s start where humans as well start. Like all babies and puppies and kittens and chickens, hatchings look adorable.

And the Chinese from a couple of millennia ago. They employed the first dragon riders. And thus tamed dragons.
Odd, Asians are not particularly hairy people, but these dragons carry a few hirsute guys. Contrary to the carefully plucked and waxed Greek gods.

Not a dragon; a water spirit and her bodyguard. The scene has a Nordic Saga look, though.
A naked man on a horse is always a sensual sight and even the monster that protects the water spirit looks like a sexual organism. This very impressive painting looks Art Nouveau but is relatively new, and artist Jim Thiesen sold it for a stunning amount. The quality of this reproduction sucks, the actual painting must be a real stunner, so I think it’s worth the price. If you can afford it.

Saint George and an obligatory damsel in distress. But the most famous Nordic dragon is Fafner, who was defeated by Sigurd (Siegfried). Who took a bath in Fafner’s blood in order to coat himself with invincibilaty, but he didn’t realize a falling leaf had come stuck to his back. So that little spot wasn’t treated, and eventually it was there, where later a spear would pierce him and kill him.

…Hm, Conan would probably say: ‘These maidens slayed a dragon??’ The modern Sword & Sorcery scene may harbor a few gym fags, but they are quite a bit tougher than this.
The interesting element in the Sigurd/Siegfried saga is that the hero lived in pre-medieval times. So he ran around in fur loincloths and sandals, or slayed the walking and flying flame thrower in Greek style: nekkid.

There are contemporary illustrations of the Siegfried story, and their quite nice.

Dragons and men; now that’s like trying to mate ice and fire. Men are convinced that the only good dragon is a slain dragon. And dragons think: I always get the body groomed gym fags so I can’t sing their leg hairs off.

It’s enough for a never ending war.

I am not always fond of computergame animation. Usually there you get to see a flat sort of 3D, and rather stiff looking, doll-like characters.

But the story and the scenery in this Warrior-against-Amazons game is delightful and it has at least one true-to-life color.

Now ain’t that red or not? The color horror movie directors would die for.
Odd though that she didn’t reap all his growths. There’s room enough in that giant mouth for the mushroom too, I’d say.

The complete episode with text can be found here.

Now this series of art works by Terence Healy is not specifically Sword and Sorcery material, and as Fantasy it contains a bit too much slash ‘n gore horror elements.
It will make some men even more restless. A giant woman. A green hulking woman. A green hulking teasing woman. Until she’s had enough of him. Or rather, having a taste for more…

I read that novelist Marion Zimmer Bradley made the Female Warrior type ‘Wonder Woman’ a trend in the 1960s. Marion got fed up with helpless, whimpering fashion models like Edgar Rice Burrough’s Jane and Alex Raymond’s Dale, so she wrote about women with muscles in all the right places and who had a 24/7 job rescuing the sorry asses of perpetually abducted, helpless, whimpering men.

The advantage that female warriors have over their male colleagues, is that they are less sensitive. They have to! It’s like in the army. Male soldiers guffawing; ‘we have to arm-wrestle with THAT?’ Conan the Barbarian or any other sandaled muscle bunch quickly learned the abilities of the female co-warrior after he cried out: ‘But the attacking enemy is a woman, I can’t kill wimmen! I don’t even slap their asses! Not that I’m gay, but I’m just not the woman-beater type!’ Whereupon the female Conan said, ‘Go stand behind my protective behind’ and disemboweled the bitch in one swipe. These wimmen may look like the Next Top Model, but they have chest hair.

‘Girl Talk’?  Forget it. But let’s not forget their charming disarming of male enemies:

Going back in time some more, we see women who belonged to another breed. Creatures you could knock unconscious with a mere blow. From a kiss. They can be recognized by their doe eyed stares and submissive poses. Which prompted the male royalty to act like King Kong in rut.

And don’t think that only uncivilized barbarians were rutting at the sight of a woman with typical Western bikini tops on.

The Man ruled the world. He thought: ‘If my right fist clenches my sword, what will my left fist clench?
I know! Another sword!
Now what shall I clench between my feet? A broad.’

Most of the time he unclenched and allowed them to sit on the ground. So they could admire him. The closer to the ground, the more towering a Man looks.

Notice the face of the girl – a Princess, according to her clothes, or rather the lack of them – who is abducted by a giant bird. She is either going to be fed to his hatchings, or fucked to death.  She only looks worried. Will it mess up her hair ? Scratch her nail varnish? Ruin her lipgloss?

From here on, comments would be a total waste of time. Strong visuals speak louder than words.

According to Wikipedia, Sword & Sorcery is situated

after the destruction of Atlantis and before the rise of the known ancient civilizations.

Right after the retreat of the Last Ice Age, I suppose. So the mythological Amazons can’t have been the first fem warriors. Their great-great-grandmothers were at least a lot more spicy.

Young and beautiful, the woman soldier/mercenary from the late-prehistoric was, and not the type to get hysterical at the sight of mice or any other creepy crawlies. She was a master in martial arts, knew a bit about white and  black magic, held her drink and she was clever too.  Letting the handsome barbarian at her side believe he won the battle. Solely for the benefit of the press she posed crouched, hugging one of his hammy calves and looking up at him with sex starved devotion.
Strange then that she had the most impractical ideas about military fashion. She always carried a lot of jewelry, and wore Uggs – scooped out bear paws – or spiked and thorned boots, and armory that more often than not resembles a prehistoric beach bikini. And oh yes; her make-up was always flawless. Ten thousands year ago they must have had excellent hair dressers too.

Soa Lee, whom I gave hell in the introduction post of these series.  This one will lose the head wings and breast cups throughout battles all the time, but she sure knows how to pose.

Now Fantasy – very popular in contemporary illustration art – has a problem just the same.
Most fans of Fantasy, and their artists, are to be found in the Sword, Sorcery & Sandals sector. That genre has become a horrror field of cliché’s equaled only by the Marvel Superhero Hype.

We all know them. The dwarfs and the wizards, the over-muscled ogres and supersized monsters, the heroes battling with swords that no mortal man can get from the ground, let alone swing around…

Digital Fantasy Art is in my view an art form that must be taken dead serious.
Digital art, however, has a problem. That is, when it strives for photo-realism. The viewer says ‘Art? All you had to do was point the camera and click the shutter and gloss the result up a bit in photoshop’, and thus will miss the creative work the artist often has put into the picture.

But what to think of this sort of creativity?

Britney Spears isn’t the only one who gave digital manipulation a bad reputation. Celebrities, looking wayyyy too unblemished, their features almost surpassing perfectness, their skin color and texture unreal.

Beyoncé from her infamous L’Oréal sessions. The funny thing is that in her ‘natural state’ she looks heavily pancaked…

Notice Keira Knightley’s boobs. Understandable, but this movie star has at least shown sense not to give in to the silicone craziness so far. Or am I running behind on Poptart newzies?

Wrong or justified; we cannot ignore certain artistic creativity:

Photographic manipulation. Stalin has been constructed from various faces.

Pre-computer age. Jean-Paul had Grace propped and tied up and after the birdie moment erased the extras again. He also did some air brushing on her. But that’s an old trick, as old as photography itself.

season’s massacral greetings

Tripping through the flards
of their slimy flesh
I smell mushy sulfur
anisette, spicy sweet

The garden wasps gone underground
remaining flowers wilt
my feet are numbed, I
turn up the gas

A byproduct
from many eons
countless autumns
of seasonal death

©2011dedeurs

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The Art of Autumn :

“Any girl can look glamorous …. just stand there and look stupid.”

On Internet, already a lot about Doris Day can be found, but I think I can add a few views. For instance, that she wasn’t just a hugely popular mainstream singer/actress. She was an extremely good singer and actress. She made 40 movies, and while not all of them flawless products, there isn’t one where she does a bad job. Not even in the ones she herself loathed.

She appeared a natural. The 1950s was a decade when Method Acting became the norm (Marlon Brando, James Dean), but Doris displayed ‘real life’ acting already earlier, in her Hollywood debut Romance on the High Seas. She made comical faces, she winked, she delivered her lines in a smooth and rapid way and put a lot of subtle little somethings in her performance. On that ocean liner, she was a very feminine apparition, and glamorous to the hilt, at the same time the tomboy in her shined through. In a glance, she looked like just another attractive dumb blond, and if you never saw a DD movie before, within one minute of Doris Day screen presence, you will realize she was far more than that.

I hate musicals, but when I see Doris doing her song routines, I marvel over her bouncy energy and her perfect timing. In a by now antique and even stuffy era, she saved many a movie moment from corniness. Her only fault, especially during the late 50s and early 60s, was that she sometimes played out the cuddly darling but hyperactive and stubborn wife-to-be too much. Which wasn’t her fault alone;  her directors’. Doris was most effective when she played a comic scene as straight as possible. Very few of her directors understood this, or thought that the public simply wanted and expected to see a Doris Day going over the top. On the other hand; her overdoing often worked. Her scene in Move over darling where she sits in her car when it goes through a washing street, is an academic example of well crafted, effective movie-making and wild, but perfectly restrained acting. With any other actress (Marilyn Monroe ran with the part until death ran off with her), Move over darling would have bombed.

Doris Day is known for her conservative views. She hated vulgarity and explicit sex in movies. So she almost always played women who were hard to get and certainly never showed themselves in their bras. In one movie Doris’s character even breaks out in rashes at the very idea of having sex with a man.
It is played in her usual comedy flair, but her self-censored coyness began to wear out during the 60s, when moral values began to change. The sexual revolution of the baby boomer generation, as wikipedia calls that episode. People not only found Doris Day’s formulaic comedies getting outdated, but also began to wonder if she herself was pathologically frigid.
She simply didn’t want to fornicate or even suggest such in front of the camera’s, to put it blunt, but she later differentiated her view on sex.

You don`t really know a person until you live with him, not just sleep with him. Sex is not enough to sustain marriage. I have the unfortunate reputation of being Miss Goody Two-shoes, America`s Virgin, and all that, so I`m afraid it`s going to shock some people for me to say this, but I staunchly believe no two people should get married until they have lived together. The young people have it right. What a tragedy it is for a couple to get married, have a child, and in the process discover they are not suited for one another! If I had lived with Al Jorden for a few weeks, God knows I would never have married him. Nor would I have married George Weidler. But I was too young and too inexperienced to understand any of this. Now my heart was busted and I had lost my way. – 1975

History writes that she had great on-screen chemistry with a couple of her leading men. They were all famous or at least established actors. Gordon MacRae, Gary Grant, Rod Taylor, Rex Harrison, Jack Lemmon, Ronald Reagan, Richard Harris, David Niven, James Garner, Kirk Douglas, Clark Gable, Rock Hudson, Brian Keith.
Nonsense. Doris would have had great chemistry with an alcohol delirious street bum. But some from whom one expected that chemistry, failed somewhat. I saw her quarreling with James Cagney in a scene from Love me or leave me, and Cagney is theatrical, his movements are visibly rehearsed and directed, whereas Doris seems like a woman who just dropped by in the studio and impulsively took out her anger on the star of the movie. She’s overpowering, and also totally real. Cagney was lauded for his role, but in that little scene Day shows what he was: an old fashioned and not very supple actor. And she proved that she could handle dramatic roles. With ease.

For her first – and reluctant – venture into movies, she showed up for a meeting with the film’s director Michael Curtis without having made any effort to wear a special dress or hairdo, and burst into tears a couple of minutes into the test vocal “Embraceable You”. The film score’s composer Sammy Cahn took her aside and explained the director was looking for a Betty Hutton type – someone who sang and bounced around. She replied, “I don’t bounce around – I just sing”.
- Eric Brown

Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff bounced reluctantly across the movie screen for two decades in a row, turning from an already famed singer into America’s top movie star…Doris Day.

When she signed on to Warner Brothers, they immediately began to give her acting lessons to prepare her for her role. When director Curtiz heard about it he was not happy. He said that she had a strong screen personality of her own and she should always just be herself, that she really didn’t need acting lessons of any kind. He, of course, was entirely correct. In Doris Day’s own book, Doris Day My Story, she reports that he said to her: “You have a natural thing there in you, should no one ever disturb. You listen to me Doris. Is very rare thing. Do not disturb.”

Doris Day may be known best for corny movie images like these:

where she was presented as a young lady with a Colgate smile and horrible 1950s hairdo’s. The typical naive WASP virgin. The Holy Mary of Hollywood.
In all these years she for sure never bared a tit or bum. But that she could look stunningly sexy sophisticated if her director had his way, she already showed in 1947, in that very first movie assignment: Romance on the High Seas.

A young Doris Day croons classics, like “It’s Magic”, aboard an ocean- going liner alongside regular co-star Jack Carson and Janis Paige. Day throws herself into her movie debut like a woman aiming for a passing lifeboat from the deck of the Titanic. But this was a fledgling performance from an actress determined to succeed — even if it took a few years of belting ‘em out in froth like this. One of those movies to watch with a box of chocolates on a rainy afternoon, that requires nothing more than an open mind and a light heart.”
- Radio Times

The amazing stills were made from a television screening. Walker Dukes features lots more interesting glamor photo art here.

dorisday.net offers extensive reviews of all of her 40 movies, with great photo stills. A must for fans.

Miss Day looks just like a tow-headed little Pekinese when she yips in anger or cuddles in devotion and when she goes in for really high comedy she looks like Carol Burnett doing an imitation of Shirley Temple.
- New York Herald Tribune on Send Me No Flowers 1964

“I have learned more about comedy from Doris than I could have learned in four years at the Royal Academy.”
- Co-actor Richard Harris on Caprice, 1967

“I’ve been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.”
- Oscar Levant, arranger and composer of filmmusic

“I had become a new kind of sex symbol – the woman men wanted to go to bed with, but not until you married her. Sexy but pure. One thing I was careful about in those films was to avoid vulgarity, which I truly despise. I liked those scripts about the man-woman game as long as they were done with style and wit and imagination. In my vocabulary, vulgarity begins when imagination succumbs to the explicit.
There was a scene in Lover Come Back in which Rock Hudson and I wake up in bed together in a motel, I in pajama tops, he in the bottoms. We have both been put under the spell of intoxicating wafers we had eaten. I felt the scene had a vulgar tone to it as it was originally written.
In the reworking of it, it was established that we have visited a justice of the peace, in our cooky-intoxicated condition, and even though, in the film, Rock is the last man in the world I want to wake up with in a motel bed, and I run out on him, at least we had the blessings of a justice of the peace upon us. This is the film that has that wonderful scene at the end, in which Rock learns I am about to have the baby, rushes to the hospital just as I am being carted into the delivery room, and marries me in a cart-side ceremony.”
- Doris Day, Her Own Story

I heard stories. Thin wisps of white hair, bag lady’s clothes. She has been a recluse for decades, after all, and is now 87 years old. This year she gave her approval to a record with songs unreleased so far. To promote it; she had a studio photograph taken. Requiring a good hair stylist and visagist and discrete lighting.
She looks great.

But I think her good looks are a natural. Doris Day is still what she always was: the Sunshine Girl. Life has been a lot better for her since she broke with Hollywood and jealous, mismanaging husbands, and started to star in the lives of abandoned, neglected and abused pets. Doris, I forgive you that you once backed presidential candidate George W Bush; I love you.

©2011dedeurs
Images were borrowed without consent of the author(s).
Him or her who objects cometh forward and object.
Illustrations/photos will then be withdrawn.

Like starting – after having aborted two trials before – a series on nudity in art. And art, that’s not only glass, but paint, marble, bronze and a lot more creative materials.

However, fearing for another dominating series, I decided to take the first episode out of Planet Bareass  again, and put it on a whole new weblog; Planet Male II. The link can be found here on the right side under Blogroll and the blog uses the same familiar black-blue Art Nouveau template.

Egypt. Building the first pre-artdeco sky scrapers, but not developing the greatest lamps and lanterns in history? I found only a few ‘genuine’ Egyptian lamps, and I doubt some of them. Nevertheless, they are nice specimens.

The trapezium looks like one that has been used by Cleopatra herself when she sat down in the evening to mend Julius’ battle socks, but it’s from liveauction, so one can safely assume it’s so new that not even Queen Suzanne Mubarak has used it when she needed some extra light for the packing of her collection of jewelry and gold bars.

1001 Nights story Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp, I found out, is a Middle-Eastern tale (possibly originating from Turkestan), situated in…China. Walt Disney was in 1992 heavily criticized by the Muslim world for his stereotyping of Arabs, most notably in the opening scene of Aladdin where a typical sly & Ugly Jew Merchant takes a swindle on the young hero, but that character was already there in 18th century versions. And today’s Arabs still don’t like sly & ugly Jewish merchants, so what was that all about??
Aladdin lamps a-plenty, but very few in glass, and mostly stylized replica’s from gift shops.

The bottom one is quite beautiful but horribly miscast. On top one has to insert a candle. Robin Williams will have a fit.

A very 21st century version, burning on oil.

A Syrian lantern. For such a modern islamic country, I’d expect that they’d have invented glass. Even if it’s truly antique.

Saudi-Arabia is the America of the Middle-East: ‘Bigger is better!’ Quite impressive, king Abdullah

I once bought two tiny lanterns like these (minus the awful gilding) and even found extra small tea light candles for them. It’s only now that I realize these were Ramadam lanterns.

Some are quite elaborate and hardly distinguishable with ‘official’ Moorish lanterns, others are made from plastic. But who cares, when the fasting is over and the fiesta begins.

For the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, they needed a bit more than ramadam lanterns. It’s a stunning place, I’ve never seen a building so white (ex- and interior photo’s here). It’s a traditional mosque and at the same time hi-tech ultra modern. The giant chandeliers, studded with Swarovski stones, aren’t even the best feature of the house. Worth a visit, although I don’t think western atheists in tight summer shorts are welcome there.

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And Algerian, Libyan, Yemenite, and Jordan lamps? No more ‘typical’ than the ones in the other countries.  In Iran they are probably banned. Iran bans nearly everything that’s not home-bred, and gas, oil and candles are needed for the nuclear plant. So the Iranian people have only fire flies and radiating djinns. Which they put in chunks of esoteric salt. Perhaps Mrs Ahmadinejad should put one in her husband’s head, perhaps it will enlighten his atrofied awareness of democracy.

- 2b continued -

©2011dedeurs
Images were borrowed without consent of the author(s).
Him or her who objects cometh forward and object.
Illustrations/photos will then be withdrawn.

- 2b continued -

©2011dedeurs
Images were borrowed without consent of the author(s).
Him or her who objects cometh forward and object.
Illustrations/photos will then be withdrawn.