My absolute favourite body type on a guy is slender and androgynous (like The Boy, around whose ankle I can touch my finger to my thumb)...but I can definitely appreciate the contrast of muscled manly-man vs. pretty pink lace, yes indeedy. (link NSFW...duh.)
Contrast is in fact a huge part of my longtime fascination with androgyny and crossdressing. I remember seeing k.d. lang perform on tv when I was a kid (on an awards show, I think?); she was wearing a dress, and it looked all kinds of wrong on her. Initially I mistook her for a guy, actually. And yet, in male or gender-neutral clothing, k.d. doesn't look male to me. Her clothes bring out the feminine or masculine aspect of her features depending on what she wears; her face is like an optical illusion, but instead of rabbit/duck it's guy/girl.
For me, the whole flipping-back-and-forth thing makes androgynous optical-illusion-faces endlessly fascinating to look at. I tried to capture that perfect state of between-ness in this painting:
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| Girl or boy? |
(pssst - it's The Boy in drag.)
I can see the masculinity in the bone structure, especially the jawline, but in a painting the hair and makeup as traditional gender signifiers make it look feminine; I think in general people will respond first to these obvious markers in a painting because not every artist does as good a job with bone structure as you did here.
ReplyDeleteSince The Boy likes to pass, he may be pleased to hear that a heterosexual guy thinks his portrait looks cute.