Touko Valio Laaksonen, known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinized homoerotic art, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.
A gay skinhead, also known as a gayskin or queerskin, is a gay person who identifies with the skinhead subculture. Some gay skinheads have a sexual fetish for skinhead clothing styles.
Fetish art is art that depicts people in fetishistic situations such as S&M, domination/submission, bondage, transvestism and the like, sometimes in combination. It may simply depict a person dressed in fetish clothing, which could include undergarments, stockings, high heels, corsets, or boots. A common fetish theme is a woman dressed as a dominatrix.
Seattle Erotic Art Festival was founded in 2002 and is the flagship program of the nonprofit Pan Eros Foundation.
Eric David Kroll is an American photojournalist, fetish photographer, erotica historian, and book editor.
Jim French was an American artist, illustrator, photographer, filmmaker, and publisher. He is best known for his association with Colt Studio, which he, using the pseudonym Rip Colt, created together with business partner Lou Thomas in late 1967. Thomas parted from the endeavor in 1974 leaving French to continue to build what would become one of the most successful gay male erotica companies in the U.S.
Patrick Fillion is a Canadian illustrator and writer of comic books with erotic gay characters and themes.
William Ward (1927–1996) was a British erotic artist. He is best known for his strips featuring bear-like men and in particular his Adventures of Drum series for Drummer magazine.
Jessica Dougherty, is a modern pin-up artist, notable for being featured artist in a number of art and tattoo books and magazines.
Dale Lazarov is an openly gay American comics writer and poet. He is known for writing wordless homoerotic short stories and graphic novels. His work has been included in "best of" anthologies featuring erotic comics, and received critical praise. He cites Tom of Finland as an influence on his writing. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Lennie Mace is an American contemporary artist, born in New York City. Mace is predominantly known for his drawings in ballpoint pen, using them to create fine artwork. He is considered a pioneer of the medium. His imagination has also served commercial purposes, appearing in print as illustrations and comic art. Art reviewers have referred to Mace as the da Vinci of doodlers and the ballpoint Picasso.
Carl Vaughn Frick – often credited as Vaughn Frick or simply Vaughn – is an alternative cartoonist known for the exploration of gay, environmental, HIV/AIDS awareness, and radical political themes in his comics. His Watch Out! Comix #1 (1986) was an influential gay-themed comic, one of the first by an openly gay male cartoonist. His work was also included in issues of Gay Comix,Meatmen, Strip AIDS, No Straight Lines, and So Fey, a collection of Radical Faerie fiction.
REX was an American visual artist and illustrator closely associated with gay fetish art of 1970s and 1980s New York and San Francisco. He avoided photographs and did not discuss his personal life. His drawings influenced gay culture through graphics made for nightclubs including the Mineshaft and his influence on artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe. Much censored, he remained a shadowy figure, saying that his drawings "defined who I became" and that there are "no other 'truths' out there". REX died in Amsterdam in late March 2024.
Sean and Shawn were the pen-names of John Klamik, was an American artist specializing in gay male erotica and comics. His homosexual-themed cartoons were among the first to appear in US publications, including a regular feature in the early years of The Advocate. He worked under two pen names: Shawn for more mainstream gay publications such as In Touch, and Sean for fetish publications such as Drummer and Bound & Gagged.
Bill Schmeling, better known by his pen name The Hun, was an American artist active in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, known for his explicit, homoerotic fetish illustrations and comics.
Domingo Francisco Juan Esteban "Dom" Orejudos, Secundo, also widely known by the pen names Etienne and Stephen, was an openly gay artist, ballet dancer, and choreographer, best known for his ground-breaking gay male erotica beginning in the 1950s. Along with artists George Quaintance and Touko Laaksonen —with whom he became friends—Orejudos' leather-themed art promoted an image of gay men as strong and masculine, as an alternative to the then-dominant stereotype as weak and effeminate. With his first lover and business partner Chuck Renslow, Orejudos established many landmarks of late-20th-century gay male culture, including the Gold Coast bar, Man's Country bathhouse, the International Mr. Leather competition, Chicago's August White Party, and the magazines Triumph, Rawhide, and Mars. He was also active and influential in the Chicago ballet community.
Tsuyoshi Yoshida, known by the pen name Go Mishima, was a Japanese homoerotic fetish artist and founder of the magazine Sabu. He is noted for his illustrations of "macho-type" men, often with yakuza-inspired irezumi tattoos. Mishima, along with Tatsuji Okawa, Sanshi Funayama, and Go Hirano, is regarded by artist and historian Gengoroh Tagame as a central figure in the first wave of contemporary gay artists in Japan.
Sanshi Funayama was a Japanese homoerotic fetish artist. Funayama, along with Go Mishima, Tatsuji Okawa, and Go Hirano, is regarded by artist and historian Gengoroh Tagame as a central figure in the first wave of contemporary gay artists in Japan.
Tatsuji Okawa was a Japanese homoerotic fetish artist. Tatsuji, along with Go Mishima, Sanshi Funayama, and Go Hirano, is regarded by artist and historian Gengoroh Tagame as a central figure in the first wave of contemporary gay artists in Japan.
Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It is a 2014 manga anthology edited by Anne Ishii, Chip Kidd, and Graham Kolbeins, and published by Fantagraphics Books. Collecting works from Gengoroh Tagame, Jiraiya, and numerous other artists, it is the first English-language anthology of gay manga.
