Rahhnstawp

Ronnie John Villa Jr has been posting on Twitter and Instagram for many years, but he doesn't leave everything up forever.  Such is the way of the internet.  Fortunately, I've saved enough of his self-published and mostly self-shot portraits to make a decent post of them here.  He's a true beauty and a bit of a gym hound.  At one point he seems to have had some ambition to earn extra bucks as a stripper.  He certainly has the body for it, but what really stands out is his face: luscious lips, prominent jaw, soulful eyes, faint but dark facial hair and a perfect nose.  Some men are truly blessed.
 

I believe the photo directly above was probably the first I saw of him, so I had some catching up to do.  Below are those from his brief gogo boy stint, the sort of thing that was almost certainly even better in person.  I'm truly sorry I missed it.

These last three above are him with his boyfriend.  Some of his old posts made it sound as if they broke up but it isn't the case.  He continues to post pictures of them together and he continues to (jokingly?) complain.  They remain a handsome couple.

Una sera come le altre...

Yesterday was the 119th anniversary of Vittorio de Sica's birth, and though I've painted his visage as an actor I never before used an image from one of his films. This is Silvana Mangano again, in a fantasy sequence from An evening like any other, the final section of the omnibus Mangano vehicle The Witches (1967). It's the film by him that I've seen most recently and the image strikes me as timely. It comes from a scene where she imagines shooting her husband, played by Clint Eastwood. Watercolor & pencil on paper 6 X 6 inches 7julio20.

And now the Prophecy

Silvana Mangano as Reverend Mother Ramallo in Lynch's DUNE... and now the prophecy: one will come, the voice from the outer world... watercolor & pencil on paper, 15.2 X 22.9 cm, 1july20.

Defund the Police

Policing was doomed from its inception in 1795 in Wapping.  It has always been about protecting the property of merchants rather than the lives of the working poor. Profiling (that is determining beforehand the type most likely to commit crime) is of its very essence. It is an unjust system that needs to be completely rethought and replaced.

The spice must flow.

The spice is vital to space travel. The Spacing Guild and its Navigators, whom the spice has mutated over four thousand years, use the orange spice gas, which gives them the ability to fold space; that is, to travel to any part of the known universe without moving.

El Colombiano de Santander de Quilichao

El modelo más popular de todos los tiempos 
en mi blog:



un amigo de Santander de Quilichao,



Colombia, un ex soldado, 

ahora un obrero de fábrica. 



Después de descubrir mi blog, 



comenzó a hacer videos para que yo dibujara. 



Tiene veintiocho años 

y le gusta hacer ejercicio desnudo. 




Estoy muy agradecido por mis amigos.

This Week's Models: Angel & Liam

It may be that not all the drawings I made this weekend are really worth showing, but in the spirit of honesty I'll include even the ones where I feel that I failed to convey the particular beauty of these two young guys, whom the great Thomasina DeMaio had the generosity to pay to pose for poor art schmucks like me to draw.  I thank her and I thank these two models and the other artists doing like work as well.

Starting off with Angel on Saturday.  Much as I like the first watercolor of the day, seen directly above, I know it doesn't really look much like this young dancer at all, whereas the drawing at the top of the page, the hour long study, was close enough a likeness that my close friend, Thin Mar Oo, whose parents live in the same building as this young man, was able to immediately recognize him with a glance at the portrait.

These next pictures are from Sunday's session with Liam Ocean, a street juggler and hula hoop enthusiast, another kind of dancer I suppose and well worth the study. The drawings are far from perfect, but also far from worthless; and I hope to have the opportunity to make more pictures of him, and of Angel as well.  Come to think of it: the two of them together would be the best of all possibilities regarding these two
.