MEMBER ARTICLE: Bound to my Art
from
Recon News
19 December 2019
By Safeandbound
Four years ago, I arrived in Madrid to study Illustration, barely knowing anyone and having no experience in the fetish world. If someone had told me about all the things to come, I would have never believed it.
Madrid is a city full of great possibilities, if you know how to make the most of it.
I was always passionate about drawing, animation and comics, but I couldn't find my personal style, and I didn't know what to focus my work on, even though I always knew that I wanted to dedicate myself to illustration. I felt a great interest in bondage from an aesthetic point of view. My only contact with it being the videos I saw on the Internet and in comics. Lots of bondage scenes in comics, like Spiderman or Avengers, inspiring me to start drawing my first kink panels. While I was in Madrid, I was dying to start trying it in person, but I suffered from a social anxiety that made it difficult for me to be social in any environment, in class, on the street, on social networks... So, my first experiences were not the best, but they helped me to learn and not lose the desire to discover more of something that excited me the way bondage does.
It didn't take me long to meet Rubfus, one of the people I appreciate most in the fetish community today. He showed me fetishes I didn't know, like puppy play and rubber, and made me feel so comfortable about my kinks that we soon became friends. He also suggested me to combine my drawing skills with my interest in bondage and the fetish world, creating an Instagram account to show off my drawings. He was my first model, and although I didn't have any expectations about the project, starting as an unknown artist, it started to work much better than I expected, and gave me the motivation to continue working on the Project that I now call ''The Art of Fetish''.
That was a turning point, as I soon discovered that most of my followers belonged to a fetish community, known as Kinkstagram, a community which I was scared to join, but which inspired and awoke great inspiration and admiration in me. I started by following the kinksters who inspired me the most, drawing photos that they posted on their profiles or asking them to send me content to draw. These people shared their fetish and kink experiences on social networks simply because they enjoy it and want to inspire and encourage others. I was inspired in ways I can't express. Without the first people who posed to be drawn without asking anything in return my project would have died. In just two months people were sending me messages to draw for them, even people to whom I had not dared to message personally. I discovered that I had a wide audience to focus my work on, and found some incredible artists who are also dedicated to it, such as the famous James Newland, a genius and a great source of inspiration, or my friend Glaube (Recon), a true leather artist living in Madrid too.
My work was beginning to be appreciated, and I felt really prized as an artist, as I soon began to sell my drawings and get commissions. I sold drawings that I really enjoyed doing, and because of that I felt less and less anxious to talk to the people who made me commissions or complimented me on my work, which resulted in me starting to interact and getting more confidence. I also began to have more bondage experiences in real life, learning more and more about my kinks and limits, collecting photos that I could draw after.
But I also began to obsess about likes and followers, thinking that they were vital for my drawings to have some value, influenced by some negative personalities that didn't do me any good.
I decided to create a personal account on Kinkstagram, whereas at Recon, I could share my experiences, arouse greater interest in the people who followed my drawings and inspire others as they had inspired me.
Not only did this spark a greater interest in my drawings, I soon began to get messages by people who wanted to meet me and have bondage fun, to share experiences like the ones I published in my account. Numerous experiences came, although not all of them were good. In fact, one of them sank me so deep that I was about to hit rock bottom and say goodbye to the fetish world forever.
But the good news is that you learn from everything, and I learned to appreciate myself, to make the most of myself, and to stay away from toxic people. A few months later, after I recovered, I realised that I had put aside what had started me in all this: my drawings. I focused totally on it, to the point of getting my first exhibition of fetish drawings in Chueca, in the centre of Madrid, thanks to the help I received from SLFC (Spanish Leather and Fetish Community).
I also returned to do bondage sessions, even doing bondage performances with Glaube and more friends at Fetish events. I realized that my social anxiety had almost completely disappeared, and that around me there were more and more people who valued me beyond the fetish aspect, good friends and company. I was still using my social media, but I started to take another approach and stopped being completely obsessed by likes and follows, turning my accounts into another tool to make my work known.
We live in a world where social networks are the order of everyday life, where it seems that if you don't have 10,000 followers you are a nobody or irrelevant. Even in the fetish world there are people with that mentality, whose obsession is with fame and the benefit they can get from it. This makes young or new people on the scene feel insecure or lack the courage to get started by looking at the big picture. For me, the best thing about the fetish world is meeting new people, trying new things and exploring new fetishes, having experiences that you can learn from. Whether they are good or bad there is always something to learn.
In the last year I have achieved more than I could have imagined four years ago. People I never thought I would get to know now are my friends, like Hairylittlepig, Cuteplaytoy, Mancsbondage, Addicttedtoropes, FreaveBound, Puppy Oddie, Domdomscott and Englishkinks to name a few. Thanks to my drawings I have been able to travel, meet more interesting people and live inspiring experiences. I have finally managed to combine the two things that I love the most: Art and Fetish.
Currently I'm focused on finishing my last academic year on Illustration, but I also keep working on custom kink comics and portraits, and on a personal project that hopefully I'll be able to publish in a little more than a year: a graphic novel based on several fetish experiences, both personal and contributed by some of my kink friends.
If you'd like to share your fetish journey, or the ways in which fetish and kink have inspired you, send your ideas or a first draft to: social@recon.com
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