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Doron Langberg works had an overlooking presence over my project, I was fascinated by the completely diversity of his portfolio of work- his scenes captured in paintings, drawings which depict sex with a blend ability of rough and detail like other artists I liked as well as his colours used. I took reference of his closeup paintings done of the genital area with this classic denim jean as a very masterful use of where to enact detail as well as where to reserve it, which finalises this beautiful piece.

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Many of my preliminary sketches were inspired by Caio Pacela, an artist I had found on Instagram. Discovered in his drawings was this traditional approach towards shading and a way of shifting focus between the figures and the background elements. They’re sketchy, rough and it attests to his ability of being able to create actual scenes in his sketches.

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'Doron Langberg has gained a reputation for works that, luminous in colour and often large in scale, hinge on a sense of intimacy. Depicting himself, his family, friends, and lovers, Langberg’s paintings celebrate the physicality of touch – in subject matter and process – a closeness that engages with new dialogues around queer sensuality and sexuality.'

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'There is also the individual's desire to see himself involved in a moment of spontaneous creation as in a deviation from a script where his actions are predetermined and in the role of fulfilling a problem-solving role (and that does not necessarily interest him)'

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Hernan Bas' work was the most influential towards the series of paintings which I wanted to do at the end of my project. This is due to finding a lot of areas I loved from the imaginary spaces he depicts in his paintings, these incredibly ornate and austere environments- bold in colours which I loved in Fratino's work but also maintaining a sense of realism which I wanted to stick to initially. In these spaces he creates the perspective are often not incredibly true to life, with elaborate objects like tables, partition and forestry in these rooms, however, they all lead to the sense of crowded, packed environments and they made me realise that through a lot of queer artists work, the relationships depicted are often in inside settings- shielded away from the outside, where we can only feel comfortable to express intimacy without the fear of being hurt.

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'He synthesizes visual languages sampled from antiquity to modernism to describe the contemporary body, landscape, and interior spaces. Fratino’s work explores the queerness in the gestures of everyday life.' I wanted to recreate his clay figures but in more reductive form to assess whether I wanted to continue with models.

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My response to Louis Fratinos paintings was done more in a reserved response then wanting to make properly, refined paintings. I really selectively wanted to pick his style of portraiture and the colourful palette he uses to contrast the black and white drawings I had been doing previously, in my final pieces I want to showcase a broad amount of skills like drawing as well as experiment with different styles of paintings. In the left quick sketch with oil pastels, I wanted to practice his style but instead shape the face of one of the guys I'd been seeing. I didn't particularly like this outcome, nor for it being incredibly underdeveloped but because I realised that I wanted to stick with the more detailed sketches which I had done before.

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'There’s a real sense of ‘gay truth’ in Un chant d’amour that’s missing from almost every gay-interest film that’s been made since (though it should be noted that there weren’t many made before 1950). Its erotic content is unparalleled even by modern gay porn – which is bleached and robotic' This quote made me really evaluate my project and who it was actually being catered toward, whether I should depict something which is expected of gay sex or rather something more stripped back and less sexual.

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Tom of Finland's influence on my work was rooted in the traditional drawings I had done of naked male figures, due to all of Tom of Finland's work being in monochromatic pencil shades and of stereotypically masculine men, with unnatural body dimensions, I took from this and instead just took his tonal shading and tried to replicate this into my own work, with more realistic body shapes. Tom of Finland's artistry behind capturing fabric like the leather and denim in his pieces is also majorly inspiring for when I wanted to capture fabric in my later pieces. Tom of Finland was vital to my project, especially as he's regarded as 'the twentieth century’s most influential artists for his groundbreaking representation of the male figure.'

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At the beginning of my project I wanted to first focus on a hypersexualised narrative which has been presented by many gay artists, the most prominent during the   0's was 'Touko Laaksonen' groundbreaking representation of the male figure, his encapsulation of homoerotic art. At the beginning of my project I wanted to focus on inherently over-sexualised artists, as due to guidance from tutors I was recommended a series of artists depicting incredibly extreme gay acts- however, I realised that for my project to be truly from me I couldn’t just focus on these animalistic depictions of gay culture. Whipping, Bondage etc. is not what many gay youth can identify with, and I think that it further accentuates this idea of ‘Gay Loneliness,’ a struggle for many gay men to identify with their own culture when the experiences we face as teenagers is never shown.

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This film was recommended to me at the beginning of my project to highlight gay media, this short by Jean Genet is impactful due to the production of such a homoerotic film in the 1950s. I like both the subtlety of certain shots within this movie which allude to something sexual, like blowing smokes through the holes and how it's romanticised, as well as implicitly sexual scenes like that of the pistol cocked in the prisoners mouth.

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'Captured at various thresholds – between youth and adulthood, innocence and experience, public and private realms – and situated within a shifting terrain of interior and exterior spaces, the figures in Hernan Bas’ paintings are charged with potential. Bringing to mind poles of intellect and physicality, the androgynous young men in these paintings engage in rituals of courtship, love, and death that seem to be based on a theatrical exaggeration of emotion. The construction of identity and dispersal of meaning is rendered thematically and pictorially fraught. Bas embellishes and destabilizes as he describes, his brushwork often threatening to engulf, his colours edging towards over-ripe or chemical hues suggestive of transformation or intoxication.'