Harmony in Blue

This one is for deviantART's LGBTQ+ Pride Month project! You can see more info here: danlev.deviantart.com/journal/… Certainly looks like Anna and Rebecca know how to get their pride on! 

In the context of this project, the colour blue stands for harmony and peace, and I think it best suited the power dynamics found in BDSM, which has some pretty strong roots in the gay community. I have a feeling that a lot of people who see this may not really 'get' kink, so I should explain: BDSM (Bondage/Discipline, Domination/Submission, Sadism/Masochism) is for those who love expressing their sexuality according to power dynamic, with one partner being the 'top' and the other being the 'bottom.' Safety and consent are super duper top priority in most modern kink communities, and partners negotiate scenes and safe signals so that things don't get out of hand. It's a huge exercise in trust, but the feelings of deep connection that you can get out of it can be incredible. There is a definite harmony to it, a yin-yang dynamism. For a submissive, there is nothing more peaceful than being able to fully surrender yourself to a person you trust. As a dominant, the peace comes from having the responsibility to take care of your partner while having them under your control. I did consider drawing some vanilla romantic scene, but I know that this aspect of relationships has already been done by much better artists than me, under the tag of this Pride project. I figured it'd be best to go whole hog and depict who I really am, even if it scares some people. After all, that's what Pride is about!

In the description of the Pride project, it says: "Here--we can express ourselves, just as we are. Here--we are accepted. Here--we are appreciated as our true, authentic selves." I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that this phrase wasn't meant to refer to smut artists such as myself, but in the eight years I've been doing this (despite the odd nay-sayer or take-down from DA moderators), I've been shocked at how much support I've gained from a wide variety of people, from those who come here to get turned on by the drawings, to those who have a deeper, personal connection to the characters and situations. In that context, I've found no better website to garner attention than deviantART. Even websites that allow for much more mature subject matter such as FetLife or even Tumblr haven't given back as much as the community has here. 

Anyway, I'm happy that DA is all in favour of LGBTQ artists (or QUILTBAG artists, for you hipsters out there), such as myself.