Welcome to mitchmen gateway

Welcome to mitchmen.com, home of Mitchell's Gay Art.

This is my permanent gateway site.
I usually post here once a month, art and photos in praise of male beauty, strictly vanilla.
There's a link in the sidebar to a small public gallery of vanilla drawings by me (gallery last updated Feb 2019).
If you have problems with the link please read this notice.

You can find my more intense and frank work via my regular 'mitchmen' blog
(where I show my own pictures mixed with articles on other gay artists and images that excite me).

There's a 'Gallery Hub' tab at that blog which has onward links to:-
- All the official mitchmen galleries,
- The mitchmen mailing list (for the latest pictures and stories)
- The permanent mitchmen archive at Adonis Male.

I welcome comments from visitors but please avoid adult references,
I can't approve remarks which are not consistent with the vanilla format of this site
and unfortunately I can't edit your contributions!

Thank you for your interest and support.
Mitchell (Jan 2024).

Wednesday 1 May 2019

Summer is coming (again)


If this picture of Allen Clippinger strolling on the beach with a parasol seems familiar to you, 
click on this reminder and you'll know why. 

Hong Tao's recreation of the subject copies the photograph fairly closely, but he seems to have swapped the hint of boyish mischief seen here in the model's face for a more serious and sensitive demeanour. He focuses our attention on the model's character (and subtly changes our perceptions of it) by removing the distracting background of sea and beach, with all it's associations with summer, play and fun. Comparing the two pictures gives a rather good illustration of how we are subconsciously influenced by what appears to be minor detail.

The disappearance of the sporty numbers on the swimming trunks is also part of that transformation though I must say I like to see numbers on a man, it suggests he's got some energy and offers the faint chance that he might be capable of submitting to discipline. 

When I first saw Hong Tao's picture I was struck by the apparent flimsiness and loose fit of the model's shorts which gave it a slightly erotic flavour. You can almost see the same effect in the original photograph but it's clear here that it's created by shadowing and the dishevelling effect of actually getting them wet in the sea (God forbid!). The suggestive dark shadowing just above the waistline in Tao's picture is however, pure artistic licence (or should I say licentiousness!).