My friend Tracey the pornstar

Close to a month ago I was approached by Tracey about commissioning a self-portrait. She's never commissioned work before and was curious how the whole quoting/pricing thing worked. At the bottom of the email, were 2 urls, and those blue underlined characters led me down a rabbit-hole of some very and I mean very, nsfw stuff. Here's one of those links if you're intererested -> Mistress T

Meet Mistress T. She's a highly sought-after internationally renown dominatrix. She's got many specialties all showing dudes and does who's the fucking boss. So, one evening we sat down and did some q/a. It turns out that she had discovered my work in a prominent 'femdom' blog. The site featured this piece. They had interpreted the scenario as a cuckholding thing and thought it was technically pretty on point. My thoughts were "what the fuck is cuckolding? I was aiming more for the awkward third wheel kinda thing with alot of drugs". I'll let you research the topic so you can formulate you're own opinion.  Anyway, this was my chance to find some interesting angles to conceptualize some elements in the piece. Traceys got alot to say and nothing to hold back. Weird right? She was really engaged in the ideation process and gave me full creative control over the project. I had alot of shit to work with and gave it a week til I returned for the reference shoot.  

For still lifes I wanted to have some intense femdom kicks so I went through her elaborate collection of shoes to find these Louboutins which apparently are seriously expensive. I illustrated her position in the foot fetish niche by placing one of the shoes around her money maker - her camera. Placed in the side of the shot is a small photo of her mother. Through our q/a I found out that her mother played as the catalyst for her open and comfortable lifestyle. And poised around the frame are a pair of glasses representing voyeurism, which were point at her lady area. More fun parts of the piece were the nurse get-up from Madame S Leather, San Fran and the medical examination table she had in her bedroom. And yes, there's an alternate portrait painted in the reflection, but I won't tell you what it's about. The painting's for her not you, so lay-off.
Some of the beginning collage bits.

Always to remember to coat both surfaces before you drop it in. Thank me later for that juicy nugget.

Pieces are in place and a flat pour is added at the end with pouring medium. This is the last surface prep technique I dropped before rendering.

Painting her I used mainly alla prima techniques. You can see how I'd block in basic temperatures and later add a complement to make it a skin tone. By laying down these basic colours first I knew which tertiary to shift my skin tone towards. Doing this made things go very fast and it felt mad fluid.

Probably the least personally-favourable parts in this was painting that tiny freaking face. Cost about 3.5 hours and later, a bottle of Jack. Tracey just came by this afternoon to check things out and make sure I didn't get carried away. I'm happy to report she was jazzed about everything and especially that tiny little portrait. This makes for one of the best commission-based pieces, in that I had full control over it, was given full trust and our final consultation didn't have lofty retouching requests (those are the worst).

D.