Can I borrow some of your time to introduce you to my favourite models?
These are the furred women I enjoyed working with the most; if you have browsed my works you may recognize them as recurring characters. They’ll be happy to tell you a bit about themselves, their design as characters and their meaning to me. They are conscious of being creatures of my mind, you see, and they have no problem with it – in fact they quite enjoy discussing their own nature as fictional characters.
MARTINA
A4 drawing – 2020
Hi! I’m Martina the pine marten (duh). I’m the youngest model here and also the most recent addition. Scale created me at a time and age when he had become fully comfortable with the female body, and I think I represent that kind of awareness. The male gaze doesn’t have to be dumb and predatory, you know.
You’ll not find pictures like “Read the manual first” or “One of those days” in an erotic portfolio. I’m comfortable showing off only if I can do it on my terms, so if you want to see my body, you may find me dealing with unpleasant stuff or even needing help, and acceptance of these facts is part of a healthy male sexuality.
Design wise I’m a pine marten with an unusually fluffy tail I’m very proud of. My other distinguishing features are a mullet haircut, a prized pinecone-shaped pendant, and the markings on my chest, which are kinda difficult to get right. Not even Scale gets them right every time. I’m very happy when an artist does, because it makes me feel carefully studied, as it should be.
My fanny is visible in most of my portraits, but it’s quite understated – thigh lips, no visible labia, natural pubic fur. This was a deliberate design choice so that it doesn’t steal the viewer’s attention like a more flashy tushie would do. I show it to talk about the female body, not to play the furry slut.
CHIWARA
oil on MDF, 25×35 cm – 2014
Greetings. I’m Chiwara and my character was obviously inspired by African sculptures of the same name. At the time Scale painted my reference sheet I was working as an obstetrician, but I switched career in 2022 because I was deeply disgusted by the way women about to give birth had been treated during the COVID pandemic. Now I work as a consultant for obstetric and gynaecological violence.
My body is boldly marked and colorful as a discreet homage to indigenous African art styles. Wouldn’t it be interesting to live in a world in which each body has a unique pattern in this vein? I think notions of fashion and elegance would be quite different there.
I must admit I’m not overly happy about the blue accents on my nipples and nether regions – it’s obviously a design decision made by a younger, hornier and less considerate artist than today’s Scale – but at least the blue goes well with my tan back and yellow nose, though I always wear red jewelry for better color harmony. Anyway, I’m content and not shy about my body.
The quantum pregnancy thing suddenly resolved itself in 2023, I’m stably not-pregnant now and I wasn’t planning on having kids anyway. It was a long and inconvenient experience, but in the end I’m glad I had it, because technically I’m a protector spirit of fertility and pregnancy, and I couldn’t be good at it if I hadn’t experienced pregnancy myself.
RASHKA
oil on canvas, 30×50 cm – 2022
Nice to meet you. My name is Rashka Êràhh-T’kr. (It’s impossible for most humans to pronouce the surname correctly – sorry about that.) I’m a revision of one of Scale’s oldest characters, a space pirate white tigress named Blink. Back in the 90s he wrote a few embarassingly naïve and ungrammatical short stories about her that are still available on some archives of old furry stuff… yeah, I love to point to them whenever I can. 😉
I feel odd being called a model. I’m just an amateur. Scale asked me to model because of my fit build and tabby fur coat, and I was happy about that because I take care of my body a lot. I’m not particularly large or muscular by tiger standards though. I just do some climbing and hiking in order to stay in shape.
The sequence of my portraits is a good summary of the evolution of Scale’s style across the years.
My first portrait from 2013, the upper leftmost one in the gallery above, was one of Scale’s first oil paintings and the one that defined his core painting style, from his preferred brushstrokes to his handling of lights and shadows. In that portrait my muzzle looks way more feral than it actually is – the latest portraits are by far the most accurate, especially “Distractions”, the 2024 one. My stripe pattern isn’t consistent across portraits, but that doesn’t bother me and it’s actually common even in art created by tiger artists. Muzzle patterns are considered the only important ones.
“Sunbreak” is a markedly fantasy portrait inspired by the works of Frank Frazetta and Gauguin and was painted at the peak of Scale’s interest for concept art and fantasy illustration.
“Roaring nineteen” is an almost life size painting, the largest painting made by Scale up to that point. I like it even though though he’s not fond of it – he wasn’t used to work on life size figures and as a result the anatomy is warped and the fur texture over-rendered. He was struggling so much with this one, he even got my fur color wrong. For a few years after this painting, Scale sticked to small canvases for finished works and began a new period of anatomical practice.
I suspect I’ll still be the model of choice for future paintings meant to summarize Scale’s stylistic development at a given time, since rendering in a convincing way my fur pattern and body type is a constant technical challenge.
