Previously on… Penerotic
Some artists go to art school. Some intern at studios. Penerotic started by drawing dirty doodles on post-it notes at a desk job – and somehow turned that into a career.
The New South Wales-based illustrator has spent years quietly building one of the more distinctive bodies of work in the adult comics and pinup space: a rich, pulp-soaked, gleefully lowbrow catalogue that pulls from Frank Frazetta, Gil Elvgren, Heavy Metal magazine, 90s Bad Girls comics, and erotic manga in equal measure. The result sits somewhere between vintage men’s adventure magazine cover and cheeky underground comix – cute enough to make you smile, sexy enough to make you look twice.
He’s done work for adult magazines, comics publishers, and private clients across the globe. He sells prints on Redbubble, posts (carefully censored) work on Instagram, and runs a Patreon where the real stuff lives – from works-in-progress and sketch reveals through to the kind of content that the major platforms would rather pretend doesn’t exist. He also has opinions about that, and he’s not shy about sharing them.
We sat down with him to talk origins, influences, the ghost of Bettie Page, the tyranny of payment processors, and why erotic art belongs on cave walls and gallery walls in equal measure.
An Interview with Penerotic
Your origin story is genuinely great – you went from scribbling on post-it notes at some anonymous desk job to building a career creating erotic pinup art and comics with an international fanbase. At what point did that shift feel real to you, like this is actually my life now?
Penerotic: My origin story started a little before my post-it note scribbles, that was how I decided to start an online account and post my lewd drawings. The actual origins happened when I was younger and getting turned on by cartoons I saw on TV and in comics. I remember seeing the Bettie Page issue of the Rocketeer comic and that triggered something. Some of my Asian friends introduced me to erotic manga and there was also the 90’s Bad Girls phase where I was introduced to artists like J. Scott Campbell, Michael Turner, Adam Hughes, and Art Adams to name a few. Ever since those days I would fill sketch books of porno scribbles and hot pinups.
The name Penerotic is doing a lot of work – it’s cheeky, it’s memorable, it’s a little confrontational. Was that intentional branding, or did it just feel right and stick?
Penerotic: There was no intentional thought to branding. I am a fan of a puns and word play. It might not be sophisticated, but it makes me chuckle. I wanted it to be obvious that I draw erotica. I did play around with different combinations with names that have since been taken by other artists. “Pen Erotic” but one word. I liked it. Even tho some people have said Penrotic or Pentronic… Most people get it.
You’re based in New South Wales, which puts you pretty far outside the traditional centres of comics culture – New York, London, Tokyo. Has being an Australian artist in this genre ever felt like an advantage, or is it mostly just a logistical headache?
Penerotic: I never saw it as an advantage at all to be in Australia. I am in a niche of a niche being in Australia – drawing art, the art is erotic and often pornographic. Lucky for me, we have the internet and the word wide market is available to me. Most of my clients are from oversees and I would say the majority are in America. Before the recent restrictions imposed by the Australia Government I had no worries about making my living from clients overseas.
Your work is soaked in vintage pulp – ‘Weird Tales’ covers, men’s adventure magazines, 1950s space babes. That’s a very specific well to draw from. Who are the artists from that era that you keep coming back to, and what is it about that aesthetic that still feels alive to you?
Penerotic: I do love Pulp art, Fantasy and Sci-Fi is something that I come back to and influences my work even when it is not directly evident. I can’t name many Pulp Artists from the 50’s era that I can name because, for me, it was not so much the style of art I liked but the subject matter and the vibe – the only one that comes to mind is Norman Saunders because his work was so well rendered. From later artists in the 70’s, Frank Frazetta is my all-time favourite Pulp artist.
I got a book about 20ish years ago called “Men’s Adventure Magazines” from Taschen that collected a bunch of the covers and I thought they were so cool. The pulp artist aesthetic I saw in Heavy Metal magazine too. There is an artist I discovered from the early 00’s Rafael Gallur from Mexico who I would call Neo-Pulp, same 50’s painterly style but pushing the sex and violence further than they could. It is hard to explain why I like that aesthetic, it is hyper-real but not to mean photo-real, but it pushes beyond reality.
You describe your work as “cute and sexy” – which is a surprisingly delicate balance to pull off without tipping into one or the other. How do you hold that tension in a single image?
Penerotic: I would say some of my work is “cute and sexy” in particular my pin-up work. You asked me about my pulp influence but for pinups I really like Gil Elvgren. That might sound basic but he is the most popular for a reason. He added a cartoon expressionism into the sexy paintings that other artists did not do. My work would lean more towards the sexy than the cute, but I like to inject from humour of cuteness where I can because I think it is fun and interesting. The balance is not something I think about too much, it just depends on what I am drawing and my intention with the character.
If you look at a character like Bettie Boop, she can be cute but a little bit sexy. Jessica Rabbit is sexy and a little cute, but I could change them to be more one way or the other. What is cute or sexy is subjective esp. across cultures. I am thinking about Anime and how some people in the West react when they see a character who visually reads for them as cute being sexy and there is a shock. My audience and I live in the Western World and even though I am influenced by manga, the art I make is going to align with the western balance of cute and sexy.
You work across a huge range of genres – noir, sci-fi, western, fantasy, horror. Is there one genre that genuinely excites you more than the others, or does the variety feel like the whole point?
Variety is the spice of life. I go through phases of interests of themes and genres. My top themes that you listed are Sci-Fi and Fantasy because they lend themselves the most to erotica in my opinion. One of my comics is more Slice Of Life/ College Sex Comedy, so I don’t want to give the impression that everything is inspired by Pulp.
Your Patreon gives patrons a look at works-in-progress, from rough sketch to finished piece. Walk us through what that process actually looks like — where does a new image start for you, and how do you know when it’s done?
Penerotic: On my Patreon I show a sketch, Inks, finished art stage. For my comics I often share some of the writing progress as well if it is a comic I wrote. I am often inspired by things I see. An example that comes to mind is a drawing of Oola from Star Wars. I think it was in May and Star Wars was on the mind. I saw a picture of a model I follow dancing at a music festival. I paused a frame of the video and sketched her pose from that, then I drew Jabba watching her dancing and drooling in the background along with some other characters.
After the sketch is done to my satisfaction I cleaned the lines up in the “ink” phase. I am working digitally most of the time now, but I still say “inking”. After I am happy with my lines I colour on another layer until the image is done. How do I know when it is done, is a question that depends on the day is one of these answers; Looks done, needs to be done, I can’t spend more time on this, looks perfect.
The tools available to illustrators have changed enormously even in the last decade. What’s your current setup, and is there anything from the analogue era you still miss or deliberately keep in your practice?
Penerotic: I do both traditional (Pencils, Pen, ink) but primarily do digital work. The program I used most is Clip Studio Paint to draw pinups and comics, drawing with a Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 which is a tablet screen with stylus pen. I used to use Photoshop but Adobe became far too expensive in the Creative Cloud subscription model. I would like to shout out the Affinity Design and Publishing software that I use to do what Clip Studio is not built for.
You’ve worked with adult magazines, comics publishers, and private clients commissioning custom pieces. Those are three pretty different relationships with pretty different power dynamics. Which one do you find most creatively satisfying, and which one is most likely to make you want to close your laptop forever?
Penerotic: They all have the pros and cons. I big time client can have less creative freedom, but the payment is more reliable. There is also bragging rights if you can list a big client in your credits. This is not to say that private clients are bad at all. In fact some of my favourite jobs are from private clients because there is an opportunity to be more varied in the creativity.
Platforms like Patreon and Instagram have given independent adult artists more direct access to audiences than ever before – but they also come with inconsistent, sometimes baffling content moderation. How much of your creative energy goes into navigating that, and does it ever genuinely affect what you make?
Penerotic: Platforms like Instagram are not that good for me since they do not allow adult content at all. Twitter (X) has been better for me since they allow erotic adult content and I can network and advertise there. With subscriptions sites things have changed and not for the better. A number of years ago I didn’t have to worry about content restrictions on Patreon.
Now it seems all subscrption platforms have the same restrictions and it seems to be from pressure from payment processors and activists. Adult content creators are being censored and blocked from making a living for creating work that is for adults and legal.
Pinup art has a long, complicated history – from Vargas to Olivia De Berardinis to the underground comix scene. It’s been celebrated, dismissed, reclaimed, and argued over endlessly. Where do you see your work sitting in that lineage, and does that context matter to you when you’re actually drawing?
Penerotic: I see myself fitting in more with the underground comix scene. Olivia De Berardinis work is amazing butt she is on another level to be and much more highbrow. I am a lowbrow kind of guy.
There’s a real spectrum in your work – from cheeky and suggestive all the way to explicitly adult. Is that range a conscious artistic choice, or does it just reflect the different kinds of commissions and contexts you’re working in?
Penerotic: I like the spectrum and variety. It is not so much a choice but more of what I feel like. This spectrum allows me to attract clients that want a variety of levels of spice to their commissions.
Custom commissions mean your audience is literally co-authoring your output sometimes. Has a fan request ever genuinely surprised you – sent you somewhere creatively you wouldn’t have gone on your own?
Penerotic: Well, I have had requests that were too kinky for me that I didn’t draw. Haha! I have had plenty of jobs with themes or content that I would not have thought to draw on my own but enjoyed and was happy to exlore creatively.
You’ve built a following across Redbubble, Instagram, and Patreon – audiences that probably overlap but aren’t identical. Do you think about those different audiences differently, or is it all just one conversation?
Penerotic: I see this as more ways that people can find me not me find different audiences. Although, this probably does happen. If someone only follows me Instragram then they might be shocked when they see my other content.
Erotic art still gets treated as a lesser form in a lot of critical circles – something to be embarrassed about or explained away. Do you feel the need to defend what you do, or have you reached the point where that just isn’t worth your time anymore?
Penerotic: I think that erotic art should be celebrated and defended. I think society goes through cultural shifts of being (more or less) puritanical but mankind has celebrated the nude and the erotic since we could paint on cave walls. I see erotic art, comics, and cartoons as being just as much a part of art than anything in modern art galleries. Sometimes, more so.
What’s next for you? What are you currently working on?
Penerotic: I have my own personal projects and some client work on at the moment. For myself, I am working on a Fantastic Four parody, and an original comic called SLU Bunny. I also have some pinups I will do doing, like a sexy Easter Bunny pinup. For clients, one I can share is an adult game I am doing for Andrealphus Games called “That time I got reincarnated as a Barbarian”. All of my personal projects and some of my client works can be found on my Patreon.
Thanks for doing this. It’s been great catching up!
