Tickle Artists #138: Interview with Volkite Serpenta 9

Contents

1 1) Do you want to tell us something about yourself and your art?
2 2) What techniques do you use to draw? Do you have a favorite artist that inspires you?
3 3) How much was the passion for drawing born in you? And the one for the tickle?
4 4) What are the tickling scenarios that you prefer to draw?
5 5) What are the aspects of tickling that you intend to represent with your art? Example: the laughing, the wriggling, the relationship between tickler and ticklee?
6 6) Online there are countless photos and videos of tickling sessions. In your opinion, what do illustrations offer more than images of real life?
7 7) In your opinion, what makes tickling so interesting for fans of this phenomenon?
8 8) What are your works of which you are most proud?
9 9) Do you have any particular artistic goals for the future?
10 10) Do you think AIs will end up enriching or impoverishing the art of tickling representations?

1) Do you want to tell us something about yourself and your art?

Hello there! My name is Volkie, I am from the U.K. and I am in my thirties. I’ve been drawing since I can remember and no piece of paper stays white if I am around and I have a pencil or pen in my hand. I have a Bachelor’s degree in fine arts and an almost infinite love for the human body and all the ways in which it can be portrayed, couple that with my longstanding passion for bondage and here I am.

2) What techniques do you use to draw? Do you have a favorite artist that inspires you?

I mostly draw on my I-pad, using Procreate, in what you’d call a realistic western style but I can also draw traditionally, using watercolours, acrylics and oils. I usually form an idea in my mind about the pose and the angle I want to draw, looking for refs and checking to include all the details, then I set myself to work on a rough sketch to begin with. Once my client and I are satisfied with it, I turn it into the lineart and then add all the colours, shadows and points of light.

Apart from the great classics like Jim Lee, Mark Texeira and Milo Manara among others, my favourite artists when it comes to bondage and tickling are Saudelli, Em-car and Elijah Pink.

3) How much was the passion for drawing born in you? And the one for the tickle?

Well, I’ve always loved drawing and I do love bondage and tickling so it all fell quite naturally in place: bondage offers a great deal of complicated poses to experiment with, both in real life and to draw and the same can be said for tickling: it allows me to experiment with a variety of expressions, playing with my characters’ faces as they laugh hysterically, beg or actually enjoy it. I also have a great passion for drawing feet and hands, they can be quite challenging, you know, so one has to practice a lot: toes curled or splayed, wrinkled soles, hands holding feathers, brushes or simply fingers doing the tickling, they offer a lot of interesting drawing options and ideas to implement in real life.

4) What are the tickling scenarios that you prefer to draw?

So, I must say that my favourite ones are the interrogation scenarios, where a policewoman, a detective or a superheroine is well restrained and relentlessly tickled to obtain information from her by some crooked criminal or some evil overlord. I’ve always tried to convey a certain sense of fun in my scenes, call it tongue in cheek if you want, since I don’t really like violence and I am more for the playful aspects of bondage. I think tickling is an amazing form of torture, quite the opposite of the most gruesome ones but still very effective and pretty humiliating. What’s better than making your captive laugh and laugh as they are totally incapable of controlling their reactions? Very embarrassing and, as I said, effective, isn’t it?

5) What are the aspects of tickling that you intend to represent with your art? Example: the laughing, the wriggling, the relationship between tickler and ticklee?

What I try to represent is, always in a somewhat playful way, the captive struggling and wriggling futilely as they try to get away and catch even a single moment of respite from the merciless tickling that’s been administered to them. I much prefer hysterical, uncontrollable laughter to tears and the relationship is quite important too: as I said I like the captured cop/snoop scenarios with some creative criminal in control but also a lovers game is quite fun and hot to draw. As they say, the possibilities are endless and very much entertaining.

6) Online there are countless photos and videos of tickling sessions. In your opinion, what do illustrations offer more than images of real life?

I think that illustrations offer a different perspective since the medium is quite malleable: where videos and photos can just portray reality, illustrations are perfect for giving life to fantasy, creating new characters and scenarios and worlds, if you want, while not being constrained by the physical limitations imposed on pictures and videos. Illustrations can and will make your creativity run wild.

7) In your opinion, what makes tickling so interesting for fans of this phenomenon?

This is a very tricky question and one that I cannot easily answer. From my personal experience, and from dealing with my clients, I think everyone has a different approach. For some it is being in control, administering a funny kind of torture to their captives, for others, me included, it’a about roleplay and I do love to play the tickled, interrogated ladycop/nosy snoop for others is to be completely helpless and “forced” to endure the tickling attentions of their “tormentors”.

8) What are your works of which you are most proud?

So, I must say I am very proud of my OC, Serpenta so almost any scene including her but, most of all, I am very proud of Volkie, the pinkhaired, clumsy ladycop: she is basically me and it took me a lot of time to gather enough courage and decide to draw myself. As you can see from the scenes where we are involved, my body type is not exactly what would be considered model standard so I wasn’t really sure about how we would have been received by the viewers but I was to be surprised and the feedback has been amazing, almost overwhelming, and more than enough to make me think that I made the right choice.

9) Do you have any particular artistic goals for the future?

Well, too many to list, probably: my own comic, creating more original characters, which is never easy, trust me, and keep on entertaining people with my art.

10) Do you think AIs will end up enriching or impoverishing the art of tickling representations?

I am sorry but I am quite hard when it comes to AI. While I think that AI can and will have a lot of rightful, meaningful uses I also think it has no place in art since it’s not really creating anything, it lacks the basic human component and it’s lifeless and without a soul. In the long run we will only have more of the same and it won’t be anything that will really matter.