What’s new
Small but perfectly formed
5th August 2022
In the last twenty years erotic bookplates have become popular, not to be pasted into books but to be be framed and displayed; the etchings of the French artist Patricia Nik-Dad are perfect examples of this genre, and you can see more than a hundred of them by clicking here.
A little light flagellation
4th August 2022
For those of you who like period spanking literature, we’ve just added Pierre Noël’s 1932 illustrations to the French flagellation narrative Diana Gantée, the Parisian Madame who trains young women to the manner required by her clients … See them now by clicking here.
Sex, sofas and ravens (ravens?)
3rd August 2022
A great new artist for you all today, the German Bodo Klös, with his wonderful etchings and drawings of naked bodies, ravens, and a touch of wry humour. You can see a large selection of his work now by clicking here.
Sense and censorbility
27th July 2022
Today’s new artist is the Mexican Areko Martiánez, who in two productive years of blogging before being censored from the internet produced several hundred sensitive pencil drawings of young men enjoying each other’s bodies. See his work now by clicking here.
Power and tenderness
25th July 2022
The wonderful Russian artist Vyacheslav Mikhailov is today’s new addition to the site, with his powerful textural canvases and his beautifully tender etchings of an older artist engaging respectfully with his Rubenesque models. See his work now by clicking here.
A Soviet erotic alphabet
23rd July 2022
A new erotic alphabet today, from the unlikely hand of the Soviet-era monumental sculptor Sergei Dmitrievich Merkurov. Imaginative and colourful, you can learn your Cyrillic alphabet at the same time as enjoying the art – click here to see the whole portfolio.
Pussy v Penis
22nd July 2022
Some light-hearted fun for everyone today, as a band of naked teenage girls challenge – and mostly win out – against a barrage of marauding phalli. Witty and imaginative, see the results of KiKo’s drawing skills by clicking here.
Sex is fun!
21st July 2022
Some gentle erotic delights today from Polish artist and graphic designer Lucjan Jagodziński, better known for his film posters. As far as we know his only risqué work, see them all now by clicking here.
Real naked people …
20th July 2022
We have had Riccardo Mannelli’s paintings on the site for a while, but we have now added a large portfolio of his drawings, all in his inimitable style, making us think hard about what makes bodies, especially naked ones, so infinitely fascinating. See them all by clicking here.
Drawn into darkness
19th July 2022
If you like the dark borders between sexuality and the occult, you’ll love the work of the Chilean artist Cristóbal López, better known to his followers as Kerbcrawlerghost. Today we bring you his best work, from the pages of Drawn into Darkness – to see them all just click here.
Important recent updates
✨ Illustrator and portfolio lists
One of the most common requests we get (and the responses to the recent questionnaire confirm this) is that it would be really useful to have complete listings of all the artists and portfolios on the website – as of May 2026 728 artists and 2,003 portfolios!
So we’ve listened and heard … and by following this link you will find files with these listings in alphabetical order (and where there are several portfolios with the same name their artists will be in order too). The lists are in PDF format, so you can download, save and search them. They duplicate what you can already find in the artist and portfolio listings on the website, but if you’re really into erotic art and illustration and would like a quick ready reference, you should find these invaluable. Enjoy!
✨ Helping you to find your way around
You asked for it, we’ve done it – all the artists on the site now have a set of ‘Similar artists’ links at the end of their biography, so whether it’s bookplate artists, spanking artists, gay artists, whatever, you can cruise easily from artist to similar artist. Have fun!
✨ Hans-Jürgen Döpp, 1940–2025
Few people have shared their wisdom, experience – and wonderful collection of erotic art – more than Hans-Jürgen Döpp, who sadly died last year at the age of 84. For more than half a century Hans-Jürgen devoted himself to the study and collection of erotic art, not as a marginal curiosity or a private indulgence, but as an essential part of human culture. Through his work as a scholar, teacher, curator, author and collector, he helped establish erotic art as a serious field of artistic and historical enquiry. He was an enthusiastic supporter of honesterotica, sharing more than 200 of his portfolios with us, helping to make the website a unique resource of erotic art that would otherwise have been lost to the world. Read our tribute to Hans-Jürgen here.
✨ The difficult mirror
Artists, childhood, and the challenge of looking
At a time of growing concern about online child safety, we are very aware of how we handle the sensitive subject of depictions of children in art, especially ‘erotic art’. We have added an important Themes and Topics article here, which helps explore how artists over time have depicted naked children, and why it is as important to think seriously about what art is for and how we look at and experience it as about what is actually being depicted. Read the piece and see what you think.