Funemployment, an HBO Max Series, & a Serious Lover of PEENS
Hello hello hello! Devin from DevinsDudes.com here with a few updates about my life and work. If you don’t know me, I’m a queer artist with a love for pop culture, cartoons, and dudes’ butts. (Read my bio here.)
November News
So what have I been up to? Honestly, my answer is: staying afloat! Trying to make a living as an artist in Los Angeles is hard, y’all. Most of my income is from working at animation studios, and right now I’m in between gigs. So for money, I gotta say yes to a bunch of tiny freelance opportunities. In the last month I’ve drawn memorial portraits of the recently deceased, designed a tee shirt for a stand-up comedian, and even constructed a Muppet-style puppet for a short film! (Pics of that will go up as soon as I’m allowed to post.)
All fun stuff, for sure, but it unfortunately means that I have to pause my personal work, my gay-ass illustrations, way more frequently than I want. How sad is it to start a series of drawings inspired by the Scream movie franchise, including one piece that got over 700 likes on Instagram, only to have to stop and -ugh- attempt to MAKE RENT??
One silver lining is that a project I (and many other fabulous creatives) have been working on for months is finally out of the bag. I was a puppet fabricator for Santa Inc., a new series on HBO Max, starring Sarah Silverman, Seth Rogan, Maria Bamford, and a bunch of other amazing talents. It should be out in time for Christmas so please watch it and maybe I’ll get to work on another season? Read more about it here.
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Queer Spotlight: Torres Jonathan
And finally, I would love to use this space to uplift another LGBT+ creator. I want you to meet Torres Jonathan, owner of the adorably explicit Peens by Torres.
Hi Torres! Tell me a little about yourself and how Peens by Torres got started.
I am a first generation Mexican and Filipino American who also happens to be queer. I received my BFA in Graphic Design at CSULB in 2013. I currently work as a full time graphic designer at CSULB College of the Arts and I am a part-time grad student seeking my MFA degree in Illustration/Animation at CSULB. While also managing my business Peens on the side.
Peens origin story started like this: My boyfriend and I walked down the streets of Los Angeles, holding hands, when a man inside his truck yelled “JOTOS (F****ts)!” at us. I wanted to use this experience as well as my deep interest for visual puns, metaphors, and wordplay to create a line of pins, which showcase cuteness with a wink. Peens was created out of my investigation of gay slurs, such as the ones that were used on us.
After investigating the origins of the word “Jotos,” I began to learn about other slurs such as: “Mariposon” in Spanish, which translates to “Butterfly-Man”. I took this opportunity to take these words and reclaim it as part of my own visual identity as a gay man.
As a result of this exploration it led to create many other “peens” that continue to embrace and reclaim slurs, stereotypes, sexuality and stories I’ve experienced as well. “Peens” are the cute, clever, and mischievous enamel pins that you’ll giggle at for that kinky mind of yours.
What inspires you to create your work?
I've always been fascinated by cute illustrations in candy packaging, specifically little mascots you would in Sanrio products. They would have that thick black line and it would make the illustrations so cute to look at. I've always been drawn to this as a kid, stylistically I would adopt this technique in all the drawings I did up until now.
There must be humor in the work I do. I never want it to be crass, but instead, cheeky and more of a wink to the viewer. I always strive for my pins to have that second read upon viewing. Get some giggles and gasps with them.
Tell me about the queer community around you. Do you feel welcome and embraced? What's one thing we as queer individuals could change to make it better?
I didn't have a lot of gay male friends before I started Peens. When I did this whole collection of them, it just opened doors to a lot of other gay guys that I became friends with. I was like, “wow there are a lot of them out there that have a lot of the same interests that I do."
The fact that I can have conversations with other people and meet people from LA and Tokyo and Mexico, that's just cool to see. It's been great to be able to connect with many different queer people. I enjoy sharing ideas, experiences, coming out stories to other queer artists that I meet along the way.
I think one of the biggest things I wish the queer community would work on, is being able to create platonic relationships without expecting a romance or hook-up afterward. I feel a lot of the time, even before I started Peens, I couldn't make any friends who shared the same experiences as I did. There was always this expectation on the other half to be able to forge a romance out of something that I saw as just a friendship. I feel like this dialogue is something that is slowly starting to make its way into the queer mainstream dialogue.
You can follow Torres via his instagram @peensbytorres or visit his website at torresjonathan.com.