Flames of Pride: A Love Unbound
An installation artist — and a long time friend for over a decade — recently asked me to help her find a home for a large scale sculpture with a dragon motif. After revealing to her the coincidence that I was born in the year of the dragon, she sent me a drawing featuring a fire dragon. It’s a blessing to receive art from another artist. I’m grateful for her kindness.
Towards the end of my session working on the Sacred Geometry series, I decided to remove the figures from the confines of the control nets, while keeping the regional prompter, so that I can describe the men individually.
The images from the Dragon series feature men with dragon tattoos, as both metaphors as well symbols to their truth forms — dragons.
I have always preferred black and white photography. Images in black and white tend to articulate the forms better. Having images in black and white additionally helps to express the deep romance the men have for each other, and allows you to see the shape of the heart often seen in photos featuring gay men kissing.
In vibrant pride, two dragons take flight, Their love ignites, casting magic’s light. Through clouds of dreams, they soar with desire, With fiery passion, their love won’t tire.
Their scales shimmer with colors so bold, A love untamed, a story yet untold. In flames of passion, their spirits entwined, With pride they dance, their love unconfined.
In skies ablaze, their love sets fire, A magic bond that soars ever higher. With wings spread wide, they conquer the night, Gay dragons united, their love takes flight.
Video
Images
Tech
- Kiss of the Dragons 3.3
- Dragon Series
- GD8.OV2.20240105.190218.00099-3743030864-SDXL.8K.BW.E2
Stable Diffusion
- txt2img
- Steps: 50
- Sampler: DPM++ 2S a
- CFG scale: 7
- Seed: 3743030864
- Size: 1024x1024
- Model hash: 31e35c80fc
- Model: sd_xl_base_1.0
- Denoising strength: 0.3
- Hires upscale: 2
- Hires steps: 50
- Hires upscaler: 8x_NMKD-Superscale_150000_G
- UI: Automatic1111
- Version: v1.7.0
- Regional Prompter:
- RP Active: True
- RP Divide mode: Matrix
- RP Matrix submode: Columns
- RP Mask submode: Mask
- RP Prompt submode: Prompt
- RP Calc Mode: Attention
- RP Ratios: “1,1”
- RP Base Ratios: 0.6
- RP Use Base: True
- RP Use Common: False
- RP Use Ncommon: True
- RP LoRA Neg Te Ratios: 0
- RP LoRA Neg U Ratios: 0
- RP threshold: 0.4
- RP LoRA Stop Step: 0
- RP LoRA Hires Stop Step: 0
- RP Flip: False
- Post-Processing:
- Upscale: Topaz Gigapixel AI
- Vertical Outpaint: Adobe Photoshop AI
- Color: Adobe Lightroom
- Size: 8192x8192
- Video:
- Animation: RunwayML
- Upscale: Topaz Video AI
- Edit: Adobe After Effects
- Soundtrack:
- Watch the World Burn by Iros Young (licensed)
- Ableton Live Suite
Dragon Series
- 2Fire Dragon: Ascendance
- 3Sacred Geometry
- 4Kiss of the Dragons