Mary Cyn

Upcoming shows

I've got a couple shows coming up!

This saturday I'll be doing a 1950's inspired act to the Riverdale cover of Milkshake. I made it last year for a rockabilly festival upstate and it went over really well! It's much sweeter than my usual acts but I love the song and the costume so I'm looking forward to doing it again.
I'm doing it at The Deep End with Cat's Eye Cabaret, which is always a fun mix of burlesque and circus acts. This month's theme is Time Machine, so I'm very curious t...

ChaShaMa Gala

Discounts first: At the bottom of this post are links and codes to get you half price tickets for the party on Thursday (Includes open bar!) and FREE tickets for the ChaShaMa Rama on Saturday.

Aside from the open bar, I'm not sure what the difference is between the two parties. But my project will definitely be in both! And, having been to one of these before, I can tell you these parties will be AWESOME. It's two floors of wall to wall art installations and people in crazy costumes. 2023-06-06 16:04:45 +0000 UTC View Post

OC Streaming

Original Cyn is tonight! But if you can't make it, it's going to be livestreamed on my instagram account a little after 9pm est.

https://www.instagram.com/missmarycyn/?hl=en

Miss Mary Cyn at the Hotsy Totsy DnD Show

I made a Succubus act for Hotsy Totsy and, for the first time in a very long time, I am unequivocally proud of it. I don't really know how that happened. But hey, I'll take it.
Follow the link above to see the video.

I always want to write these long explanations of what my process was and what I was thinking, feeling, working through, but then that seems daunting and all the words crumble away from my brain. The post is never finished and it's never good enough and then it's been in...

Glass Bottle Beach

My musician boyfriend took me to Glass Bottle Beach to shoot some b-roll for a new music video. Well, I wasn't really involved in the shooting, I just really wanted to see this place.

This place was the site of bottle factories and a horse rendering plant, then it was a landfill which was capped off in the 50s so it could go back to being a beach. But it wasn't properly capped off and trash from the landfill escapes and washes up on the shore. So much trash, in fact, that it's closed of...

Submission to the SEAF

After being on their mailing list for an embarrassingly long amount of time, I'm finally submitting art to the Seattle Erotic Art Festival.

I forgot that submitting art to things means you have to write about them and yourself. Since I spent all damn day writing these things out, I wanted to share them with you. At least SOMEONE reading them will give a damn.

Bio: Alithea Howes is an artist who finds  beauty in the small and strange. Her erotic art aims to capture the ma...

Microfiction

I dreamed that the world was ending. I don't remember the specifics so let's just say it was the Heathers Scenario: Aliens announced they were going to blow up the planet.

Everyone did the things you'd expect: Parties, orgies, tearful farewells to loved ones, etc. But then we woke up the next day and the world was still there.

We realized that the aliens hadn't given us a specific deadline. But we were sure it would be soon so we gathered together with people we loved and we waite...

The Fish We Eat in Dreams

I drew a little comic, inspired by an adventure I took this past weekend. My boyfriend John has a family lake house in the catskills and we took a weekend trip up there with his friends, Joe and Sylvia.

After brunch, our self appointed activities director, Joe, marshalled us into a lovely little antique store/artist consignment shop manned by two chatty older ladies who were crafting things to sell as they took turns on the register.

As Joe bought something, he asked if they'd he...

Speakeasy Cinderella

I'm trying to get myself to write more so I can rebuild confidence in my writing. I have a couple of novels that I've been working on for what feels like forever. There are bits and pieces that I love in them but every time I try to marshall them into the shape of a novel it just kind of falls apart under its own weight like a giant sculpture made of silly putty. So I'm trying to turn one into a short story. I've only got a little bit so far but I like that bit. Maybe that'll give me a bette...

Smut!

It's been too long since I've finished some smut. No concept. No redeeming value. Just smut.

Put You Down Music Video

OMG Y'ALL I MADE A MUSIC VIDEO!

Ok, I just did the sets and costumes and makeup but that's still really exciting!

I've been in a few music videos, but this is my first time working behind the scenes. I've always loved music videos as an art form so it was incredibly satisfying to be such a big part of  the look and feel of this video.

It was also my first creative collaboration since before lockdown and I feel incredibly lucky that it went this well. Shooting was t...

A is for Annihilation

Lettering is one of my weak points as a graphic designer, but I recently took a skillshare class that took a more experimental approach to lettering (i.e. "What if I made this part round" rather than "What is the best letterform to express X?") and it's gotten me much more interested in it. Here's a page of my experiments.

Then someone I follow on instagram, Aurelie Maron, posted a different le...

A Random Memory

I went for a walk yesterday and the music in a cafe knocked a memory loose.I tend to write in my head when I walk so this mini story came out.

I was 21 and wandering the east village. I don't remember what brought me there since I was living in queens, barely employed, and almost completely devoid of friends. So it's safe to say that I had nothing better to do. I'd always loved the feel of the east village and, even with no money,  just wandering around the shops comforted me. I wa...

Tissue Paper

I started experimenting with gluing down tissue paper on top of some of my experiments. The glue makes it semi-transparent so it blurs the image and adds cool texture wherever it wrinkles. Rubbing charcoal on the wrinkles really made them pop.

I tried using it on top of some decorative moss, hoping the tissue paper would hold it down onto the paper. It didn't work super well but I got a decent photo out of it.

I also ran one of these through photoshop, giving it a gold gradient...

Ink, Water, and Wax

These are some of my earliest experiments.

Bubbles and Beads

I've been terrible about writing...pretty much anything these days. But I've been making a LOT of abstract art. So I'm just going to be posting groups of those, probably without much comment.

I started posting abstracts in November. They were things I'd made just messing around because I missed the chaos, texture, and unpredictability of traditional art materials. I love my ipad SO MUCH but it allows for such perfectionism that it was taking me forever to finish anything. So, trying to ...

Smut Commission!

I got hired to make fan smut! Someone loved my Foxy Feds series and commissioned me to do a sexy Hotch/Reid drawing for their private collection. They were kind enough to let me share it with you.

I actually really enjoyed working with a client on this. They weren't super demanding and it was nice to have someone to bat ideas around with. The hardest part was figuring out a good price (though I guess it usually is.) I think I underestimated how long the piece would take, but I really w...

Brain Soup

My darling patrons, I am the worst.

I have an embarrassing amount of half finished posts in my draft folder and I hope this doesn't become one of them.

The other day a younger performer reached out to me for advice on how to bring more character and story to their acts. My answer essentially became a summary of my creative process when making a burlesque act (though a lot of it transfers to other projects as well.) So I thought it might be a good post here.

"I guess th...

Criminal minds pattern

I took a skillshare class on surface pattern design and it prompted me to make a fabric pattern based on Criminal Minds.

Most of the icons could be for any FBI/law enforcement show (and I may repurpose some for, say, an x-files or twin peaks pattern.) But I  added a few that were specific to Criminal Minds like Reid's shoulder bag,  Garcia's Glasses, The Jet, etc

I have a hard time limiting my pallet but I managed to get this down to  six colors (with varying shades...

In Which I am Indecisive

Which color do you like better?

Performance at Risk

I submit the pitch for this story, thinking it wouldn't get picked up. When I sent in my first draft recording I was *sure* it wouldn't get picked up. The story was too long but I didn't know where to cut it. I had no idea how to end it. I submit it saying "this was the best I could do. Maybe it's just not right for the show." But they cast me in a show anyway.

After feedback from the people at Risk, my partner, my best friend, and a surprising amount of help from my therapist, I mana...

Smutfic 2: Kinky Boogaloo

I finally finished the second chapter to my smutfic. I'm glad it's got me writing again and I'm really proud of how it turned out. I do wish it was easier for me to write things that aren't porn. But mostly I'm happy to be writing at all.

Anyway, here's the porn. This is much more kinky than the last chapter (which I've been told was NOT actually vanilla) so if you're not into rough stuff, this isn't the story for you.


Aaron Hotchner eats pussy like it's his goddamn job. And...

Pride Portraits

After Mermay I wasn't quite up to another themed everyday art challenge. But it was pride month so I wanted to do *something.* I settled on a series of portraits, one for each color of the rainbow. Indigo isn't on the pride flag but *shrug* I wanted to do it anyway.

Each portrait is of a different queer person who shaped my life in some way, so each post on instagram had a caption talking about who they were and how they contributed to my life and my experience/understanding of queern...

Mermay Wrap Up

June is nearly over so, obviously, it's time for me to finish this post about Mermay!

Mermay is a drawing challenge, like inktober: People put out prompt lists and you draw mermaids based on the prompts. I couldn't manage to do every day, but I did draw a BUNCH, with varying levels of success. It was fun expanding my hunk portfolio and I learned a lot about texture brushes.

I was also challenging myself to post on instagram twice a day. It didn't increase my followers as much as I...

Smutfic

My Criminal Minds obsession has progressed to fanfic.
I've been reading it on AO3 for a while and, tbh, it's been nice spending time in a low-stakes literary environment. Everyone's just writing for fun. Plots and story structure are optional. Mistakes don't matter. Some of it is really good, and when it's bad you don't have any investment in it so you can just stop reading.

I think one of the things that's stalled my writing recently is over thinking. "Is this structured the right ...

Foxy Feds

I know I posted Mulder already but, hell, who wouldn't want to see him again?
On the off chance you haven't seen these on my various social media platforms, here are my Foxy Feds so far. I've really enjoyed working on them. It's pushed me into making more full illustrations, with backgrounds and lighting. Some of these were really made by the lighting.

It's also made it clear to me that drawing se...

How Do You Solve a Porno Like Dale Cooper?

I thought maybe there was a way to make it subtle, tasteful, more suggestive than porny.

I was wrong.

Or, if there is a way to do it, I just don't know what it is. So back to the drawing board!

I asked Jonny if he had any suggestions and he immediately came up with shirtless axe throwing. "He uses axe throwing to solve Laura Palmer's murder," He assured me. Sex and the City had a whole sc...

Putting My Obsession to Good Use

One of my favorite teachers in college would often have us start class by completing the sentence "I am in love with, and obsessed by,________"  It's definitely a good lodestone for art. Passion is art's whole deal.

Ideally that passion would be for something very real and important in your life. However, in the vacuum of the pandemic, my obsession has focused on Criminal Minds. Specifically crushes on Reid/Matthew Gray Gubler and Hotch/Thomas Gibson. I've read SO MUCH slash fic ab...

Happy Birthday Johnny

For his Birthday, my partner Johnny asked for a book cover.

He'd bought a used copy of Marvel Comics the Untold Story, an old library copy that didn't have a dust jacket. So he asked if I'd design and make a new dust jacket for it. I was honored that he had asked me to give him art for his birthday, and thankful that it was a specific enough request that I didn't get overwhelmed by the possibilities.

He even gave me an inspiration board.

2021-02-04 16:07:34 +0000 UTC View Post

Creating a couple's portrait

One of the best thing about this past year has been the fact that I live near my best friend and producing partner, Sarah Tops. Since the pandemic started I've seen her at least once a week, either outside or on google chat and it has kept me sane.

Once my GTA job stopped booking again, Johnny and I decided to pod up with Sarah and her partner Dick Move, since now none of us were leaving the house except for groceries and the occasional walk. Also the weather was making outdoor hangouts...