Leonardo, Blake and friends: rare spanking art from Paddles and Sapphire

Outside the Janus stable, there were many, many other spanking magazines catering to dominant and submissive needs before and in the early days of the internet. Some of these are also available on the Spanking Art Wiki, alongside Janus, Februs and Fessee. Most spanking magazines contained artwork, and Australian-based Paddles was clearly extremely well illustrated, featuring drawings by the artist Leonardo, who I'm sure you will have come across before.

These pictures are from 'The Shopping Expedition' (Paddles 106)...

A wife is punished for failing to return from the shops with a suitable spanking hairbrush. Her husband accompanies her on the next trip and is more successful... and so he should be considering he tries the brush out on her in the shop!

Stories about trips to buy spanking implements are always a treat!

Paddles also featured illustrations by other artists. Most prominent by far was Lee, whose style is rather rough and ready but who often captured the essence of the sexually charged spanking stories in the magazine.

Robyn Adair also seems to have regularly contributed, and drawings by multiple artists often appeared in a single story. In 'Head Prefect Joyce' (Paddles 102), a mistress thrashes a kinky couple in front of each other... and afterwards the woman whispers that she might like to return for a solo visit.

She does return, in 'The Initiation of Maurice' (Paddles 110), but this time with a different man, who she caught wanking at work!

One of the best things about Paddles is that it mixes F/M scenarios with the F/F and M/F, often excellently illustrated by Lee, Leonardo and others.

In 'Hanky Panky' (Paddles 99), Julie's husband comes home drunk, so she asks her older friend to use her strap on him (just like she did with her own husband). And then afterwards the couple have sex while the older woman masturbates and plans to borrow the younger man for some hanky panky of her own!

In 'Surprise Meeting' (Paddles 111) a woman reunites with an old flame... and sets his bottom aflame just like she used to when they were together!

'The Rod Club' recounts how a kinky couple's antics at a cafe catch the eye of the hostess and she spanks both of them in public.

In 'Elizabeth II' (Paddles 110) two lesbians catch a man spying on them – so they spank him and sit on his face.

In 'On the Warpath' a man is spanked at the beach in front of two women for drunken behaviour.

Likewise, in 'End of Year Rituals' , a saleswoman is punished for her behaviour at the office Christmas party.

The majority of 'Melanie' (Paddles 111) concerns an excellent F/M spanking story, where a collegeboy spies on his neighbor spanking her husband, and is caught and spanked himself before she wanks him to a climax while her husband stands in the corner! Then she sends him back outside to finish mowing their lawn while she gets a good seeing-to from her husband. Sadly none of this is illustrated... but his subsequent spanking shenanigans with the girl who moves in after them certainly are!

Needless to say, the explicitness of the stories is a big plus for me...

In 'Shared Learning' (Paddles 99) a boss is surprised when her secretary agrees to be spanked to keep her job... until she is 'comforting' her afterwards and her motivations become clear!

In 'The Arrowtown Incident' (Paddles 111) a college graduate goes travelling with a friend and her strict mother, and when the girls are caught smoking weed she finds watching her friend's punishment to be stimulating in the extreme... though not as stimulating as her own spanking, which causes her to climax repeatedly across the older woman's knee!

Then in 'Guarded Treasure' an autograph hunter is soundly punished for disturbing the peace of a reclusive actress, before she has some fun with her and her bodyguard...

In Paddles 106, a dominant woman informs her man that they will be hosting 'A Most Unusual Tea Party' for an old college friend and her lover, a formidable netball coach, both of whom have a taste for spanking!

Also in Paddles 106, 'Mission Support features a man turning the tables on two door-to-door missionaries and giving one of them what she is really seeking... a good hard spanking before taking her to bed!

In 'What Silke Needed' (Paddles 99), mischievous female houseguests are kept in line with cane, strap and more...

Then in 'Waiting for Mr Dougrua', during hours of waiting for an interview, a young journalist allows her cameraman to spank her as a forfeit for losing at chess and to calm her nerves.

The fun continues in Paddles 102, where in 'New Neighbor' a woman hears her neighbour spanking her younger lover and is soon knocking at her door for a taste of discipline herself.

While in 'In Concert', a spoiled girl is made to strip and get spanked in order to be able to attend a music festival.

'The Two Minute Test' features two collegegirls playing a foolish game where they give people two minutes to do ANYTHING they want with them... with predictable results!

And in 'Not Quite Naked' (Paddles 111) a woman loses control of her three young houseguests and is relieved when her husband returns home to take them (and her) in hand.

Moving awat from Paddles for a moment, Sapphire was another spanking magazine and featured much artwork by the excellent Blake (although from what I've seen, I prefer his F/M work), and apparently other artists also appeared.

One of Blake's comic strips appeared in Janus, but only for three issues and then his (I assume the artist is male?) art was never seen in the main magazine again. Its hard to say why, though with Hardcastle, Paula Meadows and Anton on their books perhaps the Janus editors felt they had enough legends illustrating their main magazines!

Other artists appear to have featured occasionally as well...

As in Paddles, the stories in Sapphire featured plenty of explicit action beyond spanking. In 'Doubles Trouble' (Sapphire 11) two posh women are unimpressed to lose to their two nouveau riche opponents at an exclusive tennis club, so one of them spanks her partner for not trying hard enough. They are caught in the act by their opponents, who spank them for their haughty attitude... while playing with themselves with their spare hands!

In 'Russian Steppes', a cruel tzarina flogs one of her handmaidens in front of her friends, and when the girls' mothers complaints interrupt her subsequent masturbation she bends her over and birches her alongside her daughter... and it isn't long before the other handmaidens join them!

In 'Both Sides of the Coin' (Sapphire 14) a woman's punishment of her careless lover escalates until they are caught having sex by an army commando on training manoeuvres...

Sapphire was focused on F/F spanking and associated shenanigans, and was part of the Stone Castle stable of magazines which also featured Scorpion (focused on M/F spanking) and Viper (for F/M aficionados – presumably this is where Blake's F/M art originally appeared).

In these less-enlightened times, note there was apparently no demand for an M/M title (perhaps it could have been called Python or Cobra, and featured bi cuckolding and crossdressing/trans scenarios as well as guy-on-guy spanking?

I can find no real trace of Scorpion or Viper online, though judging by the photos in Sapphire, Stone Castle seems to have some link with the Vixen Ladies/Mistress Lina/Spanked Cheeks studio. While the Spanking Art Wiki links to the entire archive of the Janus, Februs and Fessee, only four issues of Sapphire are available, and the two later issues feature no artwork.

I'm not sure how long they ran for, but presumably there are several dozen more issues of these magazines featuring plenty of unseen Blake spanking artwork.

The wiki similarly only features links to five issues of Paddles, and going by the issue numbers there are over a hundred more. Janus and Februs sometimes contained adverts for Paddles, featuring artwork by Leonardo that I have never seen anywhere else:

Just imagine how many more unseen classics by Leonardo and Lee are contained within those remaining issues, which are probably less and less likely to ever be seen again, given the increasing puritanism of an ever-more corporate internet.