Ianardo's Frequently Asked Questions
What do terms such as BBW, FA, etc. mean?
What is it about larger ladies that appeals to BBW admirers?
Aren't these large ladies portrayed in the gallery unhealthy/unfit because of their size?
How long does it take to draw a portrait?
How did Ianardo get started in art, and in particular, portraits of BBWs?
How and when did Ianardo become an admirer of BBWs?
What sort of feedback does this unusual art receive?
The primary purpose of this gallery is to promote my artwork commercially and generate new commissioned portraits for customers.
The secondary purpose of this gallery is to join in with the "size-acceptance" movement, and promote the concept of plus size beauty. Many decades of mass-media brain-washing, means that the popular perception of beauty has been seriously distorted from the variety that nature has given us. Vast numbers of men hide their preference, fearing ridicule and prejudice. By far the greatest problem for (most) ladies living a large life is the behaviour of other people around them. If the general public view of beauty can be changed (or broadened), then that is the first step towards making the large ladies' lives more enjoyable and fulfilling.
BBW stands for Big Beautiful Woman. A convenient term to refer to larger ladies when discussing size-acceptance issues.
SSBBW stands for Super-Sized BBW. Very large ladies have additional problems/issues to deal with, when compared to smaller plus sized women, so this term can also be useful.
FA stands for Fat Admirer, the men who prefer the physical appearance of large ladies. It's not a fetish. It's just a preference!
FFA stands for Female Fat admirer, the ladies who prefer a large sized partner.
Chubby Chaser means a homosexual man who prefers large men. It is often wrongly used to refer to FAs, which causes some confusion.
Size Acceptance (SA) refers to the pressure movement to try and improve the lives of large ladies. As the name implies, it is about equality for all sizes/builds of people. It includes men too, but plus sized women - even just the slightly plump - tend to face more problems due to society's treatment of them.
A larger lady's figure emphasises everything that is feminine about the female form. Large hips is a fundamental feature of the female figure, as are legs that taper from large thighs via sensuous reverse curves down to the ankles. Most large ladies have a cleavage that their thinner counterparts can only dream of. Their shoulders are soft and feminine and even their arms exude feminine curves and softness. Skinny arms and shoulders look far more masculine. The rounded face of a BBW is generally more beautiful too, giving younger ladies a mature look, and keeping the not-quite-so-young ladies looking in their prime.
Is it any wonder that so many men go weak at the knees at the sight of a confident plus-size beauty who bares her arms in the summer? Or those of us who almost pass out after a mere glimpse of BBW cleavage?!
It is possible to be unhealthy from being too thin, yet many very thin people are healthy the way they are. Indeed, this artist should have died of malnutrition years ago if one believes some of the medical weight-charts! So, it should be no surprise to learn that many large (or even the very large) are involved with sports, keep-fit, working out at the gym and many know a great deal about nutrition and diet (in the true sense of the word).
Some do have problems related to their weight, most commonly mobility for some of the very large. But one cannot judge by looking at an individual nor by weighing them. Muscle and fat differ in density, hence the more muscular individuals will be heavier and this complicates the issue of analysing someone by their weight and height. It is not unusual to find two large ladies of similar height and size, but one is much heavier than the other. The heavier lady most likely has more under-lying muscle (not obvious under the fat) and so is probably more agile and certainly has a lower fat level. Yet she would be wrongly deemed to be the less healthy of the two simply because of her weight.
Some health problems are commonly thought to be caused by being over-weight. Or else the extra weight is assumed to increase one's susceptibility to certain ailments. In reality, one usually finds that there is no proven link, and even if there is some tenuous link, it is simplistic to believe that this affects all over-weight people. People become/are over-weight for many different reasons, and so they are not all at equal risk of any specific health issue. Any decision to reduce weight needs to be assessed on an individual basis, and not by generalisations. It is good to be fit and healthy, but one's weight should not be an over-riding gauge of one's state of health.
The much publicised Body Mass Index (BMI) also has one very obvious and serious flaw: It relates one's mass to one's height-squared. This brings a new meaning to "two-dimensional thinking"! We are not assessing the mass of cardboard cut-outs! If you scale a person up in size, then their volume will vary with height-cubed. If density remains constant, then mass will also vary with height-cubed. This is primary school mathematics! As mentioned above, density can vary consderably, hence any doctor's weight charts would have to have such a wide tolerance to allow for all healthy people that it would become of little use.
Much of the media-brainwashing on this issue of obesity comes from the vast weight-loss industry. Keep in mind that it is in the interests of this industry that their products fail in the long-term, so one can hardly take seriously their generalised claims on health and the supposed cost to tax-payers. Their rhetoric seems to creep into all sorts of TV programmes in an effort to brain-wash us all - even in classic dramas. I won't be surprised if it gets into Shakepseare productions in the future: "Alas poor Yorick.....he probably died of obesity, the fastest rising killer in the western world....."!!! Meanwhile doctors' views vary widely, from those who use weight as their explanation for every ailment, to those who give BBWs a clean bill of health (or treat their ailments as appropriate).
In short, you can't make any assumption about someone's health and fitness based on their size or weight.
The majority of full length (head to toe) portraits take from 10 to 15 hours each, or 15 to 20 with a background. These portraits are approximately 8 to 9 inches tall. Slightly larger sizes of drawing may take 30 to 40 hours each. The portraits in Hall 2 of the gallery are much quicker to do - about 2 to 6 hours each - these being quick sketches to display only online. I don't usually exceed 5 hours per day for drawing to avoid eye-strain, plus time needed for running the business and promoting it.
My interest in art was inherited from my Mum. I started drawing as soon as I was old enough to hold a wax-crayon, drawing some of the usual things such as people, houses, cars, etc. I developed some unusual specialities in early school years. For example drawing human skeletons (!) and maps of the world in great detail.
In later school years, I did have some art lessons, but never intended to take it up as a career. I never took a liking to painting and stayed firmly with pencil drawings mostly in black and white. When finding myself out of work a few years later, I happened to have been doing a series of drawings of classic cars. The boom in the classic car market was gathering pace, so I cashed in on this by becoming a freelance artist specialising in doing portraits and limited edition prints of old cars. I decided to switch to working in coloured pencils giving the drawings a greater appeal to my potential customers. After the classic car market crashed in 1990, I tried doing portraits of pet cats and dogs for a while. However, the over-riding problem with all of my freelance work was that most people who wanted a drawing specially done, had no conception of the number of hours involved, nor the going rates for portait art. Cars generally take 40 to 50 hours each to draw. I very occasionally did railway drawings which could take up to 400 hours to draw! So, in 1991, I ceased working as an artist.
I had dabbled occasionally (but secretly) in BBW sketches since my earliest school years, progressively drawing more frequently as time passed. The basic problem was that I had virtually no access to photos to work from and hence no opportunity to teach myself to draw the larger female form. After all, how often do you see BBWs pictured in newpapers and general magazines? Then in year 2000, I finally went online and discovered the amazing world of size acceptance. Since then, I've seen more BBW photos than I could ever make use of for drawing! I experimented with some sketches (including the one of Jennifer seen in the gallery) and then tried portraying some real ladies discovered online.
All of this happened shortly after resigning from my job, so becoming a freelance artist was an option again. It is far quicker to draw a lady compared to anything as solid and detailed as a classic car, and the potential market is a vast one. So I set up the gallery in March 2001 and the publicity has taken on a life of its own!
I can't recall any time when I did not prefer the appearance of larger ladies, but my preference has become progressively stronger over the years as I have had the opportunity to see more and more BBWs. I do recall that my interest in female beauty and style goes back to age 5, so at that time slim ladies would have appeared large, regardless of shape.
I still admired slim ladies as well, for their style, beautiful faces and maybe even a curvy figure. But such a curvy figure is only apparent in fitted clothing. A BBW looks feminine and curvy in virtually any outfit, and in a beautiful fitted gown, she is breath-taking, and this admirer quickly forgets the sort of 'ordinary' beauty that we are bormbarded with on film and TV. It is rather like discovering chocolate, and then later being introduced to fine dark Swiss chocolate! The mass media have been conning us! The beauty they portray often does look lovely, but the beauty of BBWs completely blows the film stars and super-models away!
I have received hundreds of e-mails from plus size ladies who have had their self-esteems boosted by viewing my artwork. For some, this might be the first time that positive images of big ladies have been seen. In a few cases, whole lives have been turned around for the better. The constant pressure on ladies (especially young ladies) to be skinny can be very damaging to their self-worth, and cause depression.
The men that I hear from (from all around the world) are amazed to see so much feminine beauty all in one place! A few do ask me to arrange dates with gallery ladies, so I had better state clearly that I am not running a dating agency! I also keep all portrait ladies' details confidential.
Slightly less welcome are requests for free portraits. I doubt if many professional people would do 15 to 20 hours work for free, for any stranger who happened to ask, but artists get such requests regularly.
As for negative feedback? Since starting this gallery in 2001, I've only receive 2. Both were highly abusive, and both were unable to comprehend what the gallery is about (see above!). I can't even offer to explain it in pictures, since it already is! Any really funny abusive feedback may well get an airing on this site to show up their foolishness! :)
More pages of interest for full figured ladies:
Clothing Index UK
What Causes Many Ladies to be Large?
Fitness Tips for Extra Cuddly Ladies
Dating Links plus advice on writing online profiles,
Random Rants about size acceptance issues
FAQ for this website
About this website
and tips on flirting/dating offline
Affiliate Schemes - off-topic, but related to this website.
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