looking for a feeling of erotic intimacy

I really didn't know where to start rather than from the obvious. I found few photos of couples kissing, embracing, hugging, being intimate. It's been quite challenging to find photo references where one can sense this kind of intimate, erotic human connection.

I decided to use pastels as marks made with them make me think of flow, touch and earthiness. They are also great for quick sketches and general studies of tone.

Started thinking of using abstract lines to show connection, energy flow between people.

As next step I planned to do close ups like this in pointillism style, get dots of colour mix and mingle together to give an impression of both figures merging into one another.

Another idea was to screen print overlapping shapes of people kissing, embracing, where one person is in one colour and the other in a different one, and the two overlapping create third colour. I wanted to play with shapes of the overlapped area and the other two, and check variety of possible shapes they could create together.

Trying to reduce shapes here, but not finding a satisfactory effect yet.

I really enjoyed producing these quick sketches and decided to explore pastels further.