Greetings.
My name is João Almeida, I live in Portugal and I am an artist. On my way of artistic education, I come across at some point in the world of freaks and human oddities, a topic that interested me greatly and immediately. I start looking for information and read a lot about freaks history, manly american and teratology and I discovered a exiting world and a great source of inspiration. In another aspect, I am also a portraitist and is exactly in this field I want to develop my work. A seriousely and respectable work. However, at least in my country (and maybe the world too) is extremely hard to get people with deficiencies who are willing to pose, or my lack of resources prevent me many times to get them, forcing me to resort fantasy which does not go well in my best interest. My goal is to portrate real people dignifying their image, as Witkin did with his photos.
By entering this forum, I'm looking mainly to meet people, (with oddities or not) willing to discuss this matters with me. I am not waiting to find models through the forum, just exchange experiences about the life and image of these people and looking for a little (or a lot) of inspiration for my work hoping some seriously return.
Please, no chats about vampires or et's, neither conspiracys or other stupid matters that doesn't fit with my goal, work and the topic.
Thank you very much.

[Loki]

The place where you would have most chance to localize abnormal people is India and more generally developing countries. Otherwise, I guess it is hard to enter any institution in the US and Eur

[jordyn]

Greetings.
My name is João Almeida, I live in Portugal and I am an artist. On my way of artistic education, I come across at some point in the world of freaks and human oddities, a topic that interested me greatly and immediately. I start looking for information and read a lot about freaks history, manly american and teratology and I discovered a exiting world and a great source of inspiration. In another aspect, I am also a portraitist and is exactly in this field I want to develop my work. A seriousely and respectable work. However, at least in my country (and maybe the world too) is extremely hard to get people with deficiencies who are willing to pose, or my lack of resources prevent me many times to get them, forcing me to resort fantasy which does not go well in my best interest. My goal is to portrate real people dignifying their image, as Witkin did with his photos.
By entering this forum, I'm looking mainly to meet people, (with oddities or not) willing to discuss this matters with me. I am not waiting to find models through the forum, just exchange experiences about the life and image of these people and looking for a little (or a lot) of inspiration for my work hoping some seriously return.
Please, no chats about vampires or et's, neither conspiracys or other stupid matters that doesn't fit with my goal, work and the topic.
Thank you very much.

One of my drawing instructors who's a good looking seventy something in all his years of making a damn good living drawing everywhere from australia to italy has only drawn a pregnant women six times, the sixth time was with our class...if finding a female proud enough of being pregnant to pose nude in her third trimester is that hard to find, you've chosen quite a challenge for yourself.

She was glorious in her glow but the awkward fullness of her was a challenge, but every artist there got excited and it turned out being some of our best work!

Maybe start out with pictures of them you can find on the internet will help, until you do find a chance to get one to pose. Any established life drawing artists you could talk to?