Lady Gaga and Taylor Kinney make love on canvas for charity shoot

Lady Gaga and Taylor Kinney have put their love on full display by posing naked on the cover of V magazine after having sex on a paint canvas.

The American Horror Story: Hotel star and Kinney are completely nude and covered in paint as she embraces her fiance from behind, in post-coital selfie taken by the actor.

The new issue of the publication will feature 16 different covers and proceeds from the $50 (£33) magazine will benefit Gaga's Born This Way Foundation.

Gaga, who served as guest editor, explains she came up with the concept for the feature after asking her beau to work with her on a project to raise awareness for mental illness.

"Since we first met, Taylor's been drawing and painting all over me," she writes in her guest editor's letter for the magazine.

"Years ago, when we were secretly living in San Diego and crashing on the floor of a beach shack, we never wore shoes. He told me he wanted to make love to me on a canvas."

"I asked (Taylor) to collaborate with me on a project to raise money and awareness about mental illness, (and) he immediately brought my attention back to this idea," she continues.

"We made love on the canvas on a Sunday in Chicago," she adds. "We made love amidst chaos. We talked about shootings. We made love amidst terrorism. And we talked about how people's hearts are also suffering all over the world as they watch and witness a swell of violence. We made love amidst violence."

The result of their tryst is a colourful abstract painting.

"During tumultuous times, we hope everyone in the world will see this and be reminded to love each other wildly, generously, totally, colorfully, without fear and with compassionate hearts," Gaga writes. "We made a galaxy of endless colors with only brief, black holes of emptiness that are then filled by each other."

In addition to the couple's magazine charity project, the 29-year-old has teamed up with bosses at Intel, Vox Media and Re/code for a campaign to combat online harassment. The new initiative, titled Hack Harassment, will aim to advance anti-harassment technology.

"Young people are spending more time online than ever before, making it more important than ever before to face this problem head on," Gaga's mother, Cynthia Germanotta, says.

"Online harassment has become a pervasive and often vicious problem with real-life repercussions," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich adds. "Today's tech and media leaders have a collective responsibility and capability to identify solutions that can help reduce different forms of online harassment. We need to remember that behind every device, game, sensor or network is a real person with real feelings and real needs for safety."