This is a Journal.

For the Supernatural Rare Ship Mini Bang I worked with the charming and patient crowleysmistress with a great twist on the blurry wife — JODY, MY LOVE!!!  Read Janet Jackson, Chick Flicks, and Baby here and give her the love!

I'm weirdly in love with this banner.  The Supernatural Rareship Bang blaze required for this event fit beautifully with the rosé wine mentioned in the story and I really enjoyed layering together different shades of romantic pinks and peaches to evoke and tie the two together with the softer promise of those "chick flick moments."  I used paler bands of diffuse color to create a bit of texture hopefully like light through rose liquid ;) with a little fizz (more diffuse spraying effect) to conjure bubbles.  (I almost added actual bubble shapes but that refused 100% to work.)  

(I also discovered my flair for logo style pop art is not yet where I want it to be.  But my work disguising fonts and titling is working for me.)

The main piece isn't actually seen in the story but is more evoked by its set up and imagined during certain events I won't spoil.

This piece fought me.  Actually, mental health breakdowns and medication SNAFUs and my consequent brain landscape and my lifelong but only now finally diagnosed  ADHD and OCD really fought me (but let's blame it on poor Jody?!  No!).  Life will do what life will do.  We shall finish by deadlines because that is what We Do.

These pieces are both digital, done on ipad pro with apple pencil in sketchbook pro (which is free though for which I've got all possible extra features ever for like $2.99, just a shout out for anyone angry with expensive or subscription programs).

My initial vision was to take the well known blurry wife shot and refocus the shot to bring Jody into sharp focus and the boys into blur.  I'm not completely satisfied with the composition here; without making the piece a mile wide I couldn't really replicate the original shot's blocking.  But I'm happy with Jody, after a million redraws and adjustments.  I did the boys by doing a loose paint over with (digital) paint-produced blur, then toyed with the program's blur function.  Jody was built from multiple Kim Rhodes photos and by completely chucking blurry wife's actual posture which is ... extremely un-Jody.  

Minor ramble on posture in these shots and characters: If you look at the shot from the show too long, it really starts to look like Becky doing her shy coquettish smiling up posture more than anyone else.  The wife is posed like a portrait, head tipped slightly down, hands folded demurely, a bag tucked at her hip, one knee forward for a wedding/prom delicacy and not planted squared feet.  Jody ALWAYS stands planted, with strong posture (Eileen would move to a hip but not in peaceful, serene goddess pose either — no one Sam has shown any interest in in the show has stood delicately with a pure feminine lilt).  Jody is a cop and a hunter, and even though she is extremely Mom, she is not a mom whose posture will allow her to be pushed over by a passing dog/child/strong wind.  (...Can you tell I was also raised by weird military paranoid tough people?  Go feet shoulder width apart, shoulders squared, knees not locked, head up, alert eyes, hands at sides ready to go or clasped behind back or arms folded over the chest.  ...With the action in front of you and the most secure structure to your back. ...Preferably armed, but learned your first improvised bomb recipe at about 9 years old so you'll make do.)

So, Jody, sensibly, is leaning against the post for her observation, arms looser, head lifted, eyes bright.  It comes out to minor shifts in the overall silhouette but man did it look wrong without them.

*Edited to include actual content after posting, as usual, because I cannot executive function.

Oh my god y'all.  This.  This is what I want to exist in the world.  This is the kind of thing I have dreamt of writing and illustrating.  I had visions of mad glory and godhood and understandably have not ascended but I loved working on these and haven't wanted to stop.

All my love for this dream of a project; I wish I could have made a hundred illustrations all lush on storybook pages for it. For now, I have drawn our demiurges of Winter and Summer as seen in their first meetings with the children of the North.  Digital art, attempted (but only partially succeeded) in channeling Mucha.

These are basically SFW but lustful, if you get my drift.  Fuck but I've missed drawing femme bodies!!

This has been a lovely event.  Laila has been amazing to work with, go read this brutal glimpse into Sam and Hallucifer here!  "In Your Room Screaming Suicide"

And the Stone Number One, twisted

I've been trying to stretch and play around with style and composition, so this is going to be a pretty major departure from anything I've posted recently.  In keeping with the mood of this story, I wanted to show darkness and roughness and decay, and a sense of uncertain reality.  Sketching in relief on blackboard grey gave me an effect I'm really pleased with.  All done in Sketchbook Pro on ipad pro with apple pencil.

And spoilers plus blood/death below!

This was my first time participating in a reverse bang and the lovely backrose_17 chose a picture I'd been chewing on for a long time.  Work conspired to eat my brain so I'll try to come back to this soon to do it a little more justice, but in the meantime, please enjoy "Tears of a Soul" (Sam/Dean/John Constantine) and the art!  Thanks to the lovely spneldritchbang !

Obsessed with Sam certain even as a child he could never be Galahad, because he was impure. 

The white and red cross tunic and shield are based on the Knights Templar--holy warriors with blood on their hands--and I honestly have forever associated it with Galahad of the Arthurian tales since first watching Monty Python's Holy Grail a million years ago. In my head, Sam here is that perfect pure and innocent Galahad, but tainted with blood and certain of his impurity and unforgivability.  He looks toward the light in prayer, eyes slightly raised, but he does not expect forgiveness to come.

And I'm super pleased with how this banner came out on short notice!!

For the banner, I started with a photo of Jared's eyes and did a paint over to try to get an accurate show of the impossible myriad colors that come out.  I am sure there is a David Bowie photo or album cover somewhere that's feeding this, the white and red with eyes, but I can't place it.

Both done on ipad pro in SketchbookPro.

Third collab with the fabulous runedgirl and I'm a creep running out of time on her.  Still pretty pleased with this.  Post for now is a placeholder until my brain goes voom again.

This post is unfortunately gonna be basically a placeholder.  I have a lot of thoughts but whether they'll get out, who knows?

Roxy was a delight and the story was cooking along delightfully!

The first of THREE stories I grabbed posted today over at spn_j2_bigbang .