Art!, Emotional Breakdowns, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters

serious boys

It’s been a rough and emotion few weeks
And it shows haha.

My portraits are…real dark.

This one was from last week because I was hooked on a Chevelle song, tale as old as time am I right.
And I think someone I followed on Instagram posted real glowy eyes so I popped em in at the end.

all. this. time. felt slow. we’re alone. underground. where we’ll grow. endlessly.

Here are two Chevelle drawings from the mid to early 2000s. I know Micah in that one is probably 2004, Sotoka’s most likely 2005 or 2006.


Honestly this other one I thought of during a session so I don’t know specifically why it came to me buuut. It wasn’t even going to be Andrew at first, but it didn’t seem like Micah’s vibe so I switched them haha.

It’s called

Murder on My Mind

Yahahaha it made me think of this one. Which is definitely from 2003.

Art!, Lilydale, MicahxAndrew, Myoku Needs a Tag

leprechaun

He wasn’t a leprechaun until I showed Ryan and asked him what the outfit sans vest looked like (Five, from Umbrella Academy) and he said the Lucky Charms leprechaun so now I can’t unsee it

But anyway his Pocket Gay is pretty cute

I was thinking about the Andrew doll and it occurred to me tonight that I was thinking about a really old Danyil/Erik/Eripmav doll and so I dug it up out of my drive and it turns out THERE WAS ONE OF MICAH TOO

I’m sensing another project revolving around the plush lol
Continue reading “leprechaun”
Art!, Lilydale, MicahxAndrew, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters

lots of color and line art

After spending a few months doing soft airbrush lines that I would generally cover up, I switched things up when I made a Micah character sheet. I’m teaching Super Stories again this summer and I wanted to give the kids a bit more they could do with their character development. I made them a pencil version too, but I finished a version for myself.

hehe
inspired by me
Super dumb that I pulled this off so easily when I tried to make Micah with his staff when I first wrote about it last summer and I ended up with a very different kind of painting haha

This is what I wanted to make to compare him to his old era of staff fightings.

I’ve been thinking a lot in the revisions how similar Andrew and Ingrid are

Here are some old ones of this adorable trio

I’ve also been thinking about this intense one from approximately the same era for a while haha

This was literally just a concept drawing, it was loosely for Time-Painters where Andrew was a master painter and to some degree Micah and Ingrid were his apprentices? But one of the two of them goes off the rails. I don’t know, it kinda flopped
Emotional Breakdowns, Lilydale, MicahxAndrew, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters, Other Peoples' Work!

honing skills

i added some lovely lines and it makes me happy
this fine line portrait turned out soooo preeeetty
WOLFGANG AND SHIN AS HIGH SCHOOL SWEETIES GAHHH
this is really fugly but it was lineart practice
shin soohyuk is the most magnificent and unusual character of all time and i want to tuck him into bed and smooch his forehead

but also i don’t know how he can be so delicate, so yesterday i spent the day studying him and actuallly ducking traced him like i’m a fucking 10 year old to try to understand his weird wonderful anatomy better.

i fucking can’t
Lilydale, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters, Sun-Walking, Writing Journey, Writing!

more heartwood doodles

I’m revising Superior and added a scene where Micah makes Ingrid and Lucienne go to Target to get gifts for the Folk and…doodles ensued

And okay so when I was writing the original draft I kept debating whether or not Micah and Lucienne would kiss/have a thing/briefly be together and I opted for this awkward Trial scene where Lucienne tricks Micah into thinking they slept together, but I ended up squeezing another scene in in its place and Micah ends up in Lilydale

So I talked it through with, you know, my monogamous partner, and ended up deciding one one kiss between them

and

GOSH THEY’RE A GOOD LOOKING COUPLE WTF

what a weird little world this trilogy exists in

Lilydale, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters

my soft rose boy

I’m well into the third in the Heartwood Trilogy (Lilydale/Superior/Heartwood) and in Superior Micah makes himself a magical staff which I one hundred percent thought of knowing Myoku’s history as a staff wielder haha.

This truly feels like his most evolved form, although there are places where I’m like, mm I could see him coming across as a bit annoying in that hero tendency. I mean, I’m happy with the choices and missteps he makes and his difficulty owning his power. And anyway Andrew, Ingrid, and Lucienne are all amazing.

Anyway ever since his birchwood staff was born I wanted to do a redraw of his “master of the shadows” arc. I tried a few serious adventure drawings but then I was in a session I think when him reclining in a flower bed popped into my head and I was like WELL isn’t that more appropriate. The design and the skeleton was born in under an hour and I just putsed with it for the next few days.

Emotional Breakdowns, Myoku Needs a Tag

just a cute micah + a then and now

I was starting to realize how that fancy Micah painting I did earlier this year looks good (kind of awkward though), but isn’t really comparable to other Micah portraits I’ve done over the years. So I endeavored to make a more anime style one that compared better thinking it would take several days plus, but…I did it in like a few hours. It’s super hecking cute. That’s all I have to post about, but I am kind of working on some other nostalgia rot of Andrew+Micah+Ingrid+Lucy how they used to be versus how they appear in Lilydale. I just haven’t gotten it to a satisfying point yet.

I did it! But the final product is just Micah and Andy haha.

Lilydale, MicahxAndrew, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters, Writing!

lilydale dump – it’s brainrot at this point

Yeah so it’s been done for like six weeks at this point but I still can’t get out of the Lilydale brain rot. I did two revisions myself and now my dad has it! And so far his comments have been totally what it’s needed.

I have a good feeling about this project.
Even my supervisor asked about it yesterday haha.

So it’s me so I’ve always toyed with the idea of illustrations in my work and I was thinking how much I usually like it when content I like has candids of the characters. And I realized the likelihood of the characters taking photos of each other on their phones is pretty high, so I did a bunch of sketches to varying degrees of completion around this.

I did this one yesterday during a session and I can’t even. I want to eat him. Cutie.
I designed the chest piece Micah gets at the end of Lilydale specifically to put it into this picture.
Also I find it delightful because Ingrid, Lucy, and Micah. Hearts.
Lucienne is an absolute goblin in this book.
Micah and Arwen <3
Micah’s spiritual encounter with a bobcat. It’s after he takes a piss in the woods.
Mother. I was working on this stupid image for weeks and it’s still not finished. It’s very…creamy? I don’t know if I love the lack of texture haha. WHO AM I I’ve always hated texture tehehe.

I suppose I need to acknowledge in writing how OBSESSED I am with Micah right now. I’ve been on a two month All Time Low kick because Alex’s vocals match Micah’s voice and a lot of the tone in a lot of his songs is very Micah. Fortunately they’re songs I’ve heard after the fact so I know I didn’t accidentally inject them into Micah haha.
But yeah, and fortunately this book would be published with my last name VanAlstine so people don’t start going Micah Stillwater…Mary Stewart…are they…the same
Because yes, and no.

Oh yeah so I got really into mandalas after I discovered the symmetry tool, only the funny part about them is I’m not proud of any of them after the fact. Except this juicy orange.