Art, Heart & Words
So my mom wanted art for her birthday and when I forced her to tell me what, she said, “Oh, I just love your Myoku drawings.”
I was like loool don’t mind if I do
Then a client brought in a bunch of records and I got really inspired by an Alice Cooper album cover and
VOILA
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.
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.
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 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.
After trying and failing to read like 3 different books I finally decided it was time to put into action my do-over for Andrew and Micah to fall in love. When Ryan was reading Code: Compromised he was really bothered by the teacher/student dynamic (he doesn’t understand it like I do) so I resolved at that point to give them another go, and I knew I wanted to do a story about the Fae.
So I had this brainfart two weeks ago to set the story in Saint Paul because the Lilydale bluffs by my house are SOOOO magical so two weeks later I’m 35 pages/10,000 words in to my first story in 2 years and my first written story in 4.
I got to work on this painting on and off during telehealth sessions so it rose to a much higher level of completion than my work sometimes does.
I was working on my new layout when I remembered my first picture of Myoku Atem was done in 2002 2003, meaning this year that Micah is 20 years old next year.
[edit] This felt incorrect because IT wAS inCORrect
Micah’s 20 next year so I can save my emotions for next year. I mean, he’s still super old, but not double decades yet.
I got pretty emotional, managed to tell a few teenage clients about him that week, drew a banger of a Micah picture on my splurge of an iPad Pro, and had a hard time moving on.
Oooookay so, Our Flag Means Death. NGGGHH wow. We watched it on a whim because Rhys Darby is a long time good New Zealand actor from Flight of the Conchords and voice acting in Bob’s Burgers and a werewolf in What We Do in the Shadows so we know and love him. And Taika. Oh Taika. We are very much snoots about Taika as we watched the original WWDitS movie, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and Jojo Rabbit before he rose to prominence in the admittedly fabulous role he plays in Thor: Ragnarok. We were a little worried he was going the route of Peter Jackson until Our Flag Means Death happened. I at first thought that he was writing too but it turns out he just signed on to play Blackbeard and that’s it.
And oh…dear…god. Never so fast after finishing something have I leapt on my tablet and furiously began making fanart. We literally finished the show two days after the last episodes dropped so there just wasn’t enough on the internet to satiate me yet. But after immediately following Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi on Instagram I realized many people feel the same as I did about it, including the guys themselves. Ryan rates my reaction to this show in my top 2 fangirl moments and possibly I’d say it beat out the moment at the Breaking Benjamin concert when Adam Gontier showed up. I was hoping the moment would happen and IT DID and it was SO SO SWEET
Also the character designs on the show are *chef’s kiss* and there’s a nonbinary actor who portrays a nonbinary pirate after they get found out as AFAB.
When I was looking at this just now it reminded me of one of my first go’s at digital coloring.
Hilariously I even got the heart in the wrong spot.
Also it’s the same character hehe.
Anyway, who doesn’t love a glow-up? Literally.
happy halloween!
After a busy month of settling in to our new house and to my internship, I finally relaxed enough today to pick up my iPad. Yesterday a client at my internship kept describing themselves as “nostalgic” so then I got nostalgic and of course my mind turned to my imaginary fam. So I was like HMM WHERE SHOULD THEY BE and then I was like hey bro, nothing wrong with adults going to a bar, and voila. Andrew and Danny arguing while doing shots, Micah filming everyone, and Ingrid ignoring them and drinking good wine (or blood). V atmospheric, no?
