Art, Heart & Words
My eyes are bleeding from working for so long on the illustrations for Deny Me and I’m over it. So today I took a breather (well, not really, I was just ALSO doing this) and made this per my editor’s behest. She’s my green-skinned baby.
Here’s some old Lucienne for comparison. She’s always been a sensual girl.
Ryan started clanging Fae-themed puns at dinner yesterday, so I made a drunk Andrew thing.
This gets its own post since it’s too cute not to post.
Hi blog! I have been very distracted and consumed for the five or so weeks since joining a writer discord server which has propelled me into the writing world in an exciting, but overwhelming way. I’ve gotten three critique partners who are blazing through my work and responding to it in the way I always hoped readers would respond to Andrew and Micah and co.
I also found an absolutely phenomenal typographer who’s been working with me to decorate Deny Me, The Nightshade Boy‘s cover.
Um, also, I don’t know that I’ve announced on DIC that Deny Me is the final name of the book? The trilogy is:
Deny Me, The Nightshade Boy
Relinquish Me, Your Broken Knight
Promise Me, Lord Heartwood
Overall I’ve been happily committed to my self-publishing route, but I’m also looking at indie presses going…if they would pay for printing, is that so bad…?
I’ve really hit my stride with Twitter and I’m happy with my growth trajectory within the writing community. I wanted to write my numbers but it feels lame, even though it seems like for unagented writers that I’m hitting the Sweet Spot for good engagement and a sense of community.
I’ve also been working on lots of promo art and just ordered some acrylic pins and glitter stickers this morning of Micah looking ADORABLE
But I had to neglect Andrew during this round and that makes me sad because he turned out SO SWEET
Anyway these will be fun to display for Super Stories next month.
My discord server was pretty jazzed about Pride Month starting yesterday. I’d already decided I wanted to make Pride-themed stickers for my cast but yesterday I got the itch to just start a full-scale drawing of them and add them with their lil Pride flags. It led to some interesting discussions regarding Micah since he evades any sexuality identification for all of The Heartwood Trilogy. There’s an undefined sexuality flag, and a couple of clients and I thought that there was a flag with question marks, but when deciding Micah’s design re: flags it ended up being the snappiest just to do a queer rainbow flag.
Sam is a favorite among my readers so I was excited to include him in this. Just so weird since he’s the only new character in the cast!
I was also yearning for the beach so I made this painterly one of Andrew and Micah looking super queer, and also because I’m obsessed with bucket hats rn because I drew a pfp for one of my readers (Olive!) and they were wearing one and I fell in love hehe.
And yes, I did draw Micah’s rig too exaggerated the first time and had to shrink it ehehehe.
We’re re-watching New Girl (again) and my first CP Vic loves New Girl too so I ended up turning Andrew into this Nick Miller quote hehe.
I want to release bookmarks as a bonus for preordering so I cooked up this whimsical magical beauty.
So yeah, as you can see, my focus right now is on promotional work for DENY ME, but I’m excited by how good a lot of the stuff looks.
Yeah…just some fluff of the boys.
I tried to force it on darker stuff but it didn’t work, so I started a drawing yesterday to practice on fine lineart and ended up putting a line from one of the new Fall Out Boy songs in it BECAUSE OF COURSE
The new All Time Low album comes out in TWO. HOURS. and then the new FOB album comes out next Friday and I. CAN’T. AHHHHH
Like literally how could they do this to me I’m not going to emotionally be able to handle myself O.O
Mm okay so I ordered a print of that painting I did of Andrew a few weeks ago and didn’t wrap my head around the dimensions and
it turns out I ordered a POSTER SIZED PRINT of him ahhahhaha I love it and it’s really intense
My office has an A-frame ceiling and I posed with him tonight and then found out how creepily he lines up for a bad under-chin selfie with me so, you know. Weird times. Bit surreal. My handsome gay.
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 knew I wanted to make a Valentine’s Day picture. It finally occurred to me reading someone’s post on Instagram that I hate Valentine’s Day as a corporate greed and performative holiday that make coupled people feel pressure and single people feel miserable, but it’s always so tempting because I love pink, hearts, and kisses.
Surprisingly, I decided to make a smooch between Lucienne and Ingrid rather than Andrew and Micah. I was actually working on a concurrent kiss but not Valentine’s picture of the boys, but I knew I wasn’t going to get that finished in time. Thinking about it on my drive to work, I think I’m going to have to make a version of this with some line art, but I finished this at 10:30 very specifically to have it done on Valentine’s Day, so without further ado.
I was going to stop at a sketch for this and I actually think the sketch turned out really pretty too. The angle of Lucienne’s face was a bit better in the sketch.
I had some smooches in mind with them and other partners they’ve had in the past thinking I had several more that were done on Valentine’s Day, but I think this Lucy one from Sun-Walking was the only one.
New Fall Out Boy! Got the vision of Andrew being a nerdy shut-in hanging out with his cat. I feel like he had a black cat a million years ago too. But this is Arwen.
The manuscripts were super fun to throw in there. And yes, trying to get his tum right required some interesting results on Pinterest from what me and my client described as “the rabbit hole of gay men in crop tops”
