Ah, so, it was a very bleak and unproductive October honestly. Well, I guess, I thought it was – but then when I was putting together this post (on time for Halloween, but then I never finished it…), I realized that some of my criticism was the fact that, despite how hard I pushed myself to attach to paintwip, it just never took off. Draft is done, character designs are more or less decided, but I can’t get myself excited about any of it. When I finally decided to move on and focus on other projects or crafting a new one, it was like I had permission to have fun again. I’m not sure if it’s ongoing hangups with my own sapphic shame, or if Sepia just wasn’t a strong enough narrator. Not me wondering if I should rewrite it from 3rd person…
Anyway, here’s an art dump!
Art dump!
Spooky Kasi. She was my runners-up for best Halloween art but they were meant to be posted on my socials and I felt weird not having introduced her basically at all.
I was never excited about Pumpkin Micah, sorry bb
All Time Low lyrics obvi
Had to do a classic pic with lyrics from the new ATL album. I wanted to practice doing something colorful and delicate so I did butterfly studies. All five of them are real species lol.
Kasi’s a weirdo lol
Heartwood bois
Ok so hear me out
Gummy bears
I got a handful of them from a client and was like “These would make a pretty color palette” and here we are, Gummy Bear Andrew lmao
MY PRETTY BABIESSSS
Oh and this is the pic I did end up posting for Halloween haha
So a few months ago I pulled up some old drawings to mess around with redraws and started to undertake redrawing one of my classic “heartthrob pictures”…see below lol
I did a draft of an update a few months ago but he suffered from Big Chin syndrome and kinda looked like he was in drag?
But I was bored this week and was stuck on making my nonman characters into Sailor Scouts, so I tried again and even Ryan was like “that’s quite a glow-up”
I DID IT! It’s been a while but I was browsing old art blog posts and came across ye olde paint boys drawings. The first one is from 2007! Can you believe it? Fucking ancient. Almost 20 years ago man. Almost 20 years ago this trio was being little dumb babies.
The 2019 redraw I did was SO awkward haha. Like technically not bad, but what was up with everyone’s body shapes? And MICAH’S FOOT? HELLO?
I know I was trying to make the boys really cute and it is just not it hahaha
2007 and 2019 boys
2019 was also a time in my digital art when I thought that the only effective way to color would be to make things as neat and clean as possible, but earlier this year I started doing things backwards – doing the painting first and adding lines to finished shapes. I think that let my brain rearrange how I approach color. Plus, I’ve been working with some line art brushes that I think let me create a lot more well-rounded shapes that end up cleaning up a lot better. It’s been odd with these line brushes because it’s reminding me of some of my first methods for finished art where I’d sketch it and then use ballpoint pen to line and then erase the lines underneath, only I’m using the same brush for both parts of the process, allowing me to keep the most graceful marks.
Wellp I got overstimulated tonight and ran out of steam bye
I present to you…my first sapphic pairing EVER! Oh my god eEXCPET FOR THIS ONE I FORGOT LMFAOOOoo
IN MY WEIRD CHRISTIAN SHORT STORY ABOUT SINNERS AND I MADE MICAH’S SISTER A SLUTTY LESBIAN SO HE COULD MAKE HER FEEL GUILTY FOR HER SEXUALITY LOLLLLLLLLL
Well Kasi and Sepia are in a queernormative world where there’s not even a question of labeling yourself, they’re just into each other and everyone’s here for it
Here’s some other earlier art of them before I nailed down the one above, which I feel like was the first official character art since I’ve settled on their designs
All Time Low art
I was listening to TMIA again today and decided to redo the Sleepwalking art of Micah I made, so enjoy this angry Micah from Rend Me.
At the beginning of the month, I had sort of a disastrous maker’s market that, while it started out well, ended with a colossal downpour and coupled with realizing that I haven’t enjoyed a market in ages, and that’s like… not how everyone feels about doing book promo.
I also started drafting my next project, which is a sapphic urban fantasy. As soon as I got into a new project, I completely lost interest in my past body of work. This always happens, and I don’t really mind, but it’s a bit more public now that I am published and have a small following. I don’t owe anyone anything, and I’ve moved pretty quickly into “I don’t actually need to post anything, huh… that feels good” and that’s been a relief. But I’m sort of waiting to disclose this, like I can’t relax until I speak to my silence.
I think I’m just noticing that I felt like I was in a race to keep up with folks. I felt like I was in a competition with myself. Anything about my projects was a failure unless it made a sale. Even though–what does a sale even mean? What really matters is having people read and fall in love with my books. if it weren’t crazy to do so, I’d make ’em free all the time. (The crazy part of that would simply be that that would mean that plenty of people have my book whether or not it’s “meant for them” or not).
I’m thinking that when I come back I’m going to focus on posting in a more authentic way. More like I’m posting to my friends rather than to grow my audience. Informal, more fun. I think that’s how things started, but I saw someone post recently about how Instagram has just become advertisements and promotion and I think that might be part of what killed my inspiration to post more is that it just feels soulless. If I can’t talk about how I actually feel about my books or art, then I’m not going to enjoy it.
Anyway, that’s sort of it for that… it feels like a bigger feeling in my head, but when it all comes down to it, I’m over events, I’m over promotional posts. It’s time to focus on events I get invited to, and posts about why I’m doing what I’m doing and why I love it.
With record speed, I got CFTM set up for publication. I pushed back the release for seemingly no reason, but the way that I look at it, this gives me more bandwidth to focus on promoting a highly successful book launch.
I think there has to be something I’m doing wrong with social media still as I just don’t get a lot of traction, but I’m going to focus on paying attention to what sort of posts DO work and how people build momentum for stories people don’t yet know.
When I was stuck in the mud finishing up with Quinton’s edits and decided to push out the release by a month, I spontaneously decided to follow the vague vision I had to make a new book cover.
I had just been feeling that the Lux-only cover didn’t have enough oomph, and felt lifeless. I really wanted Leigh and Nico on the cover.
I was fortunate to be able to get a lot of design help from CJ and Al to help all the elements come together. With this cover, I also designed it with ease of measurements in mind, with generous margins and a contained design.
The most exciting part is that I handwrote the title! Wtf? Yep, I said, I want to take credit for all the bits and bobs this time around.
I’m also really pleased with Ackerleigh’s shirt haha. It’s so pretty and flowy and detailed.
Here’s this year’s holiday picture. It’s so soft and delicate.
And the year in review! You can tell when all my energy shifted from Heartwood to gryphonwip lol.
Things have been crazy busy around here lately but I’ve been chipping away at the third draft of gryphonwip really focusing on world-building and characterization as well as cleaning up prose. You can really tell that this is my first project since Unface written in first person POV because I don’t really know what I’m doing. But I’m getting there!
I had this fun breakthrough last week that Ackerleigh (fka Alister) is genderqueer. I knew he was a tiny delicate twink type but I’m shifting that to really nestle into my own relationship with gender. Ackerleigh doesn’t want to be treated like he’s delicate or feminine even if he loves embroidering his own billowy blouses and is a 5’6 academic type. It really helped his character light up for me.
After a long struggle with Nico I also feel like I figured him out! The key was curls.
And then bam! He stopped being Micah lite.
Look how cute!
Ackerleigh’s design didn’t really change at all when I overhauled Nico. I tried to make him dark haired for like an hour and hated it. But I still did some cute art of him when I was nailing down his adorable fashion sense.
I actually have a height reference in Milanote so I was able to establish that before I did a ton of couple photos of Leigh and Nico.
Their faces are mid but this was the image that made me realize just how much Wolfgang and Shin influenced these guys’ aesthetics. Nico is nothing like Wolfgang though; Nico is a shy sad baby. And Ackerleigh is much punchier than Shin. But Nico’s colors are yellow and brown (and red) and Leigh wears a lot of grays and blues like Wolfgang and Shin.
Let’s see, I also did this cute one of Leigh and Pax and I think it’s the only Pax art I love from this round.
Honestly Pax is a huge bitch to draw. I’ve made minimal progress it feels and every second effort to draw it looks like ass. I think the problem I ran into is how derpy eagle faces look. Their beaks and eyes almost precisely line up, which I guess makes sense for how eagles hunt but come on
Mister Arrow much?
It also doesn’t help that Pax’s head is black so any time I want to draw elaborate feathers I’m like “ok but it’s a voidcat so why am I doing this”
So I usually end up compromising by shading it gray. Didn’t these wings turn out nice?
The face is rrk. The face asldkfjalf
Ok so in true Mary fashion though I ended up wanting to do this blog post because I made up some character profile pictures today to get ready to launch this project to the public (Al and Vic and my dad still have to read it) and I don’t know what made me think of it but I ended up looking at the profile pics I made for Redefining Evil a bajillion years ago so NOW IT’S TIME FOR A GLOW-UP EHE
Dr. Ackerleigh SebringNico De FalcoStella De Falco (I’m literally obsessed with her)Camden Zane
I’m having an identity crisis with Claire right now because I’m wondering if she needs to be Asian but I don’t love then that my token minorities are a couple so I’m wondering if I just need to turn her back to brunette. But my hand was also cramping when I was trying to work on her today so I think I just need to come back to her with more energy, because I love the previous picture I did of her when she was blonde.
Well, considering I came on to literally just compare my shitty profile pics from RE with my new ones, I certainly ended up with a whole dump!
I also want to go slow with gryphonwip because I want to enjoy some privacy haha. Pride is coming up this weekend and I have over a thousand dollars of books I’m hoping to sell so that’s…yeah not private.
Oh my gosh I forgot about my first official couple pic from this round of revisions!
