Art!, MicahxAndrew, Myoku Needs a Tag, The Heartwood Trilogy

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!, MicahxAndrew, The Heartwood Trilogy

academia

I fell down a gay boys in crop tops rabbit hole on Pinterest and needed to put Micah in one because of course. And in the epilogue chapter of The Heartwood Trilogy I sent Andrew back to school for his PhD and made him a professor at St Kate’s so I’ve been thinking about the two of them in their student years, except that Micah’s 8 years older than Andrew so never would have overlapped BUT WHATEVER IT’S AN AU NOW
After raging about the various attempts I made to color this, I decided to do what I used to do and just prettify the sketch. It honestly looks almost identical to the traditional sketches I used to do haha
like this old one of Micah and Ingrid who are now siblings aaahhhehehe and Micah’s head in that is SO BIG
We watched The Queen’s Gambit and there’s this scene where this guy seems like he’s about to kiss Anya Taylor Joy and then his BOYFRIEND walks out of the bathroom in these cute tiny shorts and I wanted to put Micah in them lol. And Andrew’s European so of course he needed to be in a speedo. chicken legs
Art!, MicahxAndrew, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters, The Heartwood Trilogy

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, MicahxAndrew, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters, Other Peoples' Work!, The Heartwood Trilogy

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
Holiday Drawings, MicahxAndrew, Original Characters, The Heartwood Trilogy

Happy Holidays 2022

Good morning and happy holidays!

It’s been a vast and varied holiday season in my house, so it should come as no surprise that I ended up with several drafted Christmas illustrations before ending up with one I was happy with.

So that means you get lots of bonuses – the finished one I’m very happy with; IT’S SO COZY – and the drafts for the other versions.

<3
I really liked this one and everything, but it was too much the same tone as the Halloween one, with Lucienne being a goblin. I also got freaked out with how similar Andrew and Ingrid looked ahahha.
Art!, MicahxAndrew, The Heartwood Trilogy

wedding kiss/first kiss

I’m trash so I wanted to make a parallel kiss pic to Andrew and Micah’s forest kiss from Lilydale. I’m not quite as squealy, over the moon about it as I was about the first one, but I am into the TONGUES hahaha

It gives major Cirrus/Syracrus vibes from that picture I did of them in high school which is hilarious because Cirrus is The Ultimate Badguy in the 3rd Heartwood book. Really there’s visible tongue because MLM manhua has taken over my brain

I had the first flash this day talking to the receptionist about books where I’m like, excited to have some more brain space left rather than terrified of finishing this all-consuming trilogy.

The evil Cirrus + tongue picture in question lol. Kinda looks like Syr’s tongue is like a probiscus hehehahahaha

Art!, MicahxAndrew, The Heartwood Trilogy

heartwood wrapping up

I’m not done yet!

But I feel like I’m trying to emotionally prepare for it. Good news is there will be plenty of edits ahead of me I’m sure teheh. And it’s gonna be extra tedious since I wrote both of the last two parts without editing!

But I love them all so much and I’m sad already to be moving toward the first of the last two (large) scenes

Which of course culminate in A WEDDING EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Gotta throw in one of the OG couple pics of Andrew and Micah from Code: Compromised

An unexpected scene led to Andrew getting a concussion which was very goofy but potentially insensitive to the seriousness of concussions

Bluey and Gravity Falls brought it to my attention that a favorite cartoon trope of mine is eyes facing different directions
I’m sad that the hottest kiss (that I traced from a manhua for practice) turned out so bloody? I guess in that sense this was a practice lol

Emotional Breakdowns, MicahxAndrew, Original Characters, The Heartwood Trilogy, Writing Journey

superior

Well…the worst case scenario has happened. My dad planted the idea in me to turn Lilydale into a series and…well, that’s working out.

So that’s most of the art that I’ve been doing lately, but honestly what art could I possibly need to do ever again tbh, they’re perfect

And THEN…I was getting underway with it and the anthem band for MicahxAndrew, All Time Low, released a new single and IT. IS. A SPIRITUAL. EXPERIENCE for me.

I literally told Ryan that the fact that this song came out while much of the plot of this second one was planned and the new single matched the theme PRECISELY…like something about that is so unreal and implausible that…that’s the shit that moves me.

So here’s an image dump of illustrations since I started Superior.

Don’t worry, this part of their story is only TWO OUTTA THREE hehe

Maybe, probably. We’ll see haha.

Micah’s sad and angry in this one, ft. Sleepwalking lyrics
Andrew on a snowmobile is an image Micah and I mutually find very sexy. But we know how I feel about drawing machines. Anyway, more Sleepwalking lyrics.
This one I did at the tail end of Lilydale and I 100% imagine this is engagement photos for them.
This was initially supposed to be an Inktober prompt but it did not remain on theme, but I loooove the vivid colors and the sketchtasticness
Ingrid goes full mom mode in Superior
Here’s an amusing and super awkward now v then for Micah and Ingrid but now she’s taller than him as a faerie
HHHH I’m choking
Another tail end of Lilydale one, SO KAWAII KYAAAA
Inktober prompt “empty” from Micah’s drunken night out

MicahxAndrew, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters, The Heartwood Trilogy, 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.

Art!, MicahxAndrew, Original Characters, The Heartwood Trilogy, Writing Journey, Writing!

IT’S FINISHED! (lilydale)

I can’t believe it! Three weeks later, I’m done with Lilydale. It rounded out around 45,000 words.

I think it’s my favorite conjunction of characters forming new relationships. I literally didn’t bother coming up with any new characters except for Sam and Micah’s evil faerie mom. Micah and Ingrid are half-siblings now. Ingrid and Andrew both slept with Erik, but he’s dead for the whole story haha. Lucienne met Ingrid in Lilydale and kind of likes her? But it’s very understated. She’s a badass archer. Also Micah/Julian’s cat Fadil is a fun throwback to that being Julian’s original name, back when he was Andrew/Bakura’s adopted kid he found in Egypt. bahahaa

Micah and Andrew basically don’t have any relationship problems for most of the story cuz I’d say the main theme ends up being Micah’s identity crisis. Andrew isn’t asked to change a whole lot mostly because he started with a very mild animosity with faeries but as soon as Ingrid and Andrew realized Erik fucked them both up, the get past it.

So I have a lot of WIPs for Lilydale art and rather than waiting to post about this being done I was just going to post them all now.

I probably also have to make a page in My Mental Breakdown pretty soon too.

I worked super hard on the two portraits below to make into a sticker. This kissing one took like 5 minutes and it’s one of my favorite illustrations in a long time.
Micah looks a bit awkward and wide and I have a different idea for his tattoo but I love his colors.
I’m still not really sure what I don’t like about this one. I think Micah’s hand and bouquet are the best part.
Bonding over mental health crises before they bone 😀 Ryan will never forget when I kept struggling with Micah’s closest arm and said it looked like a loaf of bread.
The fabulous four, all looking quite sexy if I say so myself
This was supposed to be super dynamic and whatnot but I kept not quite nailing the body positioning I wanted, but his face is so beautifully shaded it’s not a total waste. I’ve been trying to work on an epic cover? or something but remain stuck on wanting it to kind of look like that but not super.
Lucy is a smug, sexual, reckless sonofabitch and it’s a lot of fun. Also ft my trans boy Sam who is based on a 12yo client I have and I told the client lol
Had to go on Pinterest for men’s fashion since Micah likes dressing nice
Andrew gets very nervous out in the wild
I painted the Smith Ave bridge to try to use as a background in one of the portraits up there but it all got covered up ha. My son was super excited about this though as he calls it “the Ronan Bridge.”

So one of my other 12yos saw the kissing picture as my phone background and asked if I was going to post my story anywhere. Honestly it got me thinking, once I finish some revisions, just to put it out in the world myself and see what comes back.

I don’t know.

We’ll see.

Regardless, I’m really happy with how this story worked out. I think it does faeries justice, and it honors everyone’s histories as characters. Except Erik, who was pretty much a dog.