"The Answer Lies With You" art masterpost

[blindswandive]

This is the second story I did art for as part of the Ace SPN Mini Bang. I LOVED doing the art for this sweet story, "The Answer Lies With You" by LadyShadowphyre.  It's thoughtful and healthful Sastiel AU, and full of flora.  I had the opportunity to make gorgeous flowers and tattoos of flowers and alt bois and I have been dying to share everywhere, so please see below for full arts!  It's also my first time drawing Cass, so I feel like a magical new door has been opened for me.


So this first one is sort of a bonus piece - a little flashback in the story to Cass in college.  I traced over a photo of Misha for basic features and then detailed and colored.  To be honest, the image of young Cass with black eyeliner and spiked black hair was a big draw toward choosing this fic to make art for - and I think from the results it is clear why.



HOT BOI OKAY

(If it's not glaringly obvious, when I was looking up references for spiked hair and black eyeliner, I was definitely ruminating on Billie Joe Armstrong.)

The author wanted a more dreamlike quality to memories from college, which I thought was a fantastic idea.  For the background, I tried to give a smoky feel (both for the dreaminess and for the implied Cass-as-stoner-goth-boy).  I'm pretty pleased with this, even though it feels more.. hrm... portrait-y to me and not very dynamic, but.. well, it's a portrait, what can you do?  I felt like he came out quite pretty, and I loved some details (like the threads loose where he's cut his sleeves short). Unusually, I didn't bug my wonderful artist friends for concrit on this, so even though it's up and done, if y'all have any I'm definitely open to it.

Next we have the very end of the fic, where I got to picture the other things that really drew me to the fic - the flowers and a tattooed and scarred Sam.



Y'ALL.  LOOK AT THOSE FLOWERS AND TATTOOS. (Click for full sized. Please, for my ego.)

That bouquet feels like a triumph.  Almost every bit was done freehand, just two or three total copy/duplicates, and it was fussy AF but feels so worth it.  I honestly want to print out the black and white outlined design for people for coloring (yes, I I absolutely saved my file with a nice high res close-up on the black and white).  Bless digital and the ability to erase and undo, people, bless it.

As for Sam and Cass, I feel like I didn't capture likenesses as well here - I was freehanding their profiles so the accuracy wasn't as great - but I'm in love with the details.  My author was very open to me designing tattoo elements so I had a very free hand to choose the flora, but in honor of the fic's care with botanical symbolism and Sam's appreciation for pollinators in the story, I put a lot of care into the choices.  I'm torn on whether to go through the laundry list or leave it to be a puzzle for people who both like flowers and puzzles. ;D Anyway, if you're curious about any of it, drop me a comment and I'll happily geek out with you botanically.  If you recognize flowers/leaves and tell me so, I will very likely be hella delighted.

There were endless layers involved in the digital - program was Sketchbook Pro, some on my work laptop, some on my brand newtomebutactuallyrefurbishedbecauseawsesome iPad.  In my experience, Sketchbook is WAY stabler and works way more reliably on Mac, though there seems to be less control over importing and exporting on the iPad than on the work Surface.  I'll take the minor drawback for the simple reason that the iPad version knows the difference between "save" and "save as," and does not randomly, frequently, several times a session, decide to crash on me. /tech digression

Anyway.  The layering meant I could adjust the transparency on the tattoos down to let more of the underlying skin show.  Which meant I could also mottle Sam's skin to suggest some of the damage of scars there (I went for a mix of tones since burns can be very white, very pink, more raised, more mottled, etc).



Love feedback and concrit, and had a lovely time working with this author.  Go enjoy the story!