Things I write and draw

Alive - commission for perverse_idyll , illustration to her story, The White Road. Idyll was kind enough to let me release the hi-resolution graphics to public and to the fandom.


"Voldemort – gone. But you... You're alive."

"Yeah, sorry about that. Can't have everything."

"I didn't - ... I didn't fail you, then."

"No. No, sir. You didn't fail us."

Snape's head wobbles; it might be a nod. Then, as if he can no longer support the weight of being alive, he lowers his face and slumps like a tired child, his forehead sinking to Harry's chest. Harry blinks repeatedly and bites his lip, then slowly unclasps Snape's arm. Lily takes a deep, shaky breath and lets it out silently when Harry raises his hand and places it with great care atop Snape's black, bloodstained head. - The White Road by Perverse-Idyll


(click on the graphic for the high-resolution image or view as 800x600)


( More... )


Alive on DeviantArt


Alive by Acid is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Continued from here.

Looks like red is winning in the poll (37 with runner-up 11 green), so red it is.



( From left to right... )

	Just after midnight... 16x20 canvas, a mess of drawing supplies on the floor, music playlist selected for the next two hours, a new painting begins to emerge. Let's see how long I can keep this up tonight before I fall asleep.
	1 AM... Smudged brown and gray pastels define light and shade. Light source - upper left. I already see some mistakes. Might have to redraw Harry's jaw. Lower corners need more detail. Still deciding between acrylics or oils. Better blending vs. drying time. Hmm.
	2-something AM... Markers to define the shadows further. Which aren't the best way to do it, but it'll force me into keeping contrast when I paint over them. Harry's side of the face looks strange -- I'll have to reference #2 or 1 - they looked better - when I'm actually painting. Gah, I know better than to overdo the shadows on the lips. Next - deciding on color scheme. I better wait till morning (and natural light) for that. There's going to be a lot of Gryffindor colors, since Harry's wearing the Quidditch uniform. It's going to be oils... unless I find a way to simulate lighting effects with oil pastels over acrylics, which might be something to try on a separate piece of paper. Now I'm going to stop myself from trying to fix Harry's smile back to normal and get some sleep.
	3 AM... Ha! Got it. A knife I use to sharpen pencils worked well to scratch some highlights into the darker areas. Yes, it's all going to be covered up later, but I'm stubborn. The imp needed his grin back. Whew, OK, sleep time. :)

10:48AM. I spent an hour with Photoshop figuring out color schemes and I'm in desperate need of coffee.

Possibly 1 and 2, with more sunshine added. I'll decide as I'm getting breakfast and getting the paint ready.


Continued here...

( WIP photos )



He quietly put down his book on the edge of the bed, and took up a pale but warm wrist that sat atop the sheet. The pulse was a bit faint, but steady enough.
Illustration to dracofiend's The Cure.

(requested by the_con_cept and adbaculum for dracofiend)

I'm back to the virtual land of the living, for now at least.


(Since this art was requested by the snarry_reader mods specifically for the comm, please do not reuse the image for layouts or icons elsewhere.)

A large resolution version of the new layout at the snarry_reader. There is a (very detailed, even for me) art tutorial based on this picture posted there as well, and it's probably the most detail about my drawing process that anyone is going to get out of me for a long, long time, cause there's usually too much stuff to talk about and I get impatient with long explanations. OC event files of the outline and coloring progress are available by request (which means, give me a yell and get ready for a 20mb email sent your way one of these days (weeks?) when I get a chance to use something faster than dial-up.)

Aubrem also interviewed sinick and I about our collaborative writing and patiently listened (or, I guess it would be, read) when we had a lot to say. And since Sinick agreed to answer follow-up questions, I do hope someone jumps at the chance and asks a few embarassing ones about the certain scenes in Commonplace Magic that she oh-so-smoothly managed to avoid during the interview. ;)

I suspect there'll be a t0il_n_tr0uble update tomorrow... and a lot of catching up on art projects, emails I ought to have replied to weeks ago (ack!), and other items on to-do list over weekend, and then maybe -- only maybe -- writing.

valis2 requested a commission a couple of days ago. She wanted an illustration of Sarah Tanner and Severus Snape from her fan fiction The Last Sanguimagus. I haven't read the story yet, but if the amount of feedback is anything to go by, it's a rather popular WIP already. I'm pretty sure that if the fan fiction of this quality was written in a genre with a larger following than Snape/OFC, it'd get even more reviews than that.

( Progress steps and closeups )


Commission for valis2. Illustration for The Last Sanguimagus.

For those who have been wondering what I've been up to since I was silent for a few days, here's a step-by-step explanation of my mixed media techniques. Markers/ink/color pencils/oil pastels.



UPDATED with concept sketches.

( WIP stages )

I’ve been thinking lately and came to the conclusion that the same basic concepts that help you write, also help you draw. I don’t claim to be an expert in one or the other, but this is what I know.
( Twelve steps of making something out of nothing )