ArtPaperScissor: No One Mourns The Wicked [Art]
Title: No One Mourns The Wicked
Artist: soserendipity
Beta: necrora
Rating: PG
Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, wicked things
Artist's Notes: This was created for round 3 of artpaperscissor for necrora's prompt "no one mourns the wicked". Further notes below.
[Click on the picture for bigger size.]
Technical Blurb & Work Process
I admit, first thing I did when I got the prompt? I googled it. And found lots of poor quality Youtube videos from the musical "Wicked". Further image search via Google resulted in the following impressions: fog, steampunk, blue/green/violet/yellow, love, magic, absurdity, creepiness, wicked stuff.
Beforehand I was scared the muses wouldn't want to work with the prompt I got and that I'd have to fight tooth and nail to get something done, however uninspired. I should have known better. Instead of going for nothing, the muses went for all of it. Of course they did.
So I started a collage of reference pictures (examples below) to customize a background and looked for pictures of Jared and Jensen that could fit the scenery. As soon as all the prep work was done, I started with the lineart for background, stairs, lamps, and the boys. I would have loved to integrate more steampunk into this but since people and clothes are nothing I can do easy-peasy, I had to settle for the typical Winchester attire.
The lineart was followed by color fills; the whole picture was done with one of the standard round brushes in GIMP, "hardness 050", and I only varied opacity and size from time to time. Layer modes are to 95% set to "normal", the rest is either "hard edges" or "multiply". I used textures to give the stairs and the fog a bit more grit, and a stone wall texture as a reference picture for the actual wall.
The wicked things are not at all how I envisioned them, but again time was of the issue. All the poses are taken from reference pictures of the musical, some of them turned into something else on their own but most of them are still close to the originals. I added a lot of horns and animal traits and tried for a bit more general creepiness to fit the brothers' usual routine.
The fabulous necrora looked at the WIP a couple of hours before posting and betaed the hell out of it. The wicked things weren't in that version yet, though, so they are as unbetaed as they look. I apologize for crooked walls and faulty anatomy and weird things that shouldn't be there, but I ran out of time and had to stop working on this at some point. The stone wall could have done with another, darker layer of shadow to give it a bit more plasticity and don't even get me started on the boys' coloring and shadows. Ack! The muses aren't pleased, let me tell you. But at the same time it's oddly satisfying to see all these imperfections and let them be.
Naturally, there were last minute technical difficulties (GIMP froze and some of the latest changes were lost) but I hope the mood of the picture still comes across. Those difficulties are also why I posted an hour late, but thankfully the amazing mashimero was very kind and patient so I didn't lose my last nerve while trying to get things to work again.
Reference Picures
[None of these were made by me. All rights remain with their creators.]
I used a lot more than ten, of course, but I hope these can give you a better idea of what inspired the picture.
Artist: soserendipity
Beta: necrora
Rating: PG
Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, wicked things
Artist's Notes: This was created for round 3 of artpaperscissor for necrora's prompt "no one mourns the wicked". Further notes below.
[Click on the picture for bigger size.]
Technical Blurb & Work Process
I admit, first thing I did when I got the prompt? I googled it. And found lots of poor quality Youtube videos from the musical "Wicked". Further image search via Google resulted in the following impressions: fog, steampunk, blue/green/violet/yellow, love, magic, absurdity, creepiness, wicked stuff.
Beforehand I was scared the muses wouldn't want to work with the prompt I got and that I'd have to fight tooth and nail to get something done, however uninspired. I should have known better. Instead of going for nothing, the muses went for all of it. Of course they did.
So I started a collage of reference pictures (examples below) to customize a background and looked for pictures of Jared and Jensen that could fit the scenery. As soon as all the prep work was done, I started with the lineart for background, stairs, lamps, and the boys. I would have loved to integrate more steampunk into this but since people and clothes are nothing I can do easy-peasy, I had to settle for the typical Winchester attire.
The lineart was followed by color fills; the whole picture was done with one of the standard round brushes in GIMP, "hardness 050", and I only varied opacity and size from time to time. Layer modes are to 95% set to "normal", the rest is either "hard edges" or "multiply". I used textures to give the stairs and the fog a bit more grit, and a stone wall texture as a reference picture for the actual wall.
The wicked things are not at all how I envisioned them, but again time was of the issue. All the poses are taken from reference pictures of the musical, some of them turned into something else on their own but most of them are still close to the originals. I added a lot of horns and animal traits and tried for a bit more general creepiness to fit the brothers' usual routine.
The fabulous necrora looked at the WIP a couple of hours before posting and betaed the hell out of it. The wicked things weren't in that version yet, though, so they are as unbetaed as they look. I apologize for crooked walls and faulty anatomy and weird things that shouldn't be there, but I ran out of time and had to stop working on this at some point. The stone wall could have done with another, darker layer of shadow to give it a bit more plasticity and don't even get me started on the boys' coloring and shadows. Ack! The muses aren't pleased, let me tell you. But at the same time it's oddly satisfying to see all these imperfections and let them be.
Naturally, there were last minute technical difficulties (GIMP froze and some of the latest changes were lost) but I hope the mood of the picture still comes across. Those difficulties are also why I posted an hour late, but thankfully the amazing mashimero was very kind and patient so I didn't lose my last nerve while trying to get things to work again.
Reference Picures
[None of these were made by me. All rights remain with their creators.]
I used a lot more than ten, of course, but I hope these can give you a better idea of what inspired the picture.