~Stop buzzing all over me like a demented bee
Ugh my anxiety has been out of control lately it feels like. Everything scares me or sends me into weird spirals where I can't stop picturing terrible things happening or worst case scenarios. Sometimes my brain is just bringing up awful things from my past and playing them over and over again for no reason! Every now and then for a few days I start getting afraid I'll die in my sleep for whatever reason and that's coming up again lately, which is no good. :/ I think part of what it set it off is that like a week ago I was sitting in my chair not doing anything and I abruptly got hit with a short dizzy spell, maybe like five seconds, that felt like I was going to pass out. It passed but it was pretty alarming. What was weird is that I really wasn't moving or anything, I'm used to that kind of light-headedness when standing up too fast, but I was just sitting and listening to music. I looked up potential causes and they were all like CANCER STROKE BRAIN ANEURYSM YOU'RE GOING TO DIE which wasn't helpful at all either. Every tiny headache feels like a threat! I've got a little headache right now and I keep thinking MY BRAIN IS BLEEDING I'M GOING TO DIE and it's tiring to say the least. Every little thing right now feels like some kind of warning that my body is about to shut down abruptly and poof, that'll be it! Even writing this I wonder if I'll die in my sleep and it'll seem like tragic foreshadowing. I've been trying to label them as anxious thoughts when they come to me (like, picturing myself getting stabbed in the night - fearful thought) which helps a little, I think.
Restless sleep and weird dreams don't help either. Bleh. It feels hard to think clearly lately (oh no another sign my brain is failing!!) and it feels like it takes harder for certain concepts to sink in. Mostly ghost code talk, haha. I need to work on the ghost, that reminds me... lately it feels like everything I'm drawing looks weird, and I want to write but it also feels difficult. EVERYTHING IS DIFFICULT RIGHT NOW. ugh.
I did draw something kind of neat lately, I really like how it came out.
I didn't really intend for this to get as involved as it did, haha. I just wanted to draw them with their chains attached! Then it turned into a whole THING
Anyway, sort of solidifying these designs, dropped the stigmata and the general thread sort of hovering around Scriabin for simplicity's sake. Might bring it back as some kind of emotional response though.
I ended up making a Clip Studio brush for the string of Scriabin's wings. It took a while but it was totally worth it! It should make any kind of string picture a lot easier now, or at least a lot faster. There's really few things as hypnotic for me as drawing a bunch of tangles of string. Although stupidly enough, even though I made the brush so it could have string of any color, I did all these strings with white because I just totally forgot, so I had to do some finagling to change it to red. I HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME BUT MYSELF FOR THAT artist's trials when you mess up after getting a bunch done.
Doing his wings while he's in flight really emphasizes just how useless they are, haha. It's symbolic that they're useless! But in practice it does look kind of odd. It does bring to mind the image of Edgar just hauling him up there and having to carry him around which is pretty funny. It's not like the rest of their designs make logical or practical sense, so Scriabin can fly if he wants to with his pointless yarn wings. BUT STILL
It also raises the question of how their wings attach really. Or more specifically how they take their shirts/coat off. Here the yarn is stitched through Scriabin's coat! HOW DOES HE TAKE IT OFF I mean I guess he wouldn't, there'd be no reason for it but what if they want to take them off for sex some reason! Maybe they just phase through the wings?? Practical concerns really shouldn't be a thing for this and yet I can't stop myself from thinking about them. Likewise I keep thinking about whether or not Edgar's eyes dry out while he's flying or if the wind bothers them. I'd have to assume they don't BUT REALISTICALLY WOULDN'T THEY???
Anyway what was I talking about RIGHT I also used a bunch of cloud brushes for the background which was fun, haha. I wasn't sure what time of day to set it originally, dawn, evening, twilight, mid-day, I couldn't decide! I tried a bunch of color tests to try and get a certain mood, but in the end a kind of rainy, cloudy day seemed appropriate. I thought about adding lightning but that would've been kind of distracting I think, haha. Edgar already draws the eye! The flames on the rings were also a Clip Studio brush which is really neat, it really mimics the look of fire really well. Potential applications abound!
I also used a brush for the chains themselves, since I thought I might as well, that kind of ribbon pattern is made for a brush. Getting the line weight right is tricky though... as I type this I JUST remembered Clip Studio even has a brush for adjusting line weight on things... oops... well, I can keep that in mind for the future.
One fun detail is that their legs are mirrored, they're both bent up in the same way, haha. The same leg, even! I love it making them mirror each other. It's harder to see Scriabin's though with his wings in the way. The lighting/shading for Edgar was also fun with accounting for the flames themselves. They reflect off his glasses nicely! I also did a thing I don't usually do with a combination of cel-shading and softer shading in places. Got a neat effect on his wings that way. Fluffiest wings.
The length of their chains is a bit inconsistent, haha. In other little comics I've done with them (yes there are little comics, they haven't been posted yet) the chains are shorter but mostly just to fit them in the same panel. I picture them like two and a half/three feet long, so when they're attached they can get six feet apart at most. Their wings take up a lot of space too! So they're still pretty close in the end.
As mentioned there are some more little comics I'll probably post later. This whole idea has spiraled into an actual story, surprising no one I'm sure. It just kept chewing on me as I poked at different ideas in my sketchbook and before I knew it I'd managed to tie them together into something consistent. I started a fic about it but it's going to be long I think so that'll be a while in coming, if I even ever finish it, haha. I need to do more editing on the next main chapter though, really... so many things to do, ugh.
I also posted this at dreamwidth. Comment here or there, don't matter to me!
Restless sleep and weird dreams don't help either. Bleh. It feels hard to think clearly lately (oh no another sign my brain is failing!!) and it feels like it takes harder for certain concepts to sink in. Mostly ghost code talk, haha. I need to work on the ghost, that reminds me... lately it feels like everything I'm drawing looks weird, and I want to write but it also feels difficult. EVERYTHING IS DIFFICULT RIGHT NOW. ugh.
I did draw something kind of neat lately, I really like how it came out.
I didn't really intend for this to get as involved as it did, haha. I just wanted to draw them with their chains attached! Then it turned into a whole THING
Anyway, sort of solidifying these designs, dropped the stigmata and the general thread sort of hovering around Scriabin for simplicity's sake. Might bring it back as some kind of emotional response though.
I ended up making a Clip Studio brush for the string of Scriabin's wings. It took a while but it was totally worth it! It should make any kind of string picture a lot easier now, or at least a lot faster. There's really few things as hypnotic for me as drawing a bunch of tangles of string. Although stupidly enough, even though I made the brush so it could have string of any color, I did all these strings with white because I just totally forgot, so I had to do some finagling to change it to red. I HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME BUT MYSELF FOR THAT artist's trials when you mess up after getting a bunch done.
Doing his wings while he's in flight really emphasizes just how useless they are, haha. It's symbolic that they're useless! But in practice it does look kind of odd. It does bring to mind the image of Edgar just hauling him up there and having to carry him around which is pretty funny. It's not like the rest of their designs make logical or practical sense, so Scriabin can fly if he wants to with his pointless yarn wings. BUT STILL
It also raises the question of how their wings attach really. Or more specifically how they take their shirts/coat off. Here the yarn is stitched through Scriabin's coat! HOW DOES HE TAKE IT OFF I mean I guess he wouldn't, there'd be no reason for it but what if they want to take them off for sex some reason! Maybe they just phase through the wings?? Practical concerns really shouldn't be a thing for this and yet I can't stop myself from thinking about them. Likewise I keep thinking about whether or not Edgar's eyes dry out while he's flying or if the wind bothers them. I'd have to assume they don't BUT REALISTICALLY WOULDN'T THEY???
Anyway what was I talking about RIGHT I also used a bunch of cloud brushes for the background which was fun, haha. I wasn't sure what time of day to set it originally, dawn, evening, twilight, mid-day, I couldn't decide! I tried a bunch of color tests to try and get a certain mood, but in the end a kind of rainy, cloudy day seemed appropriate. I thought about adding lightning but that would've been kind of distracting I think, haha. Edgar already draws the eye! The flames on the rings were also a Clip Studio brush which is really neat, it really mimics the look of fire really well. Potential applications abound!
I also used a brush for the chains themselves, since I thought I might as well, that kind of ribbon pattern is made for a brush. Getting the line weight right is tricky though... as I type this I JUST remembered Clip Studio even has a brush for adjusting line weight on things... oops... well, I can keep that in mind for the future.
One fun detail is that their legs are mirrored, they're both bent up in the same way, haha. The same leg, even! I love it making them mirror each other. It's harder to see Scriabin's though with his wings in the way. The lighting/shading for Edgar was also fun with accounting for the flames themselves. They reflect off his glasses nicely! I also did a thing I don't usually do with a combination of cel-shading and softer shading in places. Got a neat effect on his wings that way. Fluffiest wings.
The length of their chains is a bit inconsistent, haha. In other little comics I've done with them (yes there are little comics, they haven't been posted yet) the chains are shorter but mostly just to fit them in the same panel. I picture them like two and a half/three feet long, so when they're attached they can get six feet apart at most. Their wings take up a lot of space too! So they're still pretty close in the end.
As mentioned there are some more little comics I'll probably post later. This whole idea has spiraled into an actual story, surprising no one I'm sure. It just kept chewing on me as I poked at different ideas in my sketchbook and before I knew it I'd managed to tie them together into something consistent. I started a fic about it but it's going to be long I think so that'll be a while in coming, if I even ever finish it, haha. I need to do more editing on the next main chapter though, really... so many things to do, ugh.
I also posted this at dreamwidth. Comment here or there, don't matter to me!