Art post: Every Step I Took In Faith (Sassy minibang)
Title: Every Step I Took in Faith
Author: verucasalt123
Artist: cassiopeia7
Pairing: Sam/Castiel
Rating: PG-13 / R (art only)
Warnings: BDSM, blood-drinking, possible dub-con.
Summary: AU for S4, with Castiel substituted for Ruby as Sam's blood-pusher and demon-killing trainer. The offer is made: Castiel's blood and instruction in exchange for Sam's submission. Willing to do anything it takes to get his revenge on Lilith and stop Lucifer's rise, Sam accepts.
Artist notes: Thanks go to my lovely, sweet, and patient author, verucasalt123, my badass beta quickreaver, and the ever-present devil on my shoulder my cheerleader, vicious_sock.
"Every Step I Took in Faith" is different from every other fic I've ever illustrated, and I wasn't sure if I could do the darkness of this story justice. The image of a submissive Sam wearing a collar really captured my imagination, so I went with that . . . and the result was somehow a kinder, gentler kink. Thanks again, verucasalt123 -- I didn't think I could do this, but your fic pulled it out of me. :)
As usual, art contains story spoilers. Please read verucasalt123's fic first. :)
On with the show!
“You will need to drink directly from the cut. It will very likely be unpleasant, at first, but you will not stop until you have been told to do so. Nod if you understand.”
Sam nodded as he watched Castiel open a four-inch gash across the inside of his arm, then place the injury directly in front of his mouth.
And all right, this was the point. Everything he’d done, the things he imagined he would do in the future, they were all for this. The angel blood was going to give him back his powers, give him the strength to kill Lilith.
So he did as he was told . . .
By the time Castiel decided they were finished for the night, Sam’s right palm was a bloody mess but six demons had been exorcised without a single syllable of Latin having been uttered.
[Photo refs, boring hows n' whys, et cetera. (click to open)]
I remain rather fond of the initial image this story planted in my head -- Sam wearing the collar was a very strong visual.
Demon smoke, how does it work? Seemed simple enough as an image, but little did I know.
How to make smoke look like "smoke" without using cartoon-y lines? Because I tend to try the most ridiculous things first, I tried watercolor pencil and a damp cotton ball. YWater and marker paper? Not a good combination. Then I tried the brush-tip markers I used to do King Hamlet's ghost in Elsinore, and those worked a LOT better, except having used them only that one time, I obviously hadn't quite gotten the hang of "painting" with a marker. (Or of drawing smoke, for that matter.) ;)
But brush markers plus a bit of digital blurring? Voila, halfway-decent demon smoke, yay.
Full-on digital painting is not for me, but digital tweaking of the original drawing definitely has its advantages. :D
Also, either Castiel opened his vein in a vacuum . . . angel blood is rather lacking in O2 . . . or your faithful artist used too much "mahogany red" and not enough "crimson." XD (Apologies to my Mom, dear_tiger, and anyone else in the field who knows what properly oxygenated blood should look like.) XD
Photo references:
