Work Text:
A/N: ⚠️ This art post features nightmare / unreality themes. It also includes a non-explicit nsfw drawing of a sexual nature.
A/N: I also discusses the story in relation to the art, which could be considered SPOILERS. If you wish to read the story first you can find it here.
Below you can find the pictures I drew and a look behind the scenes at my art process. I hope you enjoy. 😊
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Story Details
Title: Red Motel Reprised
Author: VagueSurprise
Artist: MidnightSilver
Pairings:Sam/Ruby
Rating: Mature
Additional tags: Manipulation, POV Sam Winchester, Demon Blood, Dreams and Nightmares, see fic for full tag list
Word Count: ~5k
Summary: "Jess was on the ceiling, a gash opening in her stomach, and she was going to die, Sam knew she was going to die, and the fire was going to come and everything was going to be over and he was never going to have a house in the suburbs and a kid who didn’t know how to shoot a gun and a job that he only sometimes hated, and most importantly Jess was going to be gone, and he was never going to meet anyone like her ever again, and Sam could feel that frantic part of his mind again, could feel it howling in desperation like an animal as he pulled something up from somewhere deep inside, buried and dormant, wrenched it up violently and pushed with a strength he didn’t know he’d ever possessed before.
It felt like using a new limb. It felt like setting his veins on fire. It felt like vomiting the bloody organ of his heart out from between clenched teeth.
And suddenly it was over."
A series of nightmares. Sam's demon blood summer.
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My Artwork
Cover:
Original prompt:
Additional art:
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Behind the scenes and my art process
My prompt for this reverse bang was inspired by the painting ‘The Nightmare’ by Henry Fuseli painted in 1781 (shown here):
In adapting this piece to an Spn theme I thought about how the nightmare in the image sits on the subjects chest, trapping them and weighing them down, preventing them from escaping. The painting also plays with the contrasts of ugliness vs beauty, and what is seen on the outside compared to what is happening inside. As well as this, the sleeping figure is indecently posed. It’s not the prim, covered sleep of a modest, goodly person. The pose is wanton, almost salacious, maybe implying a moral judgement on the victim. (For the times). And these thoughts gave me all sorts of ideas about Sam and his demon blood addiction. So I imagined Sam in the pose of the sleeper with the demon Ruby sat on his chest, a spilled vile of blood on the nightstand to show cause.
Below I have included step by step screenshots of how I painted this art prompt.
I started with a concept sketch guided by the reference painting. I kept Sam scandalously draped and in the wanton pose, but I changed the monster to a more classical demon form - goat legs, tail and wings. The wings are spread to frame the image and reinforce Ruby’s ownership of Sam. I kept the monster face to pay homage to the original source but made it into a mask that Ruby is lifting so that we can see who the nightmare really is.
For character reference photos I googled some screenshots of Ruby and Sam. To draw Ruby I just needed a standard 3/4 profile, but for Sam I needed a raised and tipped profile and this screenshot from 10x23 was perfect 😁.
Once I was happy with my concept sketch I reduced the opacity of that layer and drew neater outlines in black ink.
The next step in my process was choosing my colour palette. I wanted dark reds for the background to carry the theme of blood and to give an ominous feel. I wanted creams and pale colours on Sam in the foreground to contrast beauty and light against the darkness. Ruby I planned to colour like dull rusty blood as a nod to the source (but this didn’t last because later my love of saturated colours got the better of me 😂)
After the base colours were completed I painted just a little shadow and texture just to give myself a feel for how the final image would look. (I find it hard to get a good feel for flat colour without adding a little depth.)
Happy with where I was heading I started painting the details. When drawing a complicated composition I put the background on one layer, objects and furniture on their own layers, and individual characters on separate layers. This way I can move, recolour or resize individual objects without affecting the things around them. But I take that a step further for semi-realistic renders (works that include a lot of tone and texture variations to produce a more realistic look). I keep the sketch and the base colours on one layer and paint the shading and fine details on another layer on top. This way if I don’t like how the process is going I still have the clean flat colour layers saved separately to start over with. Below you can see me starting to put down skin shades for Sam’s face. I usually work in 4 basic tones. A mid tone slightly darker than the base flat colour, a more saturated reddish tone to add areas of flush to the mids, a darker saturated tone for shadows, and a paler less saturated tone (just lighter than the base colour for highlights). I lay these down in blocks and patches until I am happy. Then i combine the layer with a duplicate of the base colours and use a smudge tool to blend them.
Halfway through painting Sam, I paused for the night and saved a progress picture to my phone. When I looked the next day I realised that Ruby’s goat legs were totally wrong. I had already changed them once since the concept sketch, but I hadn’t used a reference for them and now looking with fresh eyes they didn’t work at all. I needed to redraw them. To remind myself I sketched a note on my phone for a shape I thought might work better.
In the end I made Ruby’s legs a kind of hybrid between goat legs and human legs and lowered one knee. That seemed to work much better. Since I was on a roll then, I continued painting Ruby’s details and got totally carried away with a paintbrush that gave a snake skin effect and provided a wonderful texture. (I also totally covered up the rust base with bright blood red 🤷🏻♂️ but what can I say?! My muse just be that way 😂)
Next I turned my attention to the bed, blankets and the bedside table. I added a bit of plaid into one blanket as a little Spn nod, and I kept the other red to carry the blood theme. There is also a little foot stool in this painting that has nothing to do with anything in my version except that it was in the source material, but I really like it because I never think to add random extra furniture into a picture just to fill out the small details 😁.
The final step in my drawing process was to paint the lighting and shadows. I used a low opacity bush on a Multiply layer to add more shadows to characters and objects and also to the flow of light around the room. Next I use a combination of Light Pens and soft brushes on Add and Hard Light layers to paint highlights and light glows. And this is the final result:
Drawn in Procreate with an iPad and Apple Pencil: total drawing time 20hrs
Close ups:
I particularly like the spark of hell fire in Ruby’s demon black eyes combined with her pleased expression, as well as the incriminating little drop of blood on her finger.
I was very happy with Sam’s deceptively peaceful expression and the careless stain of blood down his arm, it marks his wanton pose as a result of intoxication.
And the small, easily overlooked vial of blood, carelessly left to spill now that the addict is in the throes of its effect.
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My prompt was chosen by VagueSurprise 😄 and when I read the story I loved the beautiful imagery in the writing. I could see the scenes playing out like a movie in my mind’s eye and I was torn because I wanted to draw so much! In the end we had a chat and I said I could pick one or 2 scenes to draw in full colour detail or I could draw a few more in a reduced colour palette and focus on the character’s emotional reactions within the story.
We decided to go with option 2 😁 and I formulated a plan to draw a quick study of one character from each nightmare, concentrating on the negative emotions that Sam is envisioning from his loved ones.
For the first nightmare I choose Jess.
I don’t draw Jess very often so that always makes capturing a likeness harder. Also I needed to imagine her face showing emotions for which I didn’t have a reference. The story calls for narrowed eyes, terror barely covered by anger - and on top of that I tried to add a dash of disgust! (Poor Sam! 😭🫂)
(Drawing time approx 2hrs)
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For nightmare 2, I choose Dean
For reference I used a promo photo with a slightly stern blue steel expression (😁). In this second nightmare Dean stares in shock for long moments before he turns and runs, but I took a little artistic license and added in a bit of his expression from the first nightmare where Dean is cold and derisive, looking at Sam as if he is something Dean would hunt. (Did I already say: Poor Sam!? 😭🫂)
I reused the same background for all of the nightmares so the drawing time for the rest of the individual portraits is about 90mins each.
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I drew Mary for nightmare 3
In the dream this is Mary with 6 month-old Sammy and for references I used a combination of Young!Mary and Pilot!Mary. This was a hard expression for me to draw! The story says: ‘Her face was wrong, all pinched and ugly, like when she ate bad food or when Daddy slammed the door.’ And she is just about to do the unthinkable!
In my painting I tried to capture absolute horror and disgust - and I think this is one of the ugliest drawings I’ve ever drawn 😁. I can’t tell if it’s an ugly render or if there is just no way for that expression not to look ugly 🤷🏻♂️😊. (Poor Sam!)
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For the next picture I considered drawing Sam and Ruby making out in Baby, but it didn’t fit with my theme of nightmare images. Plus I hadn’t shown any emotional reactions for Sam yet. But how could I do that within my theme? I was drawn to the line in this section where Sam breaks down and tells Ruby about his nightmares, saying: ‘I’m a monster…. I always was.’
This reminded me that in his first dream with Jess, Sam had lifted his hands to find horns and had known that his eyes were yellow. To me this mental image tied in brilliantly with the hand touching the mask in the original prompt. And Sam believing that he was the monster highlighted the bait and switch that Ruby is playing with him. So I did a bait and switch of my own and inserted Sam as the monster from the prompt instead of Ruby. 😁
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The last several dreams in the story happen in quick succession and I would never have been able to draw them all, so I choose the boy king of hell nightmare. (In my mind it’s Ruby’s ultimate end goal.)
For the high lonely throne I took visual inspiration from the Hell throne in the Lucifer TV show and redrew it in my nightmare colour scheme with Boy King Sam as the ruler. I also liked this seated pose of Sam from 8x21 because it screams ‘searching and questioning’ to me, and in the nightmare Sam feels so alone and lost.
As well as hinting at the watching eyes mentioned in the story, I used a little artistic licence to draw Sam in the white suit with blood stained hems to his trousers and more blood dripping down his bare feet. (Something, something, the blood soaked path that led him there 😁)
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For the final picture I had originally planned to paint the motel scene in full colour and detail because it depicted real life, not a nightmare. I envisioned it as the modern version of the prompt. However when I came to start drawing I decided to keep the nightmare colour scheme because Sam might not be sleeping here but the nightmare isn’t over!
For references I found a stock photo of an intimate couple and some side profile screenshots of Sam and Ruby.
I can share a draft version of this last drawing because I was getting a migraine and didn’t get past the planning stages before I had to stop. For the back drop I re-used Sam lifting the mask and kept the mask hovering in the background to show that the nightmare is still present, even if the setting is the real world and the light from the lamp is trying in vain to chase away the dark shadows….
And this is the final result:
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The last thing I did for this project was make a cover and some page break icons.
I had thought the original prompt would make a good cover but once I had completed the final picture I now thought the motel setting better suited the title. But at the same time I still thought the prompt nicely highlighted the nightmare themes of the story. So I decided to use both pictures! 😁 I set the original prompt art over the motel scene like a nightmare hovering over reality:
… but this made an unusually tall banner so I also made a square cover option using just the motel version:
… then I got worried that the motel scene was too risqué to use on tumblr as a cover. (It should be okay because no intimate parts are on display) … but just incase I made a safer version using the original prompt:
… although I say ‘safer’ but there is still the scandalous drape of Sam’s night gown! But 🤷🏻♂️😁 it’s art!
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And Finally (fr): Pagebreaks.
I cut out the flask of blood from the original prompt and drew some drips, squiggles and circles to create a few different style options. To make icons I set the background to transparent and save the files as a png. To create a bit more depth I add shadows by duplicating the image, decreasing the brightness of the bottom most copy until it is black and then applying a Gaussian blur to make it a little fuzzy. I then move the shadow until it is a little offset from the main image. Nice and easy 👍😄. These took about 15 mins each to make. The hard part is thinking of different design styles to add some variation. 😊
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And that’s all folks 😄
I want to say thank you again to VagueSurprise for choosing my prompt to write for. I had a wonderful time working with you 🤗💛 and thank you for bearing with me and my migraines.
And to you dear reader, I hope you have enjoyed this art set and the peek behind the scenes. Don’t forget that if you haven’t read the story and want to give it a go you can find it here on AO3.
Feel free to leave kudos or comments if you enjoyed the art or the story. I love chatting to friends new and old. 😄
Also if you want more angel and demon goodies you can check out the Bang collection here. 👍🏻
So my friends, you be sure to stay awesome and I’ll catch you again soon 👋🏻😄