decided to make a post talking about The Process of making my piece for the 2025-26 Unsounded fanart contest, lol
(inspired by @diobreeze and their lovely post about their own work- check it out!)
so, antithetical to the purpose of this post, but... i did not actually take any pics of my lineart or sketching when doing this BUT
i have a LOT to say about the inspiration/artistic intent so buckle up i guess, lmao
first, this is the image actually submitted to the contest proper;
it's a small version of the original, eventually cropped image (the size limit for submission files was something like 2mb, i believe?)
and here's the larger version, still in my sketchbook as we speak!
there's a laptop underneath, if you wanted a better idea of scale (since i don't feel like measuring anything rn)
it's probably pretty easy to tell (unfortunately) but i used alcohol markers to color this!
less easily noticeable is that alllllll the black parts? ballpoint pen. yes, even the giant void sections, lmao. my hand was not pleased with me, but weirdly i only needed to sacrifice the ink of one (1) pen, so hooray!
the entire lineart (the ballpoint pen) took *exactly* 5 hours and 6-and-a-half minutes; i know this because i was using the time to listen to a video essay on Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, and i finished the lineart with only a minute or so left in the vid
while it didn't come across as obviously as i'd have liked, the piece is meant to evoke a "christian stained glass window" type of aesthetic- specifically of diptychs like these-
-with the general intent being to evoke a "Gefender Church/Temple Window" type of thing? yeah. i dunno if i really succeeded, as the final piece is definitely more "modern" in presentation, and the actual style itself is, (ironically, given my mediocre skills lol) probably too close to in-comic "realism" to be believable as form of religious iconography
all the same, i'm very happy with how it turned out in the end! even if my initial idea was lost in the alcohol marker-soaked sauce, as it were, aha...
probably the thing i'm MOST proud of or satisfied with or whatever is the title;
Crowned by Hell / Collared to Heaven
the meaning of which is hopefully decently clear to those familiar with the lore of Unsounded, and the characters i've depicted...? but also just sounds raw enough to titillate those of you somehow uninitiated
giving Khette bisexual lighting in her eel "crown" was wholly unintentional by-the-by, lmao; it's just that i needed darker, yet still vibrant colors to contrast Jacaranda's squish "collar"
something else i'm hoping got across well enough, but that i want to babble about anyway- i specifically made Khette have the more animalistic features, like a slitted pupil and a predatory snarling curl to her bottom lip, while having Jacaranda shown with a round pupil and a placid expression
finally, the decision to give Khette a softi flower was mostly made out of a lack of alternative ideas for paralleling Jac's (off-model) jacaranda sprig... i love the color contrast i got out of it in the end, but since Jac and *not* Khette is the one actually depicted wearing both types of flowers in the actual comic, i will be forever mildly irritated with my poor lore consistency
that's about all i have to say, i suppose! VOTE FOR ME maybe pls?