I don’t think I’ve ever talked about my two WIP webnovels on this blog before. But I should’ve since I’ve been working on them for years, especially given that they’ll both be published on their own Tumblr blogs. Plus, I’ve been wanting to revive this blog for a while, and no better time than the death of Twitter to do it, so I’m hoping to start journaling their development here.
The first is called Yume no Hime, and it’s about an autistic weeb who creates a magical girl alter-ego at 10, has a series of highly symbolic and too-lucid nightmares starring her at 18, and writes a book about what it all meant and how it , during the pandemic at 28, which she posts at 30.
Spoiling a little, it's not what it seems from the painting and description, and goes way darker than it initially looks, covering themes of isolation, NT bullying, depression, and self-hate as it goes on. It also ended up being way more personal than I expected, both based on people I knew—and how I found out I'm on the spectrum myself. But that’s for another post.
I’ll be illustrating both novels, and this one much more than the other. Here are two concepts for our MC:
#1, from yesterday, one is a painting of our protagonist Laurie at 30. It’s about my tenth piece for this series so far, and the best, although I’ll get around to posting the others.
#2, from May, is a rougher drawing of her at 18. (I’ve come a ways with the rendering since then.)
Both Clip Studio Paint over pencil drawings, although the first has a traced and recolored background from Midjourney. WIPs to come.
