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ria_oaksDS Secret Santa reveals are up, so I can officially post my drawing here!
Title: Christmas in the Fraser-Kowalski-Vecchio Household
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski/Vecchio
Rating: PG I guess, for suggestiveness. It's rated Teen and Up Audiences on AO3.
Summary: Just a 'normal' Christmas Eve in the Fraser-Kowalski-Vecchio household...
Author Notes: At AO3. And much much more rambling under the cut below.
Click to view at AO3
I started writing a comment togloriana, my giftee, who asked for more details about how I drew it, and it kind of... got really really long. So I figured I might as well post that here as well, in case anyone else is interested. Can't say I blame anyone if they're not, though. ;) I could have said more, too... I put way too much thought and time into this drawing, lol. But I enjoyed it a lot. It stressed me out in some ways (I was kind of convinced that no one else would get it or find it funny), but I liked it at least... and everyone else seems to, so yay!
Anyway, long detailed ramblings about it
I knew basically what I wanted from the start in terms of composition and some of the details (the stockings and the incorporation of the speech/dream bubbles). Backgrounds are my enemy, so my first step was to find a reference photo for the living room. I knew I wanted the couch facing away from the tree (because I wanted Fraser to be trying to crane his neck around to see RayK, and RayV pulling him back), and I wanted a fireplace to make it seem homey and Fraser-ish. :) Though I pictured this as being their house in Chicago, rather than a cabin in the north.
Anyway, I went to Google Images and found this image, which I used as a reference for the perspective and for the couch/fireplace/etc, with some modifications (and yeah, I basically traced the lines of the walls/floor and the fireplace to get the perspective right… as I said, backgrounds are my enemy! And I’m not very good with perspective). So once I had the basic blocking of the room, I could sketch in where all the characters would go.
This is my initial sketch, with the lines of the background roughed in and the characters very very rough. Like, circles and random lines. I did all of this on computer, btw, nothing by hand this time. I used new layers for basically everything; I think I probably went through at least 100 though the final one only has about 15-20). I then drew the background in properly, including the chair/table/turtle (using references to get perspective/etc right). I sketched out each of the guys properly, cleaned up each sketch, then inked them in. Finished the rest of the sketching/inking (Dief, the stockings, etc), then coloured it using solid colours. My decision to use solid colours was in part because I wanted a sort of cartoony ‘Christmas card’ look (the justifiable reason) and in part because frankly it’s much easier and faster (the lazy reason). But I really did think it’d work better for the tone of the drawing than full shading. ^^
And um… that’s about it for the technical side of things. Well, there’s lots more if you want to get into the nitty gritty of it, but that’s the gist. I used a few reference photos for RayV’s body (which went through a couple of poses), but Fraser and RayK were mostly from my head (although I believe I used a reference to get Fraser's legs right). Dief definitely required a reference photo, and I’m still not crazy about him. The Rivs and GTOs on the stockings I actually did draw based on photos of the real cars and then shrunk down, much like the mantle pictures. If you want to see them, these are the larger drawings – GTO and Riv. (I did the same for Dief's and Turtle's stockings, but those aren't as interesting. And I flat out copied/pasted the maple leaf because those things are HARD to draw.)
Composition wise, I did go through a few variations.. like the blowjob, lol [for the rest of you - my very first mental picture of this scene had Vecchio giving Fraser a blowjob...], though that never made it to paper. But I almost completely redrew RayK just 2 days before the deadline at [Bad username or unknown identity: ”quettalinde”]’s recommendation. My original vision had him flailing and falling like this, but along the way I’d changed it so he was just sort of… overbalancing a little bit. I don’t know, it was a combination of not knowing how to draw the flailing effectively and me having a kind of freak out worrying that Vecchio would seem too uncaring if he was ignoring that his boyfriend was about to fall and possibly hurt himself. Which yeah, I don't know… I know there’s underlying love there, not to mention Vecchio’s feeling that “Kowalski’s always knocking shit over and I’ll save the genuine worry for when people are shooting at us”, but I was paranoid for some reason. ^^; Anyway,[Bad username or unknown identity: ”quettalinde”] rightly said that it was funnier when he was falling, so I changed it. The original (that I was all set to post 2 days before the deadline!) can be found here if you’re interested.
And this is getting stupidly long now. I could probably go on more, but I’ll spare you all… if anyone has OpenCanvas and is interested (and you can download a free trial, I think), I can upload the actual event file of me drawing it. It’s kind of exciting. ^^
And now, bed! Too much typing. o.o
Title: Christmas in the Fraser-Kowalski-Vecchio Household
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski/Vecchio
Rating: PG I guess, for suggestiveness. It's rated Teen and Up Audiences on AO3.
Summary: Just a 'normal' Christmas Eve in the Fraser-Kowalski-Vecchio household...
Author Notes: At AO3. And much much more rambling under the cut below.
Click to view at AO3
I started writing a comment to
gloriana, my giftee, who asked for more details about how I drew it, and it kind of... got really really long. So I figured I might as well post that here as well, in case anyone else is interested. Can't say I blame anyone if they're not, though. ;) I could have said more, too... I put way too much thought and time into this drawing, lol. But I enjoyed it a lot. It stressed me out in some ways (I was kind of convinced that no one else would get it or find it funny), but I liked it at least... and everyone else seems to, so yay!Anyway, long detailed ramblings about it
I knew basically what I wanted from the start in terms of composition and some of the details (the stockings and the incorporation of the speech/dream bubbles). Backgrounds are my enemy, so my first step was to find a reference photo for the living room. I knew I wanted the couch facing away from the tree (because I wanted Fraser to be trying to crane his neck around to see RayK, and RayV pulling him back), and I wanted a fireplace to make it seem homey and Fraser-ish. :) Though I pictured this as being their house in Chicago, rather than a cabin in the north.
Anyway, I went to Google Images and found this image, which I used as a reference for the perspective and for the couch/fireplace/etc, with some modifications (and yeah, I basically traced the lines of the walls/floor and the fireplace to get the perspective right… as I said, backgrounds are my enemy! And I’m not very good with perspective). So once I had the basic blocking of the room, I could sketch in where all the characters would go.
This is my initial sketch, with the lines of the background roughed in and the characters very very rough. Like, circles and random lines. I did all of this on computer, btw, nothing by hand this time. I used new layers for basically everything; I think I probably went through at least 100 though the final one only has about 15-20). I then drew the background in properly, including the chair/table/turtle (using references to get perspective/etc right). I sketched out each of the guys properly, cleaned up each sketch, then inked them in. Finished the rest of the sketching/inking (Dief, the stockings, etc), then coloured it using solid colours. My decision to use solid colours was in part because I wanted a sort of cartoony ‘Christmas card’ look (the justifiable reason) and in part because frankly it’s much easier and faster (the lazy reason). But I really did think it’d work better for the tone of the drawing than full shading. ^^
And um… that’s about it for the technical side of things. Well, there’s lots more if you want to get into the nitty gritty of it, but that’s the gist. I used a few reference photos for RayV’s body (which went through a couple of poses), but Fraser and RayK were mostly from my head (although I believe I used a reference to get Fraser's legs right). Dief definitely required a reference photo, and I’m still not crazy about him. The Rivs and GTOs on the stockings I actually did draw based on photos of the real cars and then shrunk down, much like the mantle pictures. If you want to see them, these are the larger drawings – GTO and Riv. (I did the same for Dief's and Turtle's stockings, but those aren't as interesting. And I flat out copied/pasted the maple leaf because those things are HARD to draw.)
Composition wise, I did go through a few variations.. like the blowjob, lol [for the rest of you - my very first mental picture of this scene had Vecchio giving Fraser a blowjob...], though that never made it to paper. But I almost completely redrew RayK just 2 days before the deadline at [Bad username or unknown identity: ”quettalinde”]’s recommendation. My original vision had him flailing and falling like this, but along the way I’d changed it so he was just sort of… overbalancing a little bit. I don’t know, it was a combination of not knowing how to draw the flailing effectively and me having a kind of freak out worrying that Vecchio would seem too uncaring if he was ignoring that his boyfriend was about to fall and possibly hurt himself. Which yeah, I don't know… I know there’s underlying love there, not to mention Vecchio’s feeling that “Kowalski’s always knocking shit over and I’ll save the genuine worry for when people are shooting at us”, but I was paranoid for some reason. ^^; Anyway,[Bad username or unknown identity: ”quettalinde”] rightly said that it was funnier when he was falling, so I changed it. The original (that I was all set to post 2 days before the deadline!) can be found here if you’re interested.
And this is getting stupidly long now. I could probably go on more, but I’ll spare you all… if anyone has OpenCanvas and is interested (and you can download a free trial, I think), I can upload the actual event file of me drawing it. It’s kind of exciting. ^^
And now, bed! Too much typing. o.o
