#i don't come without my headworld. 2 for 1 deal

[grimae]

A few weeks ago I had a pretty big commission for a client who wanted me to draw 11 Book of the Sun inspired artworks for their own world building project. Payment was awesome. That was cool. Gladly accepted it, and over the course of working on it, I realized how that entire BotS project has stopped having meaning for my headworld, world building, OCs, Skindarim, you name it, and instead started having meaning for me personally in different times of my life. I look at page 8 and I know I drew it for Eleonora's sons - Vasil, Rafael, Jarek - but I think about the time the weather was beautiful and the sun was shining, I was enjoying my life in the June of 2020. I look at page 6 and know I drew it because I wanted to explore the backstory of the Istrati, but now what I see is the very first picture of a character that has become more than just dear to me, Alexandru. Someone I literally never expected to draw more than once but has now taken permanent residence in my brain. I've been working on these gold-and-black pages for a literal three years now, and I never even intended it to happen actually. I made a few because I found it fun to develop the Istrati aesthetic a bit, my weird sun vampire clan, but then people wanted to see more and more, and started asking me more often whether I will publish them, something I literally never thought about. It became overbearing. People told me that everyone is just waiting for it (oh damn, expectations), I would make bank (nah, I wouldn't), etc etc. In a way I felt thrown into some kind of hustle culture. On top came the sheer amount of times people stole them, ripped out of context, for their shitty mood boards or Dark Art Aesthetic Facebook Pages, or claimed I wasn't the actual artist because the vague mythology they built up over these photoshop made pictures was more fascinating than the reality of the person behind them.  Anyway. A few months ago I radically changed the world building of Skindarim which also included my vampires logically. I love it. It feels like me. I still haven't gotten around writing a proper new readable description beyond a giant collection of notes and cornerstones written as if in mania, but it feels like everything I wanted of my brain ghosts and world to finally become what I really love. Wilderness, nature, hope, light, darkness, gore. All topics I love to explore. I look at the BotS pages now and see everything that has changed in lore and world building, that isn't accurate anymore at all.

I drew page 38 yesterday. I barely know what it means in the setting of my characters anymore. I know it what it means to me, as a person, as the artist behind it. I'm glad I made it, and I'm glad I made the 37 before it. In a way they became obsolete, in a way they've become just as, or even more important to me than before.