#waaaa my boys growin up ;w;;;

[astralibrary]

happy silan day! i draw my oc silan with flowers every year on may 16th because i love him dearly & it’s a date i’ve always associated with him 🌼♥️

thoughts & feelings under the cut!

i tend to struggle with actually finishing them though (like last year’s, which i never ended up posting,) so This Year i made the executive decision to treat the 16th as a deadline rather than a starting point And Wouldn’t You Know It it worked!!

idk how much of that can be chalked up to the deadline switch or if it was a combination of other factors (drawing a lot more finished pieces lately, building a comfortable routine/process, the significant drop in the amount of flowers i have to painstakingly render one by one) but the fact is i got this whole thing done in a little under a week and that is a Big Win

so, a lot of things have changed!! first in 2020 the series took a hard turn from simple portraits into full illustration! the piece has a lot of energy and freedom to it imo; when i started this series i had made up all these Rules i had to adhere to, like has to be a digital painting, has to be a portrait, has to have his eyes closed, has to have him wearing a flower crown, and Has to be started and finished all in one day, on the 16th

they created a lot of unnecessary pressure that i think really contributed to my struggle to finish them. as the years have gone on i’ve steadily been chipping away at these “rules,” taking off the flower crown, opening his eyes, giving myself more time to work on it- and finally, doing away with the portrait rule altogether. 2020′s energy feels like that final push to break free of that nonsense and just have fun with the project and i’m loving it tbh. i may not have finished it in the end, but it was definitely a step in the right direction!

and then we have this year’s, 2021! definitely a more moody piece... the reason for which being all the changes i’ve been making to silan & his story lately hoho !! he is Older now, he’s 24!! before, i was jumping around with his age a lot trying to settle on anything between 14 and like 18, but as i work out the details of his whole deal more things start coming into focus, and right now 24 feels right! so i gave him a little facial hair both to make him look older and also bc i think it makes him look like a dweeb and that’s CUTE,

this year’s illustration definitely reflects the kind of work i’ve been doing lately, with all the lil adjustments n effects i like to add to my pieces- which also shows how much more comfortable i’ve gotten with my process. the 2020 one was done around the time i was still getting used to procreate, whereas now i’m Pretty Dang Comfortable

so we’re leaning a lot more heavily into the illustration aspect, and then Also this is the first year i haven’t used ANY of the three flowers i usually associate with silan (pansies, daffodils, and forget-me-nots), which!! felt really weird!! but i did take the purple flowers from last year (lavender maybe?) and incorporate them into this year’s so at least there’s Some continuity there, right?

overall to me the piece says contemplation, a bit of nostalgia, thinking about the past. there are definitely story elements related to this that i can’t really get into atm but i think these may be flowers silan remembers from his childhood? still figuring things out but that’s what i like to think

anyway yeah! i’m really happy i was able to finish this year’s portrait i mean illustration! hoping to keep this improvement train rolling so that next year maybe i can take this series even further off the rails- looking forward to it!! 💖