BTS: First Round Painting Concepts (Patreon)

Clearly, after reading my lyrics and seeing my Pinterest board, Lauren really thought I was ready to burn someone's house down... 😅🔥

In fairness, I did have some flame elements in some of the Pinterest board, and the songs are about trauma, so like...I get it 😂 But I am simply not that aggressive...maybe we hold onto these for Chloe or Iam's first albums! 🤭

Secret time: there is an element of fire in the final painting 😇

I love that every single one of these concepts has a crown, though. That is definitely something that I really liked the vibe of. I wanted to become an agent of chaos, but still be a princess 😂 Or rather, a queen. A merciless, powerful queen. 💁‍♀️👑 Because I feel like that image really captures what I wanted some of this album to feel like. It's a lot more layered than that, and I think all the final artwork reflects the complexity better. But this was a really good jumping off point!

I also think it's so funny that Lauren included an image where I'm holding a knife behind my back, because there was really only one photo in the mood board with that specific element. There were others with knives, but different vibes.

Secret time #2: My original concept for the Villain artwork was to have me looking innocent and happy facing the camera, but to have me holding a knife behind my back, visible through a mirror behind me. And that didn't change until I started building the mood board 😅

As you may recall from stream, I did actually bring knives with me to the photoshoot! But we did not end up using them for any of my proposed knife-wielding concepts...because I forgot to tell anyone that I had brought them. 😂 I literally bought them for the shoot! Now I just have literal throwing knives in my apartment for my reason 🙈 Anyway... unfortunately, there are no knives in the Villain EP artwork.

Actually, now that I think about it, I also literally bought a mirror specifically for the shoot...which we also did not use 😅 I am just a mess 🫠

BUT I am really happy with what we ended up getting and the concepts we decided to go with!

Secret time #3: One of these initial painting concepts is somewhat close to the final painting and album art... 🤫