Intimate extra - July Illustration; YuuNo Supernatural AU (Patreon)

So, for a small con later this month I got invited to join a a little stamp rallye with the theme of mythical Japan. I promptly wanted to draw Yuu and Noru from our Supernatural AU for this and sketched this piece which I absolutely dread rendering 😨I'm also thinking of making little stickers uvu

And after you decided on YuuNo for July's extra I got this idea for a second piece that appears shortly after the first 🤭

I thought of them sitting down in a machiai/koshikake (a japanese garden bench with a little roof) somewhere on temple grounds and having some private time. At first I had a top down view in mind with a rather distant observer feeling... but I was also curious of how a low angle would look like, so I tried that as well and ultimately went for that composition because it felt much more intimate, and you know how much I love character focus and showing faces uvu

I took the opportunity to test how I would render the other piece and test (darker) colors with this one. Oh boy. Shading is haaard xD I struggled so much with picking colors and placing lights and shadows. @w@ Doing atmospheric pieces is certainly something I still have to practice more. You might have seen some of my struggles over on bsky XDDI'm still somewhat unsure about the colors and I have the feeling there is something missing, but I'll leave it for now. uu" Maybe in two years, I will look back at it and laugh in improvement or something XDDD Buuuut despite all my struggles, these two are super cute and I hope you enjoy! uvu