Where the Wild Roses Grow Art Post

[seleneheart]

Title: Where the Wild Roses Grow
Summary: Cas is a human with the ability to exorcise demons, hidden away by the Order to protect his bloodline. He meets a young man at work with a billion mega watt grin, how was he to know it was his ancestral enemy – the Morrigan, and what it means to love someone like that.

When I was thinking about my claim for this year, I wanted a darker fic that was infused with symbolism and mythology. I found exactly that in seraphim_grace's story, Where the Wild Roses Grow. These pictures are a bit spoilery for the story, so read that first.

Book cover




Castiel

In the story, Castiel is described as being a Merovingian, which was a medieval French dynasty, so in my mind, he was a knight.



Dean

Dean as the Morrigan, on the other hand, was clearly a pagan, so he is a modern representation of that Celtic goddess.



Dean and Cas in happier times.



Last scene of the story -- Cas is older, hardened, has lost the one person that means anything to him.


Icons and Divider



Some scraps that were part of the larger pictures. The raven tattoo took an unbelievable amount of time as I continually changed my ideas about how I wanted it to look, even after I had sketched the outline. And it's only a decoration on a larger piece. The Morrigan sigil with the entwined roses another example of something that is part of a larger piece. Once I'd painted the first rose and leaf, I just kept warping their shapes and rotating to put them in other art.



Rock studies


Usually I do initial work in my sketchbook, scan, and finish off in photoshop. This year, my scanner wasn't available, so these are crappy cell phone photos. I ended up doing everything digitally and didn't use these, although you can see the ideas going on in my head. *squints* Perhaps they're a bit phallic . . .

A major source of inspiration for the settings for both Dean and Castiel is the art of Amy Brown. While neither of these are direct copies of her works, credit goes to her marvelous fantasy landscapes as the artistic forerunner of the pictures.

Dean was the Morrigan, a Celtic god, the battle raven, which is why ravens appear in several of these pictures. The triangle sigil that shows up in these pieces is my interpretation of the marks on Castiel's hands.

Hugh thanks as always to uisgich, who held my hand throughout this process and gave me honest feedback on the art as it progressed. Both wendy and thehighwaywoman do an outstanding job herding this massive undertaking into something organized and sensible. The spn_j2_bigbang is by far my favorite BB to participate in.



Tools: Photoshop, Corel Painter, Bamboo tablet
Fonts: Peep, Jellyka Delicious Cake, Pea Bailey, 28 Days Later

Inspirations, sources and reference photos

www.costumecraze.com/MEDI144.html
fashion-miss-model.blogspot.com/2012/03/misha-collins-photos.html
/www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/17/us-japan-quake-chernobyl-belarus-idUSTRE72G5IX20110317
naturemappingfoundation.org/natmap/facts/crow_vs_raven.html
www.wiccansupplier.com/images/black_feather.jpg
marioara08.deviantart.com/art/black-angel-wings-200050457
texturelib.com
www.fanforum.com/f222/pillow-talkers-%7Bdean-castiel%7D-slash-9-last-time-somebody-looked-me-like-i-got-laid-62949181/
celebmanmeat.blogspot.com/2009/10/jensen-ackles-yahtzee-u-win-at-life-if.html
www.shareapic.net/View-22014126-RAVEN-Tattoos.html