Snek Crowley - Blog Posts

/r/goodomensafterdark is a strange place full of weird and wonderful people.

so for April Fools Day this year I let AfterDark choose what I drew and how I drew it.

art by committee. what could go wrong?

they chose:

1. Aziraphale x Multiple Crowleys

2. in the style of Lisa Frank

prints | ko-fi | commission

detail from high res after the jumppppp

@goodomensafterdark

sketch and color by Q

lines by @the-comfy-witch

Oh shitttttt look at the details in this, people.

OP your art process sounds painfully familiar, straight down to the playlist on repeat while I work. Great piece.

Hold my head inside your hands I need someone who understands I need someone, someone who hears For you, I've waited all these years For you I'd wait 'til kingdom come Until my day, my day is done And say you'll come and set me free Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me

~*~*~

holy hell I think it's done? I don't normally do much fanart but my brother and I wanted to understand why all the tumblr girlies are so obsessed with these day old men so we binged this show which immediately grabbed me by the throat and hurled me into the gay old men fervor and wouldn't let me do anything else until I finished some kind of tribute ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

few more process shots+thoughts beneath the cut ♥

okay so I know you have to be kinda careful about making someone's face all black... but I usually dislike clearly human halves on most monster designs, and red wouldn't work either, so I just kind of tried to lighten it closer to the orangey scales on his snake face and hope it worked out?

you can see the other design ideas I had for naga!crowley in the thumbnail sketch but it diverged enough that actually I'm gonna probably just keep that as a separate design for perhaps a future character, like a tiefling/salamander npc for the next campaign perhaps 🤔

this one took a lot longer than usual due to trying to actually somewhat accurately capture an existing person's face, trying to put more effort into detailing the scales, and a style of hair I don't draw as often haha. wahoo @ being able to rather fittingly apply my monsterpeople habits to some fanart for once :)

I immediately threw together a playlist for them that I keep listening to on repeat and "til kingdom come" is the last song on there, which has been giving me blorbo heart hurty for over a decade now

genuinely felt a tangible kind of relief like 'ahhhh...' when I finished the lines cause this art was all-consuming til I let it out 8') I really really wanna keep drawing these two but feel like a week or two is all I can reasonably take away from commissions at the moment... but if I can power through another real quick maybe I'll allow myself some smorching doodles heehee

blood of a reptile, just underneath the skin

--------------------------

DRAMA!CROWLEY, ACTIVATE!

So we meet here again, in front of another flaming-as-anything-ginger Crowley. We can't keep doing this, you know. People will talk.

More info and hi res under the jumpppppppppppp.

I wanted to try my hand at a standalone portrait of Crowley before I jump back into what will inevitably be another Aziracrow portrait---I'm thinking 1920s theme. Flapper Crowley & Aziraphale? But that's for another time.

I wanted to try grey scale under-painting in digital art. A success, I hope? I'm pretty happy with the portrait (for now, give it a week and I'll hate everything about this painting, happens every time!)

I struggled a bit on the eyes in this piece. I normally paint straight color to canvas, so I have a method to my madness with painting eyes. Not so, here! This was new territory. I'm not 100% satisfied, but that just means I need more practice.

ALSO, GOLGOTHA HAIR WITH A BRAID WHAT WHAAAAAT

And because I learned how to paint snake scales for the last portrait, I decide to reprise that theme and torture myself again keep practicing them, this time with iridescence. I wanted to keep the scales low-key, though, almost as if they're just emerging or maybe the viewer caught a momentary glimpse of scales through the veil to an ethereal occult plane. Additionally, I wanted some good creepy claw hands with long fingernails (big fan of creepy, me) for a proper demonic manicure.

About: All digital, all Photoshop. Orig. 7200 x 5400 px. ~1 week of off-and-on painting. Title is taken from Reptile by Nine Inch Nails because I guess I'm still naming art after 30 year old albums? Is this a thing I do, now?

...and if so, can you imagine what I'll have to draw to use lyrics from Hurt in the title?

I know for a fact Crowley absolutely ABSOLUTELY loves Hamilton the musical. He watched it everytime it was staged and always cries when he knows the ending is near.

I just know

my current coping mechanism is blaming crowley for every minor inconvenience from my life

The poetry of the ineffable husbands

It’s me ya boi I gotta go to bed in an hour so I’m writing it as fast as I can so I don’t lose my idea tomorrow. 

So, what do I mean by that? Literally what it says. I’m just going to ramble about how beautiful and full of metaphors their relationship is and how it just gives me a reason to live. It’s not going to be good rambling. Just rambling with a little bit of passion in it.

Ight imma start with the classic things. As a former Wattpad loyal user I know all the angel x demon tropes. And I am sick of them to my stomach, I can’t stand one more uwu baby angel corrupted by demon. And this is what is surprising but does make sense about them husbands. They cannot, in my opinion, be called angel or demon, they literally became 2 halves of the same entity, the supernatural entity that watches over humans and makes sure there is a balance between good and bad. Like Yin and Yang. Good and evil, black and white, light and darkness. Not opposing, but complementing each other.

 Aaaand they were like that from the beginning. Remember when Crowley said  "Funny thing is, I keep wondering whether the apple thing wasn’t the right thing to do, as well. A demon can get into real trouble, doing the right thing. Funny if we both got it wrong, eh? Funny if I did the good thing and you did the bad one, eh?". They somehow knew it, Crowley wasn’t evil and Aziraphale wasn’t as obedient as an angel should have been. From the first time they ever got in touch in each other (we do not have any information on the times before Crowley’s fall) they somehow ended up thinking they didn’t do the thing their roles assigned them to. And this just shows how interesting their relationship that would come will be. In their relationship they always ended up stepping on their values that were assigned and for what? For the sake of each other.

Now, I got into the light-darkness thing and I feel the need to extend it. I somewhere saw a theory that angel’s halo’s are so bright that it blinds them, the angels having to rely only on God’s word. Meanwhile, the fallen angels, the demons, had their halo’s broken, forming the shape of the horns, being able to see and think on their own but not having any form of guidance. Now that we uncovered that doesnt a relationship between a demon and an angel just make sense? Like, the angel, blinded by the divine light, would rely on the demon’s words and rationalizing. The demon would then be guided by the angel’s light, this way both benefiting for each other and having to bond to each other. It just makes me so soft to think about that need of each other, and just a silly little thing my brain just said: “the angel could guide the demon through the darkest of times’’ (yes I just quoted my brain deal with it). I am just a succkerrr for this kind of soft thing and many people would probably not empathize and thats okay.

Now the really corny shit. Like the “forbidden love” kind of. This is, again, a well-known trope, but this time one that didn’t lose as much value as others did. When you think “forbidden love” there are so many posibilities. Like... gays during the history, a maiden and a prince, a gay knight and a prince, mafia gang leader harry styles and crime detective, the entire plot of hannibal, drunken me and a laptop to write, hold on I’m going too far, just young people in love and not affording it aaannndd 2 people from opposite sides. Heaven/Hell I mean. Obviously very opposite. And what we have learned about this forbidden love kinda stuff? They almost always end up running away together. Yes I am proving Crowley is head over heels but like, isn’t that poetic as fuck? Being so sick of having to do your work, to hide your feelings, to just hide yourself and the person you would die for that you just want to dull off together and live the perfect life without being judged?

Related to the past point, even if this was an innevitable choice, just the fact that Crowley chose Alpha Centauri is just making my brain and fingers go nuts. Alpha Centauri is a triple star system, 2 of them forming a binary star, basically two stars that are pretty close to each other. Now I know this doesn’t really make any sense, but what if those 2 stars represent Crowley and Aziraphale, and the 3rd one represents Adam? Like in that moment they went during the time before the world was created. I just think it would be cool as fuck that there would actually be an association made.

Also just the ship’s name: Ineffable. What does it mean? Beyond words, beyond understanding. What we always try is to put our feelings into words, and we more than usual fail. Because feelings aren’t something to be shown by words. They are ineffable.

Where did I go with this? Absolutely. No. Idea. I just poured all I my thoughts on a tired keyboard until my fingers have gone cold. It’s just that there are small details or just small ideas that maybe aren’t that revolutionary or special, but why not randomly post them on the internet?

*screeches in happy*

someone please let crowley hear his wahoo

Hello! Big fan here.

Just a teeny little question.

Since you're somewhat a snake, do you enjoy things snakes enjoy as a humanoid? Heat lamps, nice rocks to scratch itches on, etc.?

Love your work, especially the M25. Wahoo!

🖤❤️🧡

Well, hello there, big fan.

No, I really prefer the cold.... naaaah! I enjoy warmth both as a snake and as a humanoid. Would use a heat lamp if there was no sun around. And no more angel to put a blanket over me when I'm cold.

As for rocks, no, I can scratch my own itches while in human form. I have hands for that.

And, no, I absolutely do not eat mice. Not even as a snake.

I'm no longer in the business of hellish road construction, so if you happen to have any trouble with bad traffic or crazy madmen drivers, it's not on me. Anyhow, wahoo to you, too!