Vampiresonthebrain - Blog Posts
CYMB Lazar. Just ‘cos.
Used the Jake Spicer Scrawlrbox 115 and this reference image from Downton Abbey.
Daddy’s girl 🧛🧛♀️
Abigail fan art drawn in Procreate using BigPearLiu’s brushes ❤️
https://archiveofourown.org/works/58121329/chapters/162821269#workskin
Soundtrack:
Daddy Cool - A work in progress 🧛🧛♀️ (to go with Chapter 26 of The Visitor on AO3) using new brushes for Procreate from BigPearLiu. Love ‘em!
“Definitely NOT daydreaming about being Joey.”
Drawn in procreate using a screenshot from ADOW for reference (see above) to go with chapter 21 - 23 of The Visitor on AO3.
If Lazar were a Ken doll… he might look like this.
It was not at all my intention but the undeniable result of practising portraits in Procreate today. I’m secretly in love with Ken so I’m fine with it. 😝
Reference photo was found on Pinterest. I used a chaotic mixture of LHR, Liliyth, Tetiana Deniz and original Procreate brushes… so that’s probably why he looks so odd. But he kinda makes me smile nonetheless.
Onwards and upwards! ✍️💖🧛♂️ Just keep drawing (vampires).
Lazar‘s favourite snack 🧛♂️
(Ana) ~ a daydream based on Ch 18 and 19 of The Visitor (AO3) - drawn in Procreate ✍️
✍️ Tonight I‘ve been working on some digital drawing techniques and process learned from the @liliyth tutorials I did yesterday as well as trying out some of her brushes in Procreate. I‘m not sure the finished result looks like Melissa in the end, but I was trying to capture the coy mood of the reference (swipe left and please let me know if you know who to credit for it - I found it on Pinterest and now can‘t find the original source 😬). The brushes are ace and I am loving experimenting with liliyth‘s process and style. BIG fan of hers.
Lazar (but Manga).
Nobody needed him but here he is 🤣
I did the most incredible tutorial by @lilyith yesterday. She is one of my favourite digital artists and I love her style. What’s more amazing is that she has put so much time and effort into sharing her skills and process so that hobbyists like me can improve their skills. I found the tutorial so useful.
So (obviously) I had to try Lazar. And (obviously) the reference came from @asgoodeasgold - thank you 😘 He’s on the beach, which makes zero sense but I don’t care because the reference is just 👌🖍️🏖️🧛🖤
Photo faffing - in case Lazar would be your ideal Valentine too…
Originals here:
The lighting is all out of whack but who cares?
Just chillin’ with my favourite vamp in Procreate. This one is not a photo mashup, it’s drawn from scratch using LHR brushes and the grid method, which is definitely the only thing I am capable of! Everything freehand just goes seriously out of whack.
The reference pictures are from @asgoodeasgold (for MG behind the scenes in Abigail) and Pinterest. He’s ended up with a slightly weird smirk but never mind. We live and learn. And maybe he’s just smirking at Joey 🙃…
Lazaar’s Backstory
Don’t mind me - just over here daydreaming about Lazaar’s backstory. Again. I blame @asgoodeasgold for this particular version: she posted a fab interview of about MG’s Wickham and I went down an Abigail x Death Comes to Pemberley rabbit hole 🐇.
Who knows why.
📷 Silly photo mashup above made from screenshots of Death Comes to Pemberley (still currently available on Netflix - hurrah!) and MG’s interview with PBS on YouTube (thanks @asgoodeasgold for posting): https://youtu.be/AWZn_0FGSMg?si=8N8uTs5Jc78G4UIo 📷
Chapter 21 of the Visitor explains how Lazaar might have ended up at the gallows. It’s historically inaccurate and completely implausible, but it’s just for fun. Thank good(e)ness.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/58121329
Lazar
📷🧛 Photo edit (see three originals below, which I mashed together and then drew over using LHR brushes in Procreate and then added PS cinematic filter) 📷🧛
📷 ⬆️ Original images found on Pinterest 📷
Photo faffing on a Lazar theme for Friday night vampy vibes.
📷 Original Images from Pinterest and screenshots (see below). Edited and drawn on using LHR brushes in Procreate 📷
New chapter of the visitor to follow soon. 🧛
Yep, Lazar. Still. 🧛✍️❤️
I love this time of year but it doesn’t leave much time for daydreaming about vampires, does it?! Here’s a ten minute doodle of my favourites (under the mistletoe?) and a rushed and plotless chapter update. Just for fun.
Photo editing fun - Loverboy Lazaar 🧛
Don’t mind me over here vibing with Loverboy Lazaar. Had fun with some great Procreate brushes by Laura H Rubin (especially the hair ones - his hair looks RIDICULOUS, I know, but it made me smile). It’s rushed and imperfect but just for fun.
Queen’s ’Good Old Fashioned Loverboy’ was in my head as I faffed around. In terms of context, he’s just arrived at Joey’s door…
📷 Screenshot that I edited/drew all over is from The Hatton Garden Job 📷✏️
On a Good Old Fashioned Loverboy theme, I added a couple of (completely ridiculous, implausible and inaccurate) chapters to The Visitor. Just a bit of fun and escapism - ‘cause that’s sometimes what’s needed these days, eh? 🧛❤️
📷 Inept photo editing fun 📷 with my faves 📷🖤🧛♂️🎶❤️
Vampire Issues - A compilation album
(‘Cos that’s what I got 😂) 🧛🖤
✍️ Played around with the epic FREE brush and texture sample pack from True Grit Texture Supply today. Absolutely love them. Need to learn a bit more about the style though! Swipe right for the mood board /references. You know who the characters are meant to be by now 😂
Also updated The Visitor on AO3. Chapter 6 features a playlist so hence the music vibe. Hmm, what would be on your vamp-inspired list?
(Just in case you needed some kawaii vamps in your feed). 🧛🖤
I was today years old when I learnt that Abigail means ‘my father’s joy’. Too clever for me. But now I love this little detail. It got me thinking about Lazaar’s relationship with Abigail and, although we know he’s not the best father 😅, I thought he might have bought her one of these jewellery boxes. The original is from Giggle and Honey on Amazon and I just faffed around with it on Procreate. I’d love to make a real one 🎨🖌️
📷 Jewellery box from Giggle and Honey; still from the film from @asgoodeasgold 📷
Lazaar ✍️
Still a work in progress but this is what I’ve managed so far today. Drawn using various brushes on Procreate - mainly from the amazing Laura H Rubin.
Also updated The Visitor on AO3 🧛❤️
If vampire cuddles were real… 🖤
Been practising drawing on Procreate today. Here’s Joey and Lazaar again because I’m still daydreaming about that sequel, having watched Abigail again this weekend.
Here’s also the mood board of beautiful images I used as a reference and the first sketch. Ended up with 30 layers. Probably a bit excessive but I’m still working it all out.
Have added a chapter 4 to The Visitor on AO3 too. Don’t seem to be getting over this ship any time soon! 🧛❤️🖤🩶
Lazaar ponders Joey
An Abigail-inspired photo edit. 📷 Originals by Phil Fisk (MG), Joe Pugliese (MB) and me (my car window). 📷
There’s a chapter about this on AO3. I’m not sure it really fits but I just wanted to write it, so there you go. (Trying to focus on the fun of the process, rather than overthink the finished product. After all, it’s all just for fun.)
This song, which I found afterwards, is perfect for the mood I was getting at. Lazaar certainly ‘slithered here from Eden’. What a sin indeed. Thank you, Hozier.
Mood: Lazaar / languor
Refusing to do his vampire thing. And driving Ana to distraction. Imaginary, inexpert edits on an Abigail theme.
Wrote a little bit to go with these on AO3. It waffles. It’s undercooked or overcooked. A bit much or not enough. Can’t really decide. But - happily - it’s just for fun.
Edits above using Procreate ✍️
📷 Beautiful original photos (below) by Iain McKell, Phil Fisk and Joe Gillespie. Dress is from Reformation. 📷
Visit from a vampire scribbles - 🧛✏️🖤 using Procreate.
Still imagining that Abigail epilogue? Yes, I am.
In my mind, this is Joeys’s house. She has a visitor, as you can see 🧛🔍🖤
⬆️ (enjoying the luminance brushes on Procreate a little too much 😂)
📷 Fan art photo collaging using Procreate - photo of MG from ADOW - photo of MB by Luis de la Luz - stock/my own photos of garden furniture, foliage, house, etc. 📷
And there’s an imaginary scenario (for @cecipaez-blog1 ). I don’t own the characters, I haven’t properly studied the film, I have no idea what I’m talking about, really: it’s just for fun 🎡.
——————————————
A Visitor - Part 2 - Ready or Not
— imaginary mini epilogue to Abigail (2024) featuring Joey/Ana and Lazaar —
You often feel like you’re being watched. It’s a hazard of your line of work and the questionable company you keep. But tonight, as you clear away the debris of an evening with friends in your backyard, the feeling is palpable.
You pause to listen and gauge the sensation. The fairy lights strung overhead dance slightly in a warm swirl of summer air, making the shadows below you throb in and out of focus. A wind chime twinkles, with slight menace, from the garden next door.
Get a grip, you tell yourself.
Get inside and lock the door, your body tells itself.
Just as you have composed yourself and are about to continue the clean up job, a clear, luxuriant voice cuts through the warm night air behind you.
“Not interrupting anything, I hope?”
Your movement slows as immediately you identify the speaker. You straighten and speak his name:
“Lazaar.”
You are surprised by the evenness of your tone, when your pulse seems to feel the exact opposite.
You turn and, with another rush of the tepid breeze, he emerges from the shadow of a tree. His hands are in his pockets. His posture is soft. But his stare is far from it. He walks slowly towards you, enquiringly.
“I had friends over for dinner,” you gesture towards the empty pizza boxes piled in your arms and the beer bottles which clink together in your clawed fingers.
He nods and his gaze flickers towards the house.
“Everyone left,” you find yourself needlessly reassuring him.
“I see.”
You can’t quite see if he’s smirking but it feels as though he might be. As he observes the clutter in your arms, the movement of his eyes is languid and appraising. “May I?” he reaches towards the empty bottles to relieve you slightly of your load.
You’re taken aback by the offer, but agree, “Sure.”
As the bottles are transferred, you notice his nostrils flare. You realise he’s trying to ascertain what kind of company you have kept. His brow smoothes and you assume he is satisfied by his investigations; it was, after all, a girls’ night in.
Without being asked, he walks over to the bin store and deposits the bottles in the correct one. Returning to take the pizza boxes from your arms, he repeats the process. You observe that you find this bizarrely incongruous show of domesticity wildly attractive.
As he saunters back towards you, he looks at the open door to the house. You stand there wondering if you are actually going to invite a vampire into your home.
“Why are you here, Lazaar?” The question emerges low and slow into the sultry air. You didn’t mean it to sound so provocative but you’re coming to realise you have little control around this man. Creature. Fantasy figure.
The piercing gaze is on you now. The vampire looks slightly agitated by your question. You watch as he steels himself and sits down upon the garden wall. He shrugs:
“I find that you…” his gaze drops to his hands, “you… are on my mind.”
You take a deep breath to quell the lilting, fizzing sensation rising within you. You note the unassuming nature of his posture as he sits on the wall, deliberately metres away from you. Yet this calculatedly unthreatening stance does nothing to mask his agitation.
Numbed and blurred slightly by the moderate amount of beer you’ve consumed, you probe your instincts more carefully. You find there is no fight or flight here. No threat. You feel the same submissive calm of a few nights ago when you saw him in his garden. The same curiosity. The same heady lurch of your insides when he so much as looks at you.
“Ditto,” you hear yourself say, with a slight smile.
The look that now passes his features is positively devilish and you witness his first genuine smile at you in return.
But the warmth of the moment curdles instantly. You gasp as you notice the uniformity and whiteness of his teeth. They look normal and far from razor-sharp. A wave of nausea resonates with the shock pulsing through your body.
“Your mouth…” you breathe, your fingers finding your own lips by way of explanation.
His smile fades and he moves towards you but stops abruptly when you recoil.
“You’re not…” you breathe and your heart begins to thump as confusion and panic flood your senses, “you’re not in your true form. This - this isn’t you. It’s just an illusion… what are you doing? What game are you playing? Why are you here? I think you should…”
“Ana…” he interrupts, his voice gentle but stricken, “Ana, it’s all right…”
“I must be crazy. What the f*ck was I thinking…,” your mouth is dry and your legs are shaking as you try to back further towards the house.
“Ana, please,” his palms are raised in surrender as he takes two more cautious steps towards you. As the moonlit shadows slide over his features, you watch his face transform into something more familiar. His pupils darken until void of all light, his irises take on an ethereal glow and his fangs become clearly visible beneath a snarling lip.
Your heart stills as you realise that this sight, which should terrify you, has in fact achieved the opposite effect.
“There now…” he soothes, the old-worldly timbre chiming again in his voice. He tilts his face up to catch the moonlight further.
Otherwise he remains very still. Waiting. Watching.
His breath is patchy and you can see the anguish in his eyes.
“Why did you change?” your voice is unsteady, as though you might cry.
“My form… I can... I wanted to be something less alarming… more palatable… more safe.” His brow furrows and his lips close firmly. In the moonlight, you notice a muscle ticking in his jawline.
His vulnerability in this moment is exquisite.
“I did it for you,” he murmurs and this dissolves your doubt as swiftly as it had appeared.
“Well don’t,” you fold your arms but take two steps towards him, “don’t do that again.” your voice softens.
“I shan’t,” he bows his head reverently and relief floods through his tone.
When he lifts his head again, his gaze is searching, “But I want to take the form that you desire.”
The last word rips through you, quite literally, and he speaks again:
“How do you want me to be, Ana?”
⬆️ Fan-Photo-Art-Collage-Faffing-Around (still!) imagining an epilogue to Abigail (2024)
This imaginary mini epilogue scenario for Abigail (2024) popped into my head (can’t seem to shift Lazaar this week). Joey goes back to the house after a week or so. I know that really she wouldn’t go back… and if she did, she’d likely be 💀 BUT happily this isn’t real and I’m a hopeful romantic. Especially when there are vampires who look like Matthew Goode involved. Even in a horror film. It seems. Unwise, perhaps. But just for fun 🎡.
—————————————————————
(Imaginary) Mini Epilogue - A Visitor
— Characters are not mine (obvs): they are borrowed from the writers of Abigail (2024) —
When every self-protective instinct in your body begs you to fly but you don’t.
When you feel yourself submitting and you know that’s all part of it.
The plan.
Whose plan?
Is it his plan? Or was it yours when you returned here to this godforsaken place?
Has it been your plan since the moment you first felt his crisp touch on your skin?
Physically, you might be in turmoil but there’s no mental unrest here. Only serene, sacrificial curiosity.
And white-hot desire.
He’s studying you now. Pondering your reappearance. But it is not yet the look of a hunter appraising his prey. There’s a wisp of gentleness in the air between you.
“Ana,” he rumbles, with a depth that rattles through your chest.
He knows your name. Your real one at that. Did he ask? Was he told? What did they say about you? The fact that you’ve had air time in their family life brings a slight smile to your face. Abigail squeezes your hand, which you’d forgotten was holding hers in the moment he appeared, silently beneath the trees, out of the tepid dark air.
The vampire doesn’t know what to do with a smile from you. Yet. His chin recoils slightly and his eyes narrow.
“You’re here,” he observes. The old-worldly way he pronounces the second word widens your smile.
He looks to Abigail for an explanation of your presence - long past dusk, in their garden - but the girl simply shrugs and returns his steely stare.
“I came to check up on Abigail,” you hear yourself asserting as your focus is drawn to his hands adjusting the collar on his fawn cashmere sweater, exposing the pale skin of his neck.
He glances down towards his feet, suppressing a scowl that you suspect is defensive and guilt-ridden; you can’t feel the anger he emanated the last time you met.
“Ah,” he raises his magnetic gaze and your breath stops as you register gratitude in his expression.
His head still bowed towards you, he massages the back of his neck with slender fingers. You contemplate how he smells, right there, at the base of his hairline.
“Very well,” he nods and you feel Abigail squeeze your hand once more.
The vampire bows slightly lower, turns and begins to walk back towards the house. You watch his retreat appreciatively, his tall frame stalking across the darkened lawn, his overcoat billowing at the mercy of his long strides. You know that, once he’s safely shrouded in the shadows of the house, he’ll turn back to look at you.
And you wonder what the next move will be.
📷 photos above faffed around with using Procreate (my current obsession); I think if I were to start again from scratch I’d just use a straight-up Lazaar screenshot as I struggled to make MG as MDCM into him - think I need to elongate his face or something and then obviously there’s the mouth - but I learnt a lot by trying - and it’s all just for fun/ to express an idea so perfection’s unnecessary, I say. Original screenshots/ photos below - please let me know if the MG one is your edit and I’ll add credit; I saved it without any intention of using it (besides appreciating his withering side eye) but then this idea popped into my head and now I can’t find where I got it. Sorry ❤️📷
I just can’t get you out of my head.
Kristof Lazaar.
(Boy, your lovin’ is all I think about.)
—————————————
🧛🖤🥀 Lazaar and Joey photo faffing 🥀❤️🧛♀️
📷 using Procreate to edit screenshots from the film Abigail for MG and photo of MB by Luis de La Luz; rose stickers from PicCollage 📷
Here is the version Joey keeps in her scrapbook (and yes of course she keeps a scrapbook):
And this one (below) ended up looking like some creepy/weird/ironic/macabre couple’s photoshoot, so I’m including it for amusement purposes 😂 Lazaar should be holding a rose or something. Maybe I’ll do that later. Maybe they’ll get it framed… in my mind 🖼️.
⬆️ and some roses, dying obligingly on my table right now 🥀😅