hawkland - Tumblr blog

hawkland · 22 hours

Text

Paradise Lost

the SPN Angels and Demons Reverse Bang @spnangelsanddemons-rb

Paradise Lost [ -> read it here on Ao3 <- ] written by @adunaphelfaelend ||| art by @acaademicqueer

DO NOT RE-POST MY ART ANYWHERE ELSE WITHOUT MY EXPLICIT WRITTEN PERMISSION.

Guess who's back on their SPN Bang bullshit? You guessed it! This guy!! Eyyyyyy!

Anyway. Gave a Reverse bang a whirl and had an absolute blast, thoroughly enjoyed every minute. I actually churned out not one, not two, but THREE fully finished illustrations for this bang which is quite frankly batshit insane but absolutely part for the course in my wackadoo universe.

First of my three is this one: my Raphael piece. And hooooboy do I have a lot to say about Raphael. Anyone who knows me is well aware that I have a lot of feelings about Raphael and how the SPN writers did them completely freaking dirty in terms of character potential.

I had the absolute pleasure of working with Adunaphel with this one, and the fic that they came up with, rated T (for safety and discussion of medical-related trauma and death) is brilliant. It really captures the darker side of medicine that isn't often shown in the light of day, as well as a hardened vision of Raphael's character that's truly a delicious treat.

under the cut I've included some preliminary sketches and some additional commentary, as well as details since apparently tumblr eats quality ಠ_ಠ

TW: VERY FRANK DISCUSSION OF MEDICAL TRAUMA AND DEATH.

For those who know me, my day job is in healthcare. For nearly ten years, I worked in Level-1 Trauma. If you aren't one of us in the know on that terminology, Level-1 is where you ship the worst of the worst. People actively trying to kick the bucket in front of you. Horrific injuries near constantly. Car crashes and gunshot wounds. Amputations, decapitations---all manner of gruesome-and-gory, all day everyday. During my time in Trauma, I primarily was stationed in the ER / Emergency Department, but I also was up in surgeries as well on a fairly regular basis. I worked all through the Covid epidemic and have seen far more than my fair share of tragedy at this point in my life. I know the roaring sound of victory when the AED finally detects a heartbeat, and I know the deafening echo of defeat that hangs over a room that just went nearly an hour trying to keep someone alive and finally having to call time of death. I know the sound a mother makes when she's told her six month old baby wasn't able to be resuscitated and I will never lose the goosebumps that come with that knowledge.

Raphael is The Healer in typical Angelic lore, and while I'm in no way religious, I've always been fascinated with the mythos of various religions from an academic standpoint. I'm inherently drawn to the concept of a patron angel of Healing, because I can only imagine how draining that job must be. SPN glosses over this, which is unfortunate because it had such potential.

With this illustration, I wanted to play with the idea of the dichotomy of healers.

On one hand, we're dedicated to the health and well-being of others, to doing no harm. We want the best outcomes for everyone. We're empathetic and we wear our hearts on our sleeves. However, this makes us vulnerable. It leads to burnout. Over time, the empathy that was once our strength becomes apathy; our sympathy becomes dispassion. We crumble and fade under the weight foisted upon us, not enough support given and far too much drained away from us.

Even the penultimate Healer must succumb to burnout eventually. Raphael was the last standing Archangel after the events of the thwarted Apocalypse. As the Patron Healer, they weren’t meant for leadership of the Garrisons--they weren't meant to be a warrior. They were already under so much weight from the strain of being the Angel of Healing amongst humankind… constantly bombarded with prayer, inundated with countless requests for miracles…

How much weight can a single branch take before it breaks?

This piece was the one that took the most of my time, probably because it was such a passion project for me. I went through a lot of revisions and reworking until I got to the final piece.

In the show, Raphael has two canonical human vessels: Donnie Finnerman played by actor Demore Barnes, and an unnamed woman played by actor Lanette Ware. Angels don't technically have gender, and I've always believed Raphael to be genderqueer as all hell. Gender? Who the fuck is that? So for that reason, I actually mashed together Lanette Ware and Demore Barnes to create an androgynous amalgamation to approximate what Raphael could look like.

(Now, I actually have all sorts of headcanons about my personal interpretation of Raph, but I wanted to keep this piece as close to SPN canon as possible while still somehow maintaining the whole Angel-not-vessel illusion. Therefore, I didn't go with my personal interpretation of how Raphael looks this time around.)

My original concept pose is similar to the final one, but was less symbolism and more overt Angel-ness. I had the obvious cues with the wings and the halo. The only thing I knew for certain was that I wanted a split image; something cut down the middle showing the before burnout and after burnout / empathy vs apathy (the dichotomy) but I didn't want it to be a true mirror image. It's remarkably difficult to get a pose split like this without it looking absolutely wacky in some ways, but somehow I made it work.

I didn't like how wide the image was with the wings and how on the nose the whole thing was, so I started thinking about how I could make it more interesting. Some interpretations of angel true forms state "many limbs," and I know that the Hindu god of medicine Dhanvantari is depicted with four arms. The idea had merit, and when I tried it out, I quite liked the way it looked.

I wanted to make it obviously Raphael without it being overt, so I did some digging. Raphael has both a seal and a sigil that represent them, which I incorporated on the left side of the sketch. Raphael is often depicted in literature and art as riding a fish or with fish-related imagery. Raphael is also often depicted with a staff, which is why I gave them one in both sides of the illustration as well.

I also goofed around with the idea of a glitchy overlay on the apathy side, because I wanted to make it obvious that the thinking has warped, and the way the world is perceived is no longer bright and bushy tailed, but bleak and disappointing.

I wanted to do a more painterly approach this time around, and I pulled my colors straight from a few different screencaps of Ware and Barnes. I normally use the Procreate brushes that blend easily like the airbrushes, but this time I decided to play around with the traditional media-style brushes.

For years I was strictly a traditional artist, so it was fun to dip my toes back into that sandbox, even if only in my imagination. (Procreate's physics are surprisingly good for the trad media brushes imho, especially the watercolor ones.)

Once I had a solid base down, I went in and added an overlay of some old VHS screen glitches I had saved. I wanted the whole effect to be as heightened as possible while not detracting from the overall look of the painted textures. I played around with this for a good long while until I was satisfied. After that, I went over the sketch for the final lines.

Once I was satisfied with my glitch effect, I went ahead and started to work on differentiating between the empathy vs apathy aspects of the dichotomy. I used a few different gradient overlay layers to mess about with the saturation and hue of colors on each side of the image, and at one point I even played around with the idea of having the halo be a source of light on the empathy side and a source of shadow on the apathy side. I didn't quite like the way it ended up looking in the end so ultimately I scrapped that idea and stuck with the overlays instead.

I wanted the left side to feel warm, representing Raphael in the early days of humanity. Before the burdens became unbearable, the task Sisyphean and thankless. The right side I wanted to feel absolutely bleak. Like they'd been burned one too many times and have just stopped caring.

Once I had the saturation I liked best, I went back in and finalized the glitch overlays to sync up appropriately with the new saturation of the image, and added a sparkle overlay on the left side as a foil to the dark right.

All that glitters is gold, but gold tarnishes quickly when not maintained.

Details of the full LEFT and RIGHT sides

Details of the symbols on the LEFT side (empathy)

The Fish - in Tobias and the Fish, Raphael appears to Tobias as a peasant and tells him to kill and gut a fish and to rub the fish's gall on his father Tobbit's eyes to heal him of his illness. Tobias does so, and miraculously, his father is healed.

The Seal - Seals are said to contain inherent power, and as such are more commonly used in engravings on amulets or talismans for long-term or permanent situations. Raphael's seal is used for invoking Raphael's knowledge, wisdom, healing, and protective powers. The seal is depicted on the large pocket-watch pendulum.

The Sigil - The sigil of Raphael is simple, intended to be hand-drawn on paper or in small personal rituals and then charged by the caster. It's also used for invoking Raphael's knowledge, wisdom, healing, and protective powers, like the seal, although on a more temporary basis. The sigil is on the hanging pendant.

Details of the symbols on the RIGHT side (apathy)

The Staff - Crescent on top -> alludes to Hygenia, the Greek goddess of good health. (she was also the daughter and attendant to Asklepios or Asclepius, the Medicine-god.) The diamond shape below -> a loose nod to the the combined runes Algiz and Uruz. (for protection and good health, respectively.)

The Shattered Glass - the shatter has two meanings. 1) the weight of responsibility is invisible until it finally causes enough damage to be seen by others, and 2) the location of the shattered glass is on the left side of Raphael's chest, which is where the heart sits.

Black Ichor - representing The Slog -> a physical manifestation of the emotional toll the Sisyphean nature of Healthcare takes on the mind and body of the Healthcare worker. Like sludge in the gears of a car or machine, if it's not properly maintained (time off, proper support from upper management, etc.) it will wear down the inner workings very quickly and ultimately cause everything to break.

Total Tracked Time: 29hrs 40min

#amazing art #truly!#spn raphael #i love reading the process #my queue will go on forever

22 notes · View notes