Artifice Kiss

((1)) WHOO BOY! Oh MAN this took me so much longer than it should have! At this point I'm just posting it more or less "as is". The wind has been taken out of me since they finally kissed in the comic now. I started this masterwork (Humble, yes I'm known for it) before thanksgiving and had it NEARLY finished when the holiday rolled around and dragged me out of town. But I took my computer with me....
Well when I say computer, I mean my fragging hard-drive and had the nerds at home work on it the whole time.
That really delayed the process. Then I get back home and all sorts of personal crap happens and I also have to basically reload everything onto my computer from backups.
.....
Maybe this is more aptly put into a Journal entry?
((2)) Fun fact: the rough line art for this was originally sketched at around 2am in the morn (When all the best ideas come to you) and hastily scrawled in a little blackberry notebook that I got at my last job. (It comes with an attached pen! 8D) It was originally a sketch of two of my OCs that are relatively new and I've never done anything with. In fact, they're SO new that I don't have a clear idea what the guy on the bottom there even looks like. So I thought to myself while trying to design him, "Just have him resemble Jeff from Artifice."
That came back to bite me since when I finally draw the two of them together I realize that if I change their clothes, give the blond dark hair and make him beefier and HEY-O! Artifice fan art!

((3)) And I just started listening to The Smiths when I was drawing this. It's been so long now that I don't remember HOW I even got there, but when I heard the song "Please, please, please let me get what I want" it made me think of both of them. It could apply to either Deacon or Jeff and I fell in love with the song. I made a youtube list that's JUST that song about 14 times I kid you not + "How soon is now?" which I have from t.A.T.u.'s album '200 km/h in the wrong lane' and had never realized was a cover! I like both versions though t.A.T.u.'s a little more. Oh and "On the rise/in my eyes" from Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog, which is a silly name for ANYTHING but I've seen it... oh 3 or 4 times now and I'm convinced it's a modern OPERA. D:

((4)) Ok! For Winona and Alex:
Jeff was a BLAST to do! I love doing shiny hair and if left to my own devices I would have made it even shinier, but I was going off of a few pages of the comic and want to stay true to them. His nails, his nipple even his chest hair surprisingly! All very fun. His boxers too!
The clothingsuit was also pretty fun to work on, and yes. That is the OFFICIAL term for Deacon's outfit and what the layer was named in Gimp!
But his hair KILLED me!! I wish I'd either printed it out (My printer is ... touchy about when it will work) and done his hair by hand or just BS'ed it like some other fanartists do and just colored it uniformly blackish gray.
Did the shading and by the time I'd gotten to the highlights, it was well into December. I have no intention of making the background any more detailed than that.

((5)) And finally Deacon (On top) and Jeff (with the fabulous hair) belong to Alex Woolfson and Winona Nelson. They belong IN Artifice which you should all go read NAO. D8 --> [link] <--