PROCESS VIDEO: shiver // nsfw

here's the process video for shiver, a recent drawing of my blacksmith werewolf qaragan and his husband na'im! you can download the .mov file below.

once again, you might recognise the pose from a sketchdump i uploaded months ago, and once again i originally doodled that pose without any particular characters in mind. it could have worked for so many different pairings, but i decided to go with qaragan and na'im because i haven't drawn any smut of them before, and the tenderness of this moment seemed to suit them really well. i started refining the sketch the same way as always, step by step and layer by layer. the lineart has quite a lot of detail and is set to a rather low transparency, so that the many little lines defining qaragan's beef and weathered textures would better blend into the colouring. 

when i design my werewolves i try to diversify their looks in different ways, so they don't just look like the same copypasted monster person with different colour schemes. in qaragan's case, he has a distinctly muscular head that looks rather like a pitbull, and most of his fur is shorter and smoother, like a short-haired dog rather than a wolf, save the fluff around his neck. tbh now that i'm thinking about it, i might draw him without the 'mane' next time and just give him a short coat all over his body. in all honesty qaragan's werewolf form looks more like a were-dog than a were-wolf, and if you read the spotlight about him you might remember that his story is inspired by dogs being rescued and rehabilitated from dog fighting. his ears were torn off during the gladiatorial fights he was forced to take part in, his tail was docked during torture, and his body is covered with scars. i would like to develop the details of his colour pattern a bit more, but all in all i think he has a very distinct appearance and that he could hardly be mistaken for any of my other werewolves. 

there's one aspect of his design i need to get better at drawing, though. qaragan is supposed to be fucking huge, in the strongman kind of way--you know, those people that can pull airplanes and trains. people with that mighty level of strength usually have muscles covered by a layer of fat, so their body type looks less sculpted. plus na'im loves feeding qaragan and even if his years as a slave had left him quite malnourished when they first met, it's not long before he starts putting weight back on, thanks to na'ims cooking.

what i'm trying to say is i drew qaragan (especially his torso and arms) a bit too chiselled-looking, simply out of habit. i just really love drawing muscles (i find it as fun and therapeutic as drawing flowers and plants) and if i don't think about it, i automatically draw every goddamned character with quite defined musculature. sometimes when i show kubi wips they literally have to remind me that their characters should look more slender and lithe and not as sculpted as on my sketch, lol. so i really want to do some new sketches of qaragan to better portray his body type, and perhaps fine-tune his coat colours and fur length while i'm at it...

in any case, i mostly used charcoal brushes to colour both characters. i'm still in love with the smooth, textured gradients those brushes create, but i also used the graphite brush to add detail and definition to select areas, like na'ims hair, qaragan's face, and the chest fluff that mimics chest hair. i have to admit that i hadn't fully determined qaragan's palette and pattern when i started colouring him, so i had to sort of make it up as i went. i knew he's mostly medium-dark grey with a subtly yellow undertone, because he's supposed to look weathered and worn from life's hardships. basically i wanted to use hues of grey that might remind you of a slightly yellowed old photograph. brighter or 'happier' colours wouldn't have given the same impression of a middle-aged werewolf who's both physically and mentally scarred from the shit he's been through.

the palette of this whole drawing is rather limited but i applied bits of digital media magic to spruce things up, mostly notably the subtle hint of green that somehow worked really well for qaragan's fur. that said i also added a subtle bronzy overlay to him later on, to make the grey hues less cold and more in-tone with the warm colours of the rest of the drawing.

i saved the cum for (almost) last, because i wanted to make sure i the character's bodies were fully rendered first. i usually paint cum in several layers set to different percentages of transparency, trial-and-error-ing my way to making it look thicker and whiter where it's pooling up and more see-through where it's thinning out.

i next went over the whole painting to clean it up a bit, emphasise some lines where necessary, and finally added qaragan's many scars. i painted them on a separate layer from his body as well, so i could partially erase a few of said scars, making them look more faint and faded while others remain more prominent.

speaking of cum, this is one of those aftermath pictures that depicts a soft, slow, and tender moment between lovers--but where the abundant load dripping out of na'im bears witness to what they must have been doing a minute earlier. it's up to the viewer's imagination to picture why na'im is still shivering with overwhelming pleasure, and if their brain works anything like mine they'll probably imagine him squirming on his husband's knot.

real talk -- as a nsfw artist it's easy to default to depicting characters mid-action, dick/fingers/tongue/toy in hole, fervently going at it. it's easy to assume that near-orgasm or mid-orgasm moments are the epitome of smut art and that it is what people (myself included) most like to see. but that's not always the case. drawings of the prelude or the aftermath can be so evocative, enticing, and really get the imagination going. i find myself wanting to draw more kissing, fondling, groping, edging, teasing, rubbing, fingering, licking, and other sexy activities that doesn't necessarily involve anything being thrust into anywhere. and as for what comes after i want to draw characters breathless and messy, panting together, cuddling and nuzzling, helping each other clean up, catching their breaths, perhaps some more teasing... you get the idea.

basically i want to make people pause, zone out and imagine what's going to happen next or what must have just happened. when i look at this drawing of na'im and qaragan i can almost rewind the scenario in my head, back to qaragan being on top of him, before the knot slipped out, before it swelled inside him in the first place-- and so on. it's just something i've been thinking about lately--i want to draw a wider variety of sexy activities, ranging all the way from the first initiating moment to characters taking a nap together after the deed is done. i've been thinking about doing a poll about it, inviting people to vote on and suggest different smutty activities or moments they want to see more of, but feel free to comment below if you want to chime in already!

// art + qaragan © me; na'im © kubi.