Catie Rowley

The Crossroads Space Station Swingers' Club

I was commissioned in 2024 by my friend and LARP author & GM July Pilowsky to draw a roster of aliens for their LARP (live action roleplay game) "The Crossroads Space Station Swingers' Club", which made its debut at the LARP convention Intercon W in February. They were the lead GM, of course, and I was their trusty assistant GM and also a character in the LARP as one of the hosts of the alien swingers' club, which was a lot of fun.

The game is set in a galaxy where many different sp...

Aximili, Normal Human Boy

I unearthed this old WIP of Ax from KA Applegate's Animorphs series yesterday, almost as seen in the third picture: with just the one finished bust of Ax on the left, and then half-finished inks of the other two sketches (plus a bonus human Aftran with a gay little haircut). I miss drawing Animorphs stuff and I liked the inks so far, so I finished up all three busts. I miss this flatter, more comic book-like style of coloring, too-- it's much faster than painting, and it's a departure from th...

Hot Pot

There's an artist that two friends of my parents had a few prints of hanging in their kitchen when I was a kid. I can't remember his name now, but I know I looked him up pretty recently... I have to find him again, because his artwork captivated me then and has stuck around in my imagination since. The prints in my parents' friends' kitchen showed a couple different scenes of vegetables with arms and legs: potatoes escaping from a shopping bag, and a group of vegetables lounging in a bowl of ...

Misty

Hi everyone! Thank you for being here. I hope you're all doing well!

I've started listening to the ttrpg podcast Critical Role at the urging of a friend, and Misty from the Age of Umbra campaign is one of my favorite characters so far. She's a mystical living statue (possessed statue?), and I pictured her with a very classical sculpture sort of appearance and proportions, especially since she's described as being very tall-- so naturally I felt inclined to paint her in a sort of art nou...

Matsue - assorted sketches

sketches of a few characters from a story set in 1880's Kyoto, Japan that's been on a low simmer in my brain, in one form or another, for like ten years. The shaded solo portrait is Matsue, the main character: the daughter and apprentice of a master carver of wood blocks for printmaking.

Cozy Morning

one of the last drawings of 2024! Yesterday morning was rainy... the perfect weather for staying in bed with the cat.

I haven't drawn in this sort of looser art style for a while, but it was nice to go back to it-- most of the pressure that I put on myself to get a drawing "looking right" isn't there when I draw like this. Maybe drawing more pictures like this one will help me break through the art block I've been struggling with this year.

Losing Color

ink and colored pencil

I've been struggling a lot since the US election. It's scary how quickly it feels like the color and hope have drained out of life. I want to bring people hope and comfort with my art, but in the face of what feel like much bigger problems and forces than I have any means of fighting, I haven't been able to focus much on art-- which makes me feel even worse, which just keeps the cycle of dark feelings going. I've been carrying this image in my brain for a few week...

Kate & Zack's Wedding Caviar

I had the sincere honor of designing and illustrating a custom label for an extra-large celebratory tin of caviar for the wedding of my friends Kate and Zack! They're both cheesemongers and fishmongers who own their own shop, and they buy caviar from Wulf's, so one of the managers at Wulf's had the lovely idea to create this caviar gift for them.

I think the sturgeon is an extremely underrated cute fish, and I was glad to get the chance to draw a couple of extra-cute ones in my art sty...

Chrysanthemum - Mountain Cottage

I drew these on an airplane! My usual sketchbook is completely full, so I grabbed a random blank notebook when leaving to fly to my parents' house for Thanksgiving, and I found that I really like the grid pattern on this one's pages.

These are some worldbuilding and visual development sketches for a short comic introducing Chrysanthemum, one of the characters from a much larger project: Sweet Pea's story. She was adopted as a tadpole (she's a member of a race of anthropomorphic axolotl ...

The Crossroads Space Station Swingers Club - Illustrations

"The various spacefaring species in the galaxy have only recently discovered one another’s existence. One of the clauses in the fragile treaty that arose was to establish space stations in neutral space where all species could meet, trade, and negotiate. Crossroads Space Station was one of these, founded twenty years ago. The swingers club is only a few years old, and it’s blazing new frontiers."
-Act I description

"The Crossroads Space Station Swingers Club" is a LARP m...

Fajitas & 'Ritas - Recipe Illustration

Hello everyone! I deeply apologize for having been away for so long. This year I pulled away from a lot of things that used to bring me happiness, including art; but I'm determined to fight through these dark feelings holding me back. Although, after the recent American election, pursuing happiness is going to be an even harder fight now than before, for myself and many other people.

Here is a recipe illustration that I did today for a friend of mine! I really miss drawing and painting ...

Traditional Commission - Henry

it's Henry!! This is a Valentine's Day commission for a friend of mine, of her boyfriend's dog Henry. She asked for traditional media instead of digital, so I went for ink and colored pencil. The paper is a bit too textured for colored pencil, but I'm still happy with how it came out-- and, most importantly, my friend is happy with the picture too.

I really like working in colored pencil, but it's definitely more high-stakes than digital... I was really missing the transform and lasso t...

fanart - Kofu and Kotatsu

one of my favorite blogs is Stray Cat J, run by the Japanese "landlady" of a formerly stray, flame-point siamese cat named Mr. J. A little while after taking in Mr. J, Landlady adopted a younger cat named Kofuku ("Little Luck"). They get along very well, but Kofuku is very mischievous and likes to tease Mr. J.

I've been wanting to do a drawing of both cats for a while, and was recently struck with inspiration after...

Painting Study - Car Wash Hot Soup

a painting from a photo I took in Vermont in July (visible on the left side in the process images)! I loved the big cloud and the signs on the side of the building: "CAR WASH/HOT SOUP".

The Locked Tomb - "Ultimate power-- and posters of my face."

"Why did you ascend to be a Lyctor?"
"Ultimate power-- and posters of my face."
Fair.

-Harrow The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

(Please click through all of the images to see the full process! There are a lot for this one!)

finally, this piece I've been "working on" since 2022 (sketched a year ago, let languish, and then finished over the last few weeks) is done! Ianthe Tridentarius is my favorite character in Tamsyn Muir's "The Locked Tomb" ...

New Year's Eve 2024

I did a little self-portrait for New Year's. I was home drawing instead of out partying because I caught covid in a Florida Wal-Mart last week! I hope all of you have had a safer and more festive holiday season than me.

Thank you all again for your patience and support in 2023!

Commission: Dani and Mia's Beach Day

(Dani: faun, they/them; Mia: goblin, she/her)

this very kind and patient person commissioned me for this piece back in JUNE... lol woops. It was nice to have a little piece of summer to work on in winter, but I'm glad it's finally in their hands.

Thank you guys very much for your patience, too! Freelance and personal art have both been going a bit slowly since I started my new day job. I hope I'll be able to make more time for those things soon.

Please click through all of t...

Commission - Yegege

another older finished DnD character commission appropriate for "Gnollvember"! This gal's name is Yegege, and she's s an accountant who also studies magic in a semi-secret organization.

Siwa Rusk Paper Doll

oh my god I just noticed this in my drafts? Hello?? lol if you follow me on twitter or tumblr you've already seen these, but I want them on my patreon page too! Look at my volus OC in more little outfits, please!

Commission - Lightning and Earth

Hi everyone! First of all, jeez, thank you so much for being patient with me these past few months-- settling into my new day job and routine has been a lot harder than I anticipated. I've had sort of a terrible mental block when it came to doing art or even posting art I'd already completed-- I felt so embarrassed about not having more updates that I procrastinated on posting any updates at all, which sounds contradictory but really is what my brain was doing.

I finished this commissio...

A message from Catie

Hi everyone! Thank you for your continued support on here. I’m sorry it’s been so quiet for the past month— I’ve started a new job! It’s not art-related (at least not all the time), but it’s interesting and a good steady income. Ideally I want to find a good balance of time and energy to be able to do regular freelance artwork alongside this day job, but I’ve been learning so much while getting settled into my new job that I’ve been feeling really tired out when I get home, so...

Mass Effect fanart - Siwa and Kesh

I drew a comic about two of my Mass Effect OCs the other day (among other ways to pass the time) while stuck in Chicago O'Hare Airport for 7 hours! This is the full resolution I drew the comic on my iPad at, if you'd like to just mash your face right into all those textures. The other image is the very rough sketch I did to get the layout and posing down! Even my "sketches" usually have rougher sketches that happen first...

2 AM Sketch Commissions, Part 2 of 2

the second half of the big batch of sketch commissions I took last week! Including a really special one commissioned as a present for the person who wrote the character of Anchor Root (and lots of other stuff) for Paizo's "Strength of Thousands" Pathfinder 2e Adventure Path-- that's her in the main image!

There's no real reason for the alternating gray and white backgrounds for these images, btw. I always put on a dark background layer while drawing so that a big default white lit-up ca...

2 AM Sketch Commissions, Part 1 of 2

HALF of a batch of recent sketch commissions! I'd write more but I'm cooking an egg

I gave people a choice of color for the lines & monochrome shading and lots of people asked for green!

Sketchbook - Go See A Star War

a couple studies of frames from Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Markers are SO stressful?? Especially when you don't have The Exact Right Colors to choose from. I'm trying to get better with them but they're a big challenge for my digital painting sensibilities. But that's what sketchbooks are for.

things used: Blick store-brand illustration markers, Copic markers, black micron pen

Sketchbook - hot pot friends and Meat Font

when I was really little, some friends of my parents' had a series of prints hung up in their kitchen of various realistically-illustrated vegetables with legs getting into misadventures. I was enthralled by them. Unsurprisingly, google is unhelpful when I google "vegetables legs art print" and variations thereof, so if I ever want to find out the name of the artist whose work has been haunting my subconscious since Bill Clinton was president, I'll probably have to ask my parents' friends dir...

Sketchbook - Bathroom Sink

a comic about having too many makeup tubes and things on my bathroom sink and what it feels like to accidentally start a domino effect and knock them all over...

Commission - Kriv the Goblin

a sketch page commission! These are a lot of fun. No WIP shots this time because.. it was sketches... so basically what you see is how things started, apart from shuffling the final sketches into this arrangement for the final image.

The commissioner had some specific things they wanted included, like the formal outfit on the bottom right and other costume/accessory details, all of which added a fun bit of extra challenge. He also gave me a ton of references for the character's appearan...

Rainy Day Sketching - Vermont

some sketches from today! Including some sophisticated and high-brow weed humor.

Mass Effect fanart - Tali, Hood Down

a piece of fanart I've been working on for a while (read: started months ago and put aside and finally dug back out this morning). I really loved the descriptions of quarians in Mass Effect 1 that made them sound almost like cyborgs, and was a bit disappointed when later games didn't lean harder into that idea. The way I draw Tali is still very humanoid, but incorporates more of the suit-as-life-support idea than her canon physical appearance.

The focus of this drawing is supposed to be...