arboret

oleaspur commission timelapse

enjoyed the colors in this one (:

heartleaved commission timelapse

I really enjoy doing pixel art commissions of pets! the fur texture was particularly fun to figure out in this one.

lion guardant

I've been struggling with motivation to work on personal art and also been really frustrated with my regular workflow, so, after my long break last month I decided to try working on something totally different!

this is my plush lion I recently bought that I'm a little obsessed with, and the background is based on the pattern of my bedsheets. when my roommate and I were sick last month we isolated from each other so this lion and bedsheet were my whole world for 3 weeks- thought it might be healing or something to draw them together haha.

as for the process, my plan was to do everything different to my usual workflow to make this hopefully refreshing and fun... I sketched as I worked from left to right and colored everything in by hand instead of using the fill tool. I'm sure there's a billion tangents I didn't want to go back and nitpick, but the goal here was just to let loose so! I am going to think about how to change up my coloring process like this going forward though, since it's usually my least favorite part.

luckies commission timelapse

finally catching up with my commissions from last month! I had fun with the fur and blood with this one hehe (:

pixels & sketches

I'm back! and mostly doing okay after covid other than some fatigue and brain fog so I'm trying to take it very easy, or as much as I can with the state of things lol. I didn't draw that much while I was sick, so most of these are from just before and after. this sketch dump includes:

pixel art tiles of judi, ellie, hal, briar, aery, & hess, inspired by medieval tiles; pokemon style sprites of aery and hess; drawings of hal; drawings of the dragon kids; and then development sketches for the newest dragon kid named riven!

aery and hess's designs came to me immediately but I had a vaguer idea for riven so I had to do some exploring- I originally wanted him to be a wyvern with nargacuga in mind, but while we were rewatching the movie damsel (on netflix- probably a bit obscure but it's great) I drew the second page of sketches and tried out a more general four legged dragon build instead. I thought his design was missing something until my roommate suggested a frog-like mouth for him to go with his crested newt inspiration and that was basically the finishing touch haha. I'm still getting to know him as a character but he is quite weird and silly so far...

taking a break this month

I'm taking a break from posting here for the rest of the month because my roommate and I caught covid over the weekend- I'm taking the time to take care of them and rest. I'll hopefully be back to posting next month. thank you all for your support <3

recent commissions

mostly design commissions from last month- a pouf for buttermaster (deviantart), vespire for inneedofausername (deviantart) & mantibab for badgerteethh (deviantart), plus a youtube thumbnail I'm still working on for simplysnaps! which I've been taking my time with and wrestling hard with the colors... color and light a guide for the realistic painter by james gurney, save me...

kandikatze commission timelapse

what a distinguished gentleman...

fursona & sphinx sketches

since remmy mentioned my old seal fursona last month I thought it'd be fun to share some of the redesigns I've been playing around with of my other old fursonas! the sketches of my dragon fursona are a couple years old but I still think the frogmouth bird idea for their head is funny. some of the lion fursona sketches are a little old too but some are newer since I come back to them often.

I've also been thinking about making a sphinx character so I've been doodling random sphinxes and trying to work out an interesting way to draw them... I've been looking at medieval art specifically for some of the cool shapes of the animals, like the curled wings and very decorative tails, for general inspiration and I think I'm getting somewhere combining that with sphinxes...

anguiculus commission process

this was a very peaceful and meditative commission to work on! I made a gif of the process screenshots I took-

I listened to a lot of year of the griffin by diana wynne jones while I worked on this, which was great like all of her books I've read so far, though I think I prefer the book that came before it, dark lord of derkholm- partially because the multi-species family (human wizard parents with human kids and griffin kids) was so fun and sweet and inspired me to make hess and aery!

may to august sprites timelapse

quite a span of time covered in this batch of sprites! I always have a lot of fun doing pixels of people's pets like the dog here, need to do more examples of those...

some traditional drawings

two recent traditional drawings I did for my roommate's family- the first is their dad's cat siggy with prismacolor markers, and the second is a random bunny pic for their grandma done with prismacolor pencils. these were both really fun to draw even though I had to fight to the death with my markers to squeeze the last of the color out of some of them... I've had them for more than ten years and they were pre-owned when I got them so I'm surprised they're still kicking!

zodiac designs part 2

they are finally finished...!! I decided to include both gemini designs in the same batch since that's on brand for gemini anyway- one is based more on gemini vibes (a fickle fae chimera with two faces) and the other is based on mythological themes like the rest of the designs so far (the horsemanship associations of castor and pollux and their origins as the indo-european horse twins, and st. elmo's fire and lightning).

I didn't include the inspiration images for the first gemini design and taurus last time I posted them, so I included that and some design progress screenshots of the two gemini designs!

june to august sketches

one billion oc sketches upon ye...! much to explain here so I will ramble a bit:

first are some drawings of ćiro and briar, who I'm pretty sure I've mentioned are cousins, but act more like siblings. ćiro is actually a few years older than briar but because he's a dragon he doesn't age like humans do and he gets quite big quite fast (and ćiro is very envious of this)

the next two are me messing around with the idea of ćiro having an enchanted dragon mask based on basically her dragon persona that she roleplays as with briar... she might be able to take on that dragon form, but only in dreams, where she will inevitably cause problems. I'm settled on the design yet but I do think the wings are cool...

then there's two new characters I made at the end of june/start of july, who are briar's younger sisters! there's aeronwy (the seal) and hesper (the dolphin/bird/finfin creature) and they are both also dragons which seem to have a lot of variety in this world haha. don't worry about why they look so different <3 aery is actually based on what her human dad would look like as a dragon and hess... was originally going to be more of a wyrm like briar but we were briefly obsessed with finfin as a group and watched the lugia movie again, so that's why she looks like that.

aery is very feminine, self-assured, and unshakably positive- she has an almost unnerving attitude of calm contentment. hess is the opposite as a tomboy who puts up a standoffish front to mask how sensitive and insecure she is. she also loves to play football with her big bird feet.

(the drawing of aery with the fish in her mouth is based on this video)

the second to last are some drawings of them with their daddies, their human forms, and the siblings as tiny babies. the very last are some character concepts for another dragon in this world that I probably won't end up using but might save to be recycled for something else!

sothasil artfight attack timelapse

I recommend slowing this one down a bit since it goes so fast... which does reflect how I absolutely blasted through most of this drawing in one morning last month haha. I wish I had recorded the sketching part of this too, it was a fun challenge trying to get that feeling of the twist that cats do when they're realigning in the air to land on all fours!

I did something a bit new with this one by accident and I want to experiment with it more later- I left the sketch in like I did with the briar and ćiro drawing from a few months ago since it was relatively clean, but I put the lighting layer above the lines layer and below the sketch layer, so in the lit areas the lineart is lighter and more of the sketch is apparent... it's a bit subtle in this piece but I'm curious about how it'd look in another drawing!

artfight part 2

here's the rest of the pieces I did for artfight! I was not expecting to get this many done... I kind of went ape... a lot happened this month and I threw myself into artfight to cope, but I had a lot of fun with it and loosened up quite a bit! it's a tough choice to not take commissions for a month and I'm really lucky I can do that at all, but I usually feel so artistically refreshed by artfight that I think it's worth it... I uh... will just have to actually finish those zodiac designs now like I wanted to last month haha

the oc appreciation of artfight really inspired me this year to update my ocs toyhouse pages and put more info up about them so I'll be working on that... I have some doodles piling up so I'll be posting them soon!

keydemon commission process - shading

here's the last bit I recorded of this commission of some of the shading! at this point the colors were actually a bit lighter/more pastel than they showed in the video, but I liked how they looked here so I tweaked the whole thing darker/more vivid after this.

keydemon commission process - lines

20 whole minutes of live lineart action! I split this from the rest of the last video because I thought 30 minutes straight might be too long but then again I guess I could just post a whole half hour video and you can watch as much as you want? I thought about speeding this up too but you can do that through the playback speed settings if you want to make me go fast 🏃

also, just curious- do you guys prefer these with or without music? I did actually record this to my very cool ghibli lofi soundcloud playlist but then I wasn't sure if the audio would be ok to include so I took it out, but I guess it might be ok? if that sounds nice to you let me know (:

keydemon commission process - sketching

I recorded quite a bit of this fullbody commission for keydemon from last month, so here's some of the sketching part! this is the second thing I recorded after that pouflon test video so I do go off the bottom of the frame a bit but I'm trying to watch that in later recordings... might buy one of those gooseneck phone holders so I can align it better since I like making these!

artfight part 1

halfway through artfight...!! haven't drawn as much as I would've liked but I'm happy with the fullbody drawings I did! I'm going to try to do different kinds of drawings for my next attacks, like headshots and such...

pokemew2 commission timelapse

this guy is such a classic dragon I thought he'd make a great big sprite! I've been on a big dragon kick lately. need to draw more dragons 🗣️

trotts commission timelapse

this design is so cute... tried to get a good sense of depth with this one!

fluffyfenn commission timelapse

I drew a fullybody commission of this character a few years ago- it was fun to do pixel art of him this time!

I listened to the darkest part of the forest by holly black while working on this and I think some of the young adult vibe did stick to it haha. I didn't read much YA as a kid but I've been reading through some lately, partially as research for ćiro's character... and I really liked the cruel prince series. cardan was a meowmeow to me.

plushcercius commission timelapse

this big sprite is a bit smaller than usual since the commissioner wants to make it into a cross stitch- they've already done one of a previous commission I did for them that turned out amazing!

may & june commissions

here's the finished converted design commission for inneedofausername (deviantart), big sprites for trotts (discord), fluffyfenn (furaffinity), plushcercius (twitter), & pokemew2 (twitter), a pixel portrait for kibbowle (twitter) & the sketch for a fullbody commission for key! I'll be posting the timelapses for the pixel commissions later!

lineart test vid

since I have a better desk set up now I thought it might be fun to try recording my Actual Hand drawing! please excuse my cracked ipad screen and three mysterious purple dots from my phone's camera <3 if I do more of these I'll try to adjust my easel to a shallower angle so it's not as tilted. let me know if you'd want to see more!

for helioangel who asked about my brush settings- this is the brush I use for all my sketching & lineart!

may & june sketches

since we moved in april I've been so occupied with managing the new place that I haven't been drawing much outside of commissions... but my workspace is a billion times nicer than before (right by the window in the sun all morning- for the last 3 years I worked in a dark corner 20 feet from a window lol) so hopefully when things are finally settled I can draw more <3

these sketches include some explorations of older ciro, drawings of her uncle kosmy (owned by my friend- he was a human and turned into a dragon god 👍), ciro and kos from two scenes we roleplayed, a wip of wyn's new reference I hope I get done before artfight, a new character I made for the same headworld who is a manticore god of ambition (and his inspiration moodboard), and a sketch for a design conversion commission, turning my aquarius design into a pouflon!

oleaspur commission timelapse

my lovely rubber tree modeled for the plant in this piece and I modeled for the guy. I listened to the whole audiobook for carmilla while I worked on it, which was genuinely creepy and darkly sapphic... 👍

morihart13 commission timelapse

the colors and background of this one were a challenge...! been trying to pay more attention to lighting in my portraits and treat them more like paintings.

endtemple commission timelapse

this one was sooo fun to work on. the reflective armor and colors were both inspired by the knight of the flowers-