arboret

crowlets commission timelapse

this sprite was such a challenge for my very-stressed-about-moving brain at the end of march... but I love this design and the vibe they wanted so I persevered (through the challenge I made for myself)

I get through a lot of audiobooks while I'm working so I thought it might be fun to make note of them when I post timelapses - I listened to most of the left hand of darkness while working on this one. I think the color scheme ended up fitting for that book actually, being set on an alien arctic planet, with contrasting greys and multi-colored lighting...

recent designs & wip

first is the finished pouflon design for kendall from march, then a dragon design I sketched ages ago and finished up recently that I'll be putting up as a donation adopt for gaza, and then the next few zodiac themed designs that are taking so long I guess each batch will be a yearly release lol... first is taurus, then gemini, and the wip for aries. I might actually make a different design for gemini more closely based on mythological themes for the sign like the rest in the series and sell the kitty design separately.

february to april sprites timelapse

I worked on some of these so long ago that watching the timelapse was new and surprising for me like huh... interesting choices...

mysweetestrose commission timelapse

another fun nature themed portrait! I used my own photo of a local moorland for the background of this one.

march & april sketches

finally decided on ćiro's colors! there's some sketches of her and her new pet rat (named thimblerig) courtesy of her grandpa, a mage with a strong affinity with rats. then her and briar, some various judi expressions, a random donkey furry and some rat studies. I gave them pointed ears as a joke- in our headworld there's a theme of rats being almost on par with humans, and all the humans have pointed ears, so naturally.......

I've been super busy with moving- it's taking forever and has been super stressful but we should be fully moved into the new place next week. I'm really looking forward to it because we've been in our current flat (a very small one bed place) for 3 and a half years and we've had a rat infestation in the bedroom ceiling for 2 of those years, amongst other issues lol. really hoping that with less rats and my own bedroom I'll be able to draw more (:>

clovercoin commission timelapse

always love drawing ungulates. there were some tricky small details in this one but got there in the end!

tofupixel commission timelapse

this was a fun commission for tofu's pixel art discord server! the whole thing came together faster than I expected.. I really want to do more pixel art foliage.

endtemple commission timelapse

went with a more lineless/painterly approach to this one! sometimes these turn out better with bold lines and sometimes they're better lineless and this is still a mystery to me.

misswhiteart commission timelapse

I redid the lighting in this one so many times. I blame it all on purple........ I have a harder time in general working with cooler colors than warmer ones.

february & march commissions & sketches

a finished design commission for inneedofausername (deviantart), portrait sketches for tofupixel (twitter) & endtemple (discord), big sprite sketches for clovercoin (deviantart) & crowlets (twitter), and a wip of a design commission for kendall! I've been saving a lot of timelapses so I'll have a bunch of those to post later!

jester & dragon

this is a birthday present for my friend's birthday next week, briar is their character! ćiro's outfit colors were supposed to be temporary but I still haven't figured them out so she's just going to have to deal with them for now.

I went through a bunch of sketches for this piece so I thought I'd go through them here-

this was my original concept for this piece- she was going to be booping briar on the nose with her bunny wand, which would have been adorable, but I wanted to focus more on the idea of her balancing and jumping on him like he's a jungle gym instead. also he has six wings and I wanted to draw all of them and couldn't fit them in here.

so I sketched this instead, but some parts of it were feeling kind of flat to me... so I tried a trick I use when my sketches seem too flat-

I imagined I could sort of tilt the whole thing, like I moved the camera up and above them a bit, and did a really rough sketch of that.

then another sketch working with the new angle, except on some of briar's coils at the end where I ended up preferring the first sketch. I think briar is going to eat ćiro in this one

then another more refined sketch on top of that! I ended up liking the look of this sketch under the lines in the finished piece so I kept it in and erased a couple spots to clean them up.

more february sketches

woe, ćiro upon ye... trying to figure out her colors but I'm not sure what direction to go in yet. also featuring a snuggly hug with wyn while I was testing my dying fineliner pens and some briars in his biggest wiggly worm form!

february commissions & wips

first is an experimental chibi for fairytopia on toyhouse, then a big sprite made with a limited palette to be a cross stitch for vagabonddiesel on furaffinity, a wip of a big sprite for mwhiteart on twitter, and a sketch for the baby form of a design I'm working on for inneedofausername on deviantart!

departedglories commission timelapse

this piece got me thinking about exposure, which I'd really like to study and experiment with more... there's a great breakdown of it in devin korwin's creative fundamentals. 

february sketches

first are some sketches for a chibi commission- trying to maximize the small and cute factors.......
then some sketches of ćiro- I read through all of dungeon meshi recently (loved it) and wanted to mess around with giving ćiro thistle's hairstyle since they are both cute little jesters. the rest are call doodles of briar, judi, and ellie!

january sprites timelapse 2

some more timelapses from other sprites I did this month!

pouflon design process

I wanted to show the design process of the taurus themed adopt I've been trying to work on... forever, but I've really struggled with that design and restarted it once already so I don't think I could show a coherent process for it haha. it's usually more straightforward with design commissions- I was aiming to only take pixel art commissions this month, but kendall had a custom pouflon in mind with a special personal meaning to them that I wanted to work on anyway, so I figured I would save some process shots from it instead. they wrote a bit of their own story behind the meaning of this pouf:

"I found I lost my hearing in 2022 at the age of 22. I’ve lost about 70-80% in both ears and after years of searching for an answer I was told I’ll never get one. I was told to just deal. It’s been a long journey full of challenges but found that it doesn’t define who I am! Just motivates me to work harder and be my own advocate! I was searching for a design that represented this journey and I super appreciate Ronnie taking this on for me"

they also wanted this pouflon to represent the conflict between hope and peace vs sorrow and struggle, a few colors they had in mind, and unicorn traits including the horn and fetlocks. I looked at the last unicorn for inspiration, taking some of that style for her longer fur. I thought some draconic traits like the wings and tail could contrast the unicorn traits and help represent the theme of duality... I also intended the pose to be hopeful, rearing back in a gentle triumph, but her head turned back rather than charging ahead, kind of introspective. it's hard to come up with poses sometimes when I've worked on so many pouflons, so having a solid theme to base them around helps a lot!

going into the colors, my first impressions for the design were overall dark with a night sky feel, representing the sorrow side, and a lighter head and mane like a sunrise breaking through, representing the hope side. most of these are placeholder colors but I knew I wanted the head to be simple, cream and tan and almost monochromatic, to try to give a feeling of peace and calm.

I added some purples and blues for more of a night sky feeling- added the lighter blues at the ends of the design to try to evoke a lighter night sky there, like early morning, as if the darkest part in the middle is a transition rather than the end. but these still felt like flat placeholder colors to me, so I went looking for sky pictures to reference...

I was unexpectedly drawn to this picture I found.

I thought the dark blue/green would be a much more interesting base color so! I often switch the lineart off to check on the colors since it's easier for me to see and judge them that way.

kendall included some previous pouflon designs I'd done that they liked, and they wanted some wavy piebald markings- I was actually aiming to have these patches be like slices of a clear morning sky against the night sky more than clouds, but I couldn't quite get the shapes right and they ended up like clouds anyway. but it works either way I think haha.

cleaned up the clouds, added more stars and some edits requested by kendall!

they wanted the colors adjusted to be lighter and more pastel- I liked the dark version but I'm really into how the lighter colors turned out.

and here's the final version with the last few edits kendall wanted!

january sketches

first up is the sketch for a pouflon design commission I'm working on- I saved a bunch of progress shots while I've worked on the design, so if it's done in time I'll be posting them next week!

then there's some rough sketches for a chibi I want to do of my unicorn character fable! I want to condense/simplify the proportions of my chibi commissions a bit so trying to work that out here.

then some character exploration doodles of wyn and sabs' new kid ćiro (she/they) (yay for them 🎉) I'm still working her out but she is very fun to draw in puffy pants! the big and small bunny-eared dragons are the same guy, a dragon spirit named briar, and technically ćiro's cousin. I'd love to explain the characters from this shared headworld better but we blow it up every couple months so it's hard to say anything definitive LOL it's a messy thing on purpose for us to have fun with.

january sprites timelapse

some of the sprites I've done so far this month, for key & skeleton! thank you both again! ❤️

december drawings

I wanted to take a big break from drawing last month but ... I drew anyway. some of these are from november though!
the first is a finished up sketch of wyn and sabs, which I tried a couple new things with- I remembered I have a great marker brush in clip studio that I want to mess with more later... the next three are doodles of my characters and my friends' characters, then some rough colors for that boar character and a couple creatures.

november commissions + taking a break for december

most of the commissions I worked on this month were pixel art that I've already posted, and the rest were these three- a fullbody piece for deuyr4 on twitter, a character design for quailtea on twitter, and a wereform design for kali-naan on deviantart for their pouflon! 

I'll be taking a break from commissions and posting here for december so I paused billing for next month. just want to say a huge thank you to all of my patrons! ❤️ I've been in a very low place for the last year and the state of social media is not helping at all lol, so I seriously really appreciate the support. I haven't done as much here yet as I wanted to... and I'm not sure when I'll feel well enough to work on that, but I'll definitely keep up the weekly posting as I've been doing after december. I hope everyone has a good holiday season!

october & november sprites timelapse

timelapses from a few of the sprites I did this month and last month!

sacchim commission timelapse

sometimes there are interesting divides between my regular artwork and pixel artwork owing to the nature of both mediums- for example I was actually excited to work on this portrait because of the modern city buildings in the background and I hope I never have to draw a background full of those outside of pixel art 🙏

goldspill commission timelapse

tried something new with the underwater light effect in this one!

commission wip + sketches

progress on this commission has been really slow but finally getting somewhere I think! the sketches include some boar studies, two furry character ideas I've been kicking around (earth grunge boar and vampire bunny) and kirie just being herself.

jurassiq commission timelapse

this one was nice and relaxing to work on! 

september & october commissions + wip

small sprites from july to october, pixel portrait for biolucent on twitter, big sprite for ophanimon on tumblr, character design for ellisgoats on twitter, and the sketch for the fullbody commission I'm working on right now!

mercuriel-art commission timelapse

I had strong cool lighting in mind for this piece that didn't work out at all until I slapped a warm overlay on at the end... which is typical for me, I really struggle to work with cool colors haha. I'd really love to do more forest backgrounds for pixel portraits, foliage in pixel art is so satisfying (mushrooms specifically always turn out great too)

anoddcryptid commission timelapse

I wanted to try more dramatic lighting than I normally do with my big sprites for this one- usually I pick colors by hand but with more complex characters like this it takes too long, so I used two layers set to soft light with a light orange color. I liked how the highlights on the glasses and eyes turned out!

oatchi and the pikmen

I put off working on this for weeks because I was intimidated by how many pikmin I drew LOL
I have another pikmin fanart idea I've been sitting on for actual years and now that oatchi exists I can add him too... I took the perfect reference picture of some plants behind my flat so hopefully I can find the time to finally sketch it!