kalahari

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (14)

The final page! It may not have been about the mangoes, but there's no reason to turn away a good find. Time to eat up!

Getting to explore Mazia and Malech with this little project has been a blast -- and at first it wasn't even meant to be a series! Thanks for taking this journey with me. Very happy I did something more with it and let these two have their fun. It's also been good to get some more grayscale work under my belt in case there's publication gigs out there that need such ma...

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (13)

The civets share a nice, deep climax, with Mazia being pretty vocal about it. At first I wasn't going to include an internal shot, but I'm glad I did -- it was way too fun! I love drawing both fluffy stuff and squishy stuff, so what more could I ask for? This leaves only one more panel to go, sadly!

Fun fact: the characteristic striped collar of African civets is thought to be a visual marker for where to bite during play-fighting. This lets the civets easily nip at each other's scruff ...

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (12)

Naked in the humid jungle with her favorite civet boy making rough, atavistic love to her . . . Mazia's basically in heaven. She very easily and enthusiastically enjoys the little pleasures in life, so naturally she's also the definition of 'happy sex'.

How a young civet manages to explore and indulge her sexuality so liberally without starting a family fairly early on requires some kind of explanation. While it feels a little lazy and derivative from a creative standpoint, an herbal bi...

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (11)

Mazia and Malech share some naked jungle love. The village may as well be a million miles away at this point, which means frisky civets can get as wild as they want!

Some interesting perspective issues here; it didn't come out looking right the first time . . . or the second . . . but maybe now it works? The next page is a more conservatively angled side view, but I don't think it'll be any less interesting.

"Like Wild Animals"

Thanks, KitsuneLegend for pointing out this piece wasn't in my high-res files! Somewhere along the way, the original scan got deleted and all I had was the FA version. Time to correct that.

While adjusting the scan, I tried an alternate color correction, something that more closely matched the warm, vibrant look I originally intended for this piece. So maybe call this a "Special Edition", but I won't be making a habit of it. I'm including this alt version in high resolution as well.

"Umber"

Lilly gave me an opportunity to draw one of her lovely cows (and there are a lot to choose from, so I picked my favorite). This was an interesting piece, not the least of which because I'm really rusty with my bovines, never mind udders! She's soft-spoken, hardworking, and loves tending to the crops. I only hope she doesn't snack on more than she brings home.

She also has a 2019-06-27 23:47:54 +0000 UTC View Post

"Staying the Night"

"Are you managing okay back there?"

The tuft of hair peaking from her bandanna gently bobbed as I found my target and pumped away. If there was any doubt in the extent of the shaman's invitation to relax and stay the night, it was dispelled when she rolled over on all fours under the pretense of finding another recondite manual of herbalism. But by this point, we both evolved other intentions.

Rather than waiting for an answer, she settled down on her generous chest and indulged a...

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (10)

I guess they're on the same page! No mangoes yet, but hopefully the expedition hasn't been totally fruitless.

June may be the month I finish up this little vignette -- I hope you're not sick of these civets just yet! I'm very interesting in exploring their village through some other scenes, almost certainly involving Topaz again.

"Vine Rider" (pencil and color)

Maia the kinkajou, surfing down that vine with impossible ease! I added some flat colors to the pencil work, but I'm still not sure if it really added to the picture -- let me know which you like better.

Kinkajous are a new subject for me. I love under-represented animals, and while drawing this I remembered another lesser-encountered procyonid from a while back. Not long after they were declared a separate species, I drew 2019-05-18 20:00:43 +0000 UTC View Post

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (9)

Finally, Malech's point of view.

Bending over AND lifting her tail? Real subtle, Mazia. But she knows it gets results.

Text and no-text versions included as always!

"Fraying Colors"

 Juno with some fun colors. She always kind of invites a more playful approach to coloring, I just had to choose a nice palette with strong hues. And I managed to fit in some of those Monstera leaves that are so popular these days.

Interestingly enough a few people mentioned this would make a good poster, so if you wanna try printing it out, go ahead! The resolution will only give you 300dpi up to about Letter size, but I've happily settled for lower resolution on posters ...

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (8)

How much of this is Mazia being really into this cool moth she just found, and how much that she just wanted to tease Malach with an obvious tail lift? Probably equal parts.

A bit of extra background (since I like to share than in the smaller circle that is Patreon) this was actually the first pose I drew for the entire series. I had the sketch of Mazia bending forward, giving quite the invitation, but the context wasn't there yet. As innocent as she might be wiggling her butt in the ai...

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (7)

Having both ditched their clothes in the spirit of a more natural mango-hunting experience, Mazia and Malech run deeper into the wilds of the forest. Just a transition piece, really, and the next one up is a little more engaging :)

Once again, Mazia gets to be her untamed, spunky self, and I love drawing her this way. She rarely puts on that deliberately seductive face, but I guess she has her own means of tempting civet boys to get in trouble.

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (6)

Just a couple civets, running through the jungle.

Really wanted to get a couple of running shots in, both as a nice transition and because I had to see Mazia in action! One more running scene to come before the tone shifts...

"In with the Tide"

Aleutia, the long-tailed weasel, is prone to spending large amounts of time exploring the coast. I drew this piece for her over the past couple weeks, starting with a digital sketch and color thumbnail before drawing it out on 9x12" paper and coloring the whole thing in marker.

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (5)

A very natural Mazia.

Since her first appearance, Mazia's figure has changed a bit. This is the first time in a while I've done a full-frontal of the civet girl, and I'm very happy to call this her 'canon' figure at this age. She's noticeably stockier than Topaz; a major part of that is species, since I want to adjust any given character's figure to suit what's typical of that animal, so a genet will tend to be slimmer, an African civet heavier.

Now the question is, will Malech jo...

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (4)

Now you know she's serious.

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (3)

It's a tropical rain forest, so I mean, of course she gets a little stuffy. This is just fine with Malech.

This little tear across the frame is about as close to a traditional comic as I'll probably get in this series, since I want each of these panels to kind of stand on their own. Text and no-text versions attached!

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (2)

Continuing on . . .

Only the one file for this page since there's no text. But Mazia did succeed in rousing Malech, so now they're off for their little adventure. This is sure to be a fruitful experience for him, but maybe not in the most literal sense . . .

"It's Not About the Mangoes" (1)

Mazia the civet has been one of my favorite characters to draw for a long time, being as positive and playful as she is. So I'm working on a small series to give her some more attention and show just what happens when she goes off mango hunting with her favorite boy civet . . .

For this first page I've included the original hand-written text (before I decided to go with speech bubbles) and the no-text version. I've got multiple pages getting worked on at the same time, and once I've cau...

"Muted Forest"

I drew this earlier in the month as a vehicle for evaluating Kal's design, which has been essentially unchanged (pending revision) since 2013. He was a pretty standard red fox at the time, and under exigent circumstances I adjusted his design enough so that he could stand out from a crowd. Now I want to go back and tackle his design in a more informed way. Some characters just come out 'right' the first time, and others need a little work :P

Art Batch (2018)

(repost because Patreon's slow tonight and I got an upload error)

Here's the full collection for the past year in three zip files! (because Patreon doesn't allow attachments over 200MB -- if there's a better way, let me know)The image files for every previous year are now also zipped for easier download. Here are the links:

• 2017 
• 2018-12-31 23:54:57 +0000 UTC View Post

"Sanctuary"

Tucked away in a far corner of the forest. The inspiration for this came about while arting with Katy (who has her own Patreon). The background is a mix of inkwash and Copic marker pigment, the foreground being pen and marker. When I tried to do the background wash the first time, it wasn't blending nicely at all, so I scrapped that and did mixed media for safer results.

"Cozy Up"

JakeRabbit on FA won the auction for this charity YCH, which means $350 went to the ASPCA! This is now the 7th year I've done a holiday charity piece -- I unfortunately missed last year due to personal issues that cropped up around that time.

Only a couple more posts left until we begin the new year!

"Subjects of Interest"

Only a few days left to post the last of the year's art, so expect more soon!

Here's the continuation of the story, this evening shared between a fox and bear in a very cozy home-den. I imagine two or three more installments will finish up this little story.

The shaman made for easy company, sharing stories of a few favorite recipes and hinting at just how much luck went into discovering them. To look her in the face I had to incline my eyes quite a bit, and feeling the potenc...