November went by ungodly quick, and it’s already the 6th of December somehow, as of writing this. But whatever, it’s definitely not the latest I’ve been,,,

Have some doodles to tide us over through the most festive month of the year, aw yiss.

Occasionally I feel the urge to draw piggos. Here’s some piggos I sketched while warming up sometime in November. Stuff like this is always welcome because it means I actually have pictures I can send to my grandparents to prove I am indeed still drawing. It’s also super fun because it allows me to use my fiddly but pretty brushes, like my watercolour brush, because colouring a fluffy potato is dead easy.

I’m pleased with how these lil lads turned out, in any case. It was an experiment in loose, quick sketching, and I’m pleased with the results. I wanted them to look animated and lively, which I think worked especially well in that top sketch. Both very much in my comfort zone and totally out of it. Fun stuff~

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More watercolour brush! But a completely different subject, too. Something inspired by one of Cammy’s stories from around this time two years ago, The Observer. I definitely recommend reading it if you haven’t already. The idea behind this particular doodle was envisioning where they might be around Christmas the year after they met in this scene. Something soft and delicate and lovey in a spergy way.

I’m pretty pleased with how this turned out, especially because the framing I chose ended up being surprisingly challenging. I’d never drawn these characters from the back before, so it was an interesting experiment. I could point out the areas I’m not happy with, but I feel that wouldn’t be getting into the festive spirit,,,

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More pennyverse~

So, Gonzo was first drawn in June of 2019, more than two years ago. His original design was based on the brown bunnies in Minecraft, as Cammy got one accidentally stuck in his garden on a group server we had. We ended up naming him Gonzo, making a bunch of jokes about him smoking weef, and getting attached. So, I drew him up as a Pennyverse character. Here’s the original for those who haven’t seen the lad.

(Click it to see it bigger)

Now, his personality has changed a lot since then. Like a crazy amount. He used to be a paranoid, frazzled drug addict living in the woods, basically. Now he’s not drug addled or particularly frazzled, he’s just a little kooky. His fascination with aliens and cryptids remains though.

While making a drawing that I can’t yet show anyone, I realised that his markings suck, at least compared to a more recently designed character, Calhoun. I decided it was time for a redesign. I smoothed out his markings, added more of them, and made his colours warmer and his fur fluffier. I’m happy with how it turned out, I think the paler snout markings help shape his face and give him more shape, and the arm markings look less like gloves.

Good times, good boy.

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And now for something completely different!

I’m not sure if I’ve posted this anywhere, but I sure did save it as a png, so I must have intended to at least. It’s a very basic, uncoloured sketch of an older Daf, with his girlfriend whom I have not named yet because I suck at names. My dude discovers women at like 25, god bless. I think it’s a cute sketch, I might colour it sometime if I have the time. I’ll have to figure out what the hell Dai is doing with his arms though, he’s looking kinda strange currently.

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From Pennyverse to Wyn’s World to Pinede!

The story behind this one is that I had a dream one night about some random nonsense, but within that nonsense was a yellow fox girl. I think in the context of the dream, she was someone’s OC, but obviously that person within my dream does not actually exist, so I took the design. I then doodled her a bit, showed her to Cammy. He wanted to see her in Pinede, so I decided to doodle her a bit more, but in an anthro style that was more suited to Pinede. I drew her in her wandering gear, as well as in some sleep wear, because why not~

She hasn’t got a name yet, and I haven’t drawn her since, but she’s cute and I’m happy with these sketches, they came out real solid, I think. And Cammy likes her, so win-win :3c

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One last drawing for this here November post! Two more currently unnamed characters, this time in the Pennyverse. I hadn’t drawn them in a long while, so they were deserving of another go. Chinchilla girl and pine marten girl, lesbiabs. I’ve decided that chinchilla girl works in Apricot Bay’s big, ancient library, enjoying the peaceful, slow workdays, and pine marten girl likes to think of herself as a bit of a rebel. Of course, she’s a softie at heart, all of my OCs tend to be~

I used my pencil brush again for this one, it’s a firm favourite of mine at the moment. Produces these really soft, lovely lines that while a bit more effort to colour, do give me some really nice results. I’m happy with how this doodle turned out, though there’s bits and pieces I’d like to fix if I were to draw it again.

In any case, good lads. I hope to work more with them and figure out more of their characters (and their names,,) as time goes on.

And that’s it for November! Onto December and many festive doodles, most likely,,

I’m slipping again! Nuuuuu

This was a pretty damn busy month overall, feels good. Feels like I’m getting somewhere with my art again. Hoping to continue that into November! For now though, here’s a few favourites from October :>

Starting off with something from pretty early in the month, a lil headshot of a pretty new face! As I mentioned in the previous art blog entry, Cammy and I have been pondering the idea of his sona having some transformational powers, the ability to turn into different species, while still retaining his colours and general bouf. Once again, I drew his wolfie form :3c

This piece was heavily inspired by a lot of stuff I’ve seen on one of my many Yerf binges, specifically a style where artists inked and coloured traditionally and then added effects and a background digitally. This was all obviously done digitally, but I’m pretty pleased with the results. Super glowy and warm, and he even used it as an icon for a bit~

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Another new face! I have no willpower and I wanted to see an otter Cammy real bad, so I sketched one,, Big 90s glasses because I still had a Yerf fixation going on…

Cammy decided that each of the different species of Cammy should have a slightly different personality, though all true to the real boy. Otter Cammy’s a bit more of a dweeb than badger Cammy, more spergy and stimmy, and is always ready to jump into the nearest body of water. This means that nearly every time you meet him, his hair’s still drying off,,,

He’s also adorable, but that goes for all of them,,,

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More otter Cammy! He and Caby making the most of the fact they’re both aquatic mammals and swimming together. I had a vision in my head that had to be drawn, even though the general aesthetic is extremely out of season,, But I couldn’t have these two swimming in frigid, wintery waters,,,

Once again, highly inspired by Yerf and old digital art in general, so I used a lot of airbrush on this one. I used three brushes with this, a really lovely inky brush for lining (that I edited my pressure controls for, a risky move that paid off, bless), the plain gpen for the flat colours, and an airbrush with pressure control for the shading and background. Very very pleased with this one.

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And on the subject of changing faces… Cammy’s been pondering for a bit what mari would be if he wasn’t a flareon, and the general consensus is he’d be a pomeranian, which I very much agree with,,, Recently that discussion point came up again, and I ended up wanting to draw him as one, and thus I did :3c

He’s still super floofy, and he kept his vaporwave glasses and general orange tones, though not quite as vibrant. And of course, he kept his smug and sassy attitude,,

Other than in this one other drawing I did to act as a sprite in a recent stream of his, in that one he’s just a doof,,

(Oh, and in this form, his name is marf >:3c)

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Now here’s something exclusive to the blog~ :3c

Before we decided that the stream sprite should be pom marf, and because I was experiencing some insomnia, I spent an hour or two after Cammy had gone to bed drawing a little halloween-y mari to be a potential stream sprite. It’s a simple concept, a flareon with bat wings and little spikey teefs. One of those things that started as a doodle, and then felt like I should line it a bit, soI lined it,,, and then I coloured it,,, and then it was done! Oops,,

Of course, this didn’t end up getting used, and then in the general hustle and bustle of life, forgot to even show it to him,, Ah well, he gets to see it now :3c

I also made a little alternate headshot version with different wings, because why not?~

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Another exclusive, though not quite as exciting, have a little doodle I did while testing out the lovely, inky brush that i ended up using in that otter Cammy pic. I discovered it goes very well with my watercolour brush, it’s a combo I must use again at some point,,

For now though, enjoy the green cat gal~

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One more as a bonus, because this has been a busy old month and I didn’t wanna leave this one out,, A gay little doodle I did for Cammy of our sonas cuddling while he plays something on his DSi. The sketch was originally in daytime clothes, but we were feeling comfy and sleepy, so I switched it to pyjamas before lining :3

It’s in a lining style I don’t use very often anymore, so it was nice to play around with it again, and it’s always nice to draw us together~

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Thas it for this month’s art blog post, apologies if it’s a bit more freeform than usual, I haven’t been up to writing recently. But I didn’t want to leave this any longer, so I just winged it. Thanku byeeee

I’m writing this while my right hand is wrapped in bandages after a rogue blender attacked me. Kept all my digits, so I might as well still work on this blogpost before I forget.

September was a pretty productive month, and I’ve been feeling more confident with my art, which is nice. Here is a handful of pieces to show you a quick overview, as usual~

Starting simple, a quick and messy Eloise sketch I drew sometime near the start of the month. A while back I found a nice, soft pencil brush for Clip Studio, which I had been using on my laptop a bunch. Recently, however, I discovered a whole new dimension to the brush, as it turns out it supports a new feature Clip Studio introduced recently, which is the ability to tilt the brush to get a different texture. This brush, if you tilt it on a tablet that supports this action, makes a thicker, lighter brush, imitating using the side of the pencil when drawing traditionally.

I discovered this fun little detail after I transferred the brush over to my copy of Clip Studio on my pc, as my tablet over there supports tilting. This makes the brush so much fun to use, so I became a little obsessed with it,,, Worth it, though, as you can see from the results above. It was sketched out with that pencil brush, and coloured with my trusty watercolor brush.

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Been on a bit of a MLP kick recently, a mixture of nostalgia for G3, and a general love of the aesthetic of G1. So, after seeing scans of a favourite MLP picture book from my childhood, ‘Wishes Do Come True’, I decided to draw these two favourites of mine! The pink horse is called Sky Wishes, and the white horse is Star Catcher.

I used my usual retro toon method of a good, inky brush, flat colours, and a background that took far more effort than anything else in the picture. I had a bunch of fun with this one though, deciding to just use abstract colours, shapes and pretty clouds instead of my usual nature scenes. Very pleased with how it turned out, and it did well online, so double win~

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Well here’s a face we haven’t seen in a while! I realised this month that the reason I wasn’t drawing Kapy at all was because I wasn’t happy with her design. It had never been particularly stable, no one knew how to draw her, and I was gradually coming to the conclusion that I found her colours quite ugly. Every other sona of mine had been redesigned to some extent, even Caby, so it was definitely Kapy’s turn.

I made her colours warmer and softer, and made her white markings cover more of her body, as well as help smooth out the gradient by using the lighter orange as stripes as well. I also hope the face remains a bit more consistent, as that was always the biggest issue before. No one, including me, could get it right,,

Also! Plushie form, because they’re always good and adorable,,

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It was a certain lynx/snake/bori boy’s birthday this month, and I always like to make an illustration to celebrate a friend’s birthday, so this year I made this for him! From left to right you have the neopetsonas of dcb, Borb, me, Cammy and mon, celebrating with party hats and a big ‘ol cake!

Little easter eggs are the cake itself, as it is in fact the design of the cake item released to celebrate Neopets’ 18th birthday, and the colours of our hats! I made them match with the role colours we have in the Somnol Discord server.

The gift went down well, so I’d say it’s a win!

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So now for something completely autistic and super fun. It all started when Cammy was imagining having an otter sona, as he loves water and swimming. It gradually evolved into the idea that Cammy, who is usually a Eurasian Badger, has the ability to transform into other animals if he so wishes, though his colours remain the same. This specific Cammy happened because he had a wolf emote in his status on Discord, and it got me thinking about a wolf Cammy,,

I kinda love him, he looks like someone’s sona on Yerf or something. Real 90s furry boy. Cammy likes him too, which is much appreciated~

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More Pinede! This time, a chunk of concept art for the big spooky dragon boye, AKA the blood dragon. The general idea is that he’s big, powerful and dangerous, but currently fast asleep under the core of the planet. If he tastes blood, he awakens, and wreaks havoc. It’s a great incentive for the people of Pinede to avoid war, and the world is overall very peaceful because of this. There’s evidence of ancient battles scattered across the landscape, old battlefields and castles, as well as the occasional piece of armour adorned with blood crystallum hidden in a dusty, old chest.

Drew him with a little ground dragon for size comparison. Might make the blood dragon a bit bigger, we’ll see. Also, thanks to Borb for the neat idea of the big veins down his sides! She designed a cool blood dragon version of Polaris which can be found here, and she included that detail, so I decided to use it for the big boye himself, too. Cool and gross and spooky, it’s perfect.

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Bonus! Because talking about this month wouldn’t be accurate without mentioning the decent number of adoptables I made. I’ve been saving up for both a new guinea pig cage as well as the liners that go with it (might make a page about that, we’ll see), and adoptables have proven to be a fairly quick, effective way to make some cash. They’re also pretty fun to design. Have one I’ve yet to sell, a bookish tiger girl. Once again, fun with the pencil tool!

A post on time? What a world…

I did a whole bunch of redesigns of characters this month, all for Pinede, and all turning homeless characters into lads suitable for various parts of our comfy little fantasy world.

First, meet Fairbanks, a black girdled lizard who specialises as an ice mage, living on the outskirts of Volkhov. She’s a bit of a loner, and fiercely dedicated to her craft, having been given the gift of eternal warmth by the ice deity, allowing her to live safely and comfortably in a barren, frozen world no other lizard would ever survive in.

She was originally a salamander character that my good friend Borb adopted but never found a use for. You can find her old art here, in case you’re curious about the initial design. I liked her colours and the idea of her powers, and wanted to give her a more solid home. I even kept the northern lights idea, as her latest experiment of combining ice and lightning magic to form bright, colourful lights in the sky.

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Another redesign for Borb! She has a few old, dear characters lying around after a project fell through, and she was wondering about redesigning them to fit into Pinede. I was asked to redesign a dragon lad named Trick.

A bit of context here, I’ve been bouncing the idea around for dragon species in Pinede, and as a group we decided it’d be neat if there was one dragon species for each deity, so Water, Fire, Ice, Magma, Ground, Lightning and Blood. I’ve been gradually pondering different dragon designs since then. The three most concrete ones so far are Water, Ice and Ground. Trick here is an Ice dragon, with a sharp horn on his nose for breaking through ice, a thick fur coat and thumbs on all four feet.

He’s also “calidistic”, a term I made up for a warmly coloured Ice dragon, a callback to Trick’s old designs. Another quirk of the mutation is weaker ice magic, meaning he’s far more sensitive to the cold and not as capable casting spells. Hence his little locket made of ice crystallum to boost his powers.

I also started redesigning another character of hers, so I might as well throw that here too, a more adult Ice dragon with a few battle scars. His name is Jenju. The marking on his shoulder is another experiment, a potential decoration a dragon might use.

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A redesign for myself this time! A couple months back someone who wasn’t old enough to pay me asked for me to draw their character, offering a character as payment. I, as a gigantic softie, accepted this, and ended up with a little pink alien cat thing called Spoon. While rather cute, I had no use for Spoon, so he just sat on my toyhouse for some time.

That is, until we started brainstorming dragons for Pinede. One of the immediately popular ideas was the idea to make Ground dragons anthros. The idea behind this is that they’re the most neutral, accessible, common kind of crystal, so the dragon would be the same. As such, these doofy, squishy dergs were born…

Not long after, I had the overwhelming urge to turn Spoon into a dragon, so I did just that. He’s fire-aligned, due to his colouration, and is a peppy, hopeful student in the University of Murad. Due to his alignment, he feels a bit cold in Murad, despite the heat, which has triggered a cute trait of Ground dragons, growing a thick, fluffy coat of fur in chilly weather. He’s also rather clumsy, hence the singe marks on his cape…

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And now for something completely different!

Out of the blue earlier this month, I received an email from a very kind person requesting a commission of Minty from G3 of My Little Pony, drawn in my G1-inspired style. I gladly accepted and got to work.

Took a little while, but they were a very polite client, and I ended up with this! Had a bunch of fun with this, a bunch of different little experiments going on here. I experimented with different ways of painting tree leaves and grass, as well as using a new brush to line the pony herself. Also, the first time I’ve drawn water in one of these! Overall, very pleased. Did crazy well on Twitter too, totally unexpectedly. Bizarre but appreciated~

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First off, read the story this was inspired by if you haven’t already, it’s one of Cammy’s best so far, super vibey. Doooo iiiit

While reading through the chapters Cammy had gotten done already, I ended up with a strong visual in my head of Gonzo, sat in the driver’s seat of his camper, reading through his latest copy of Cyclone Monthly with a concerned expression on his face. And thus, I had to draw it,,

This is what came out of that, and I’m happy with it. Used a bunch of warm tones and a slight glowy effect to make it look as hot as possible, meant to be a heatwave, after all. I went fast and loose with the perspective, but I think it looks okay. The vehicle is based on a 1986 Winnebago that I scoured the internet for photos of the interior. Doesn’t look like I used much of it, but it was very useful for figuring out how to draw the chairs and the dashboard, as well as the detailing on the bits of wall you can see and the shape of the windows. It’d be a cosy little haven if it wasn’t for the fact the air con’s broken.

Went into one of my fabled art tunnel vision moments where I just drew for a couple hours, not moving or checking my messages, but it was worth it because I got this thing done in less than a day. I would’ve liked it to be more cluttered, but I drew this on my laptop and the poor thing was struggling by the time I saved the flat image. Ah well, at least I got a bobblehead luau alien in there…

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And something simple and self indulgent to finish us up… Cammy and I have long since pondered what it might’ve been like had we met earlier in our lives, or simply how our old sonas would’ve interacted. That topic of conversation came back recently, and I ended up getting the urge to doodle something for it. So here, have my wonky first attempt at drawing a honey badger Cammy :>

We like to imagine those two are relaxing together these days, playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2-3 on the PS2 and going on long walks. It’s like a retirement for old fursonas, catching up on some good times that they missed out on back in the day.

This was drawn on Paint Tool SAI by the way! I was feeling extra nostalgic, so I went and found an old cracked copy, similar to the one I used back in the day, and doodled a bunch with it. Lotsa fun.

To end this post off, have this extremely accurate representation of baby Caby and Cammy interacting.

Art Fight month! As always, it overtook the entire month, though not quite as badly as last year. I only hit 50 attacks instead of 100! Still, there were some favourites I did, so I’ll throw them in here where I can.

An Art Fight attack on Twitter user Doekis, and two of her lovely characters, Kissy and Dove. These two were perfect for this sort of retro style, and I had a lot of fun with it! I experimented with both a looser painting style and also with adding a foreground to my pictures. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, and I’m very happy that Doekis liked it too ;w;

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Here’s one I really recommend you open in full! One of two big group pictures I did this year. They’re various MLP characters I found while browsing the Art Fight site, all enjoying a nice, sunny day in a G1 inspired environment and art style. I had a whole lot of fun with it, and the second one too, which you can check out here, as well as the night version which I made for funsies. :3

It was an interesting challenge, as I had made smaller retro MLP drawings before, but nothing of this scale before. It let me both develop my style for drawing the ponies, and also the backgrounds. Very glad I did it.

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Gosh, what’s this?~ An Art Fight attack on someone familiar,,,

Yes indeed, this year Cammy went ahead and made an Art Fight account, to post his very first digital drawing as an attack on me! It’s of my Pinede lad Dai, and you can check it out on his DeviantART. Give it a favourite if you haven’t already, it’s so cute~

As such, I of course had to get my revenge, and I did so by drawing one of his Pinede lads, Nicholas. I chose to draw him fishing on a warm day, as it had been rather warm over here too. I had a bunch of fun using my watercolour brush to paint the background, and a funky pencil brush to line it all. The colours came out way more vibrant than I was expecting, but I’m not complaining, hue,,

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Can’t remember quite what spawned this idea, but it was probably a mixture of things. Browsing Yerf again, poking through some vintage webcomics, and just general spergery.

I’ve been pondering restarting Capy Comics for some time now, but I’ve never gotten around to it. The whole “sitting home and doing nothing for a year” thing definitely didn’t help. But I also wanted it to be something a bit more substantial. I started Capy Comics when I was a very isolated, introspective person, so it was all just me and random thoughts and happenings that occurred to me. But I have friends now, I’ve got people to talk to, and that sort of removed the need for it in my life.

I’ve also just had a whole lot more I need to draw between personal projects and commissions, so that removes a lot of mindless doodling opportunities for me.

But this was a fun idea I had, as a potential rebirth of the comic. A late 90s, early 2000s webcomic centered around my friends and I, and the goofy shit we say and do together. Cammy came up with the idea that we’re all running a computer repair shop in Cardiff, which I loved.

So yeah, still nothing set in stone, but everyone seemed really into the idea, so when I have a bit more time to draw, it’s something I’d love to do :>

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And now for something completely different! I’m not sure if I posted it to the blog, but you can find it on my Toyhouse, a while back I drew a “fantasy Wyn” in his usual anthro style. I believe it was pre-Pinede, so he wasn’t meant to fit in that world. But it did plant an idea in both Cammy and I’s heads.

So after a lengthy discussion recently about another far-flung idea for the future, I redesigned his fantasy form to fit in with Pinede’s style, all doughy and far less anthro. He’s an adventurer and a thief, though he means well. What is that idea, you may ask? Well, let us figure out the logistics first,,,,

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This is so stupid, but I felt like I had to put it somewhere. While once again browsing Yerf, I came across a “personal photo”, AKA the 90s version of a selfie, of a man showing off his new toy furby. This man, bless, looked for all the world like a bootleg Styx. I showed it to Cammy and he agreed.

One thing lead to another and I ended up sketching a Styx fursona. He’s a Siamese cat. Hue