​Remember that concept art for Kivara I recently shared? If you want to see what my drawing process looks like in fast forward, while listening to music that's far prettier than the early stages of the drawing were, here's the speedpaint!

If you haven't read Kivara's story yet, you can read Upholding the Covenant here. 

If you want to support the development of a novel starring Kivara, and to get early access to completed stories, art and videos, please consider joining my inner circle on Patreon.

And if you just want to thank me for my work, you can leave a one-time tip on Ko-fi.

She's here! That horrible, adorable little fur monster I've been posting about finally has a face to go with the shenanigans.

Guys, gals, and nonbinary pals, I'd like you to meet Kivara, the Charishi kitten from my short story and upcoming novel, Upholding the Covenant.

This picture put up a heck of a fight, which is appropriate for a kitten who will try to fight ANYTHING from loudly dropped boxes to thunderstorms.

You'd think an artist who's lived with cats almost my whole life would know how to draw them, but nope, I did not. At all. So this picture was a total learning curve for me, and it looked like ass until I added the stripes. After that, it all started coming together.

I had a rough idea of what Kivara looks like, but a lot of the details needed to be ironed out and experimented with on the fly, so I was actually designing Kivara while I drew her.

​I decided to record the process for a speedpaint, which I'll release soon, and even though I did a rough practice round before starting to record in earnest, the parts I recorded still added up to almost six hours.

​And that's not even including the bits of tinkering I did while the second-last video was rendering and I thought I was done (before I realized the ears needed fixing), and widening her raised forelimb to match the planted one!

Still, I'm glad I stuck with it, and didn't let that struggle be the final word on whether or not I could introduce Kivara's cute, bratty face to the world. I think this picture captures not only her appearance, but her alert, energetic, inquisitive and mischievous personality.

Designing not just a character, but a species.

Kivara is the first Charishi I've ever drawn, so to some extent I was figuring out their traits as a species while I was drawing her.

I wanted to give the Charishi more distinctive physical features to differentiate them from real-life felines and make them more unique, but so far, most of the ideas I've had just haven't felt right. The one thing that did stick was those big, triangular tufts of fur on the ends of their rounded ears.

Speaking of which, Charishi ears aren't normally that huge; Kivara's just special that way. She's the runt of the litter, but she has the voice, ears and attitude of a much larger creature, haha.

As she grows, her forelimbs' digits will elongate into fingers, and she'll start to shift to a bipedal stance as her default way of walking. But she'll still be able to drop to all fours for a startling burst of speed!

She'll also start to wear clothes; I need to figure out what kind of outfits the Charishi wear. Probably some sort of loose, roughly knee-high robe that can comfortably accommodate both bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion.

If you like this bratty baby enough to bring her into your house, you can get Kivara on T-shirts, stickers, coffee mugs and more in my RedBubble and Society6 stores!

And if you want to learn more about Kivara, her species, and the world she lives in, you can follow me on social media to get notified when I share more updates.

For my latest pride flag cutout art series, I wanted to try something more ambitious. Instead of having a single theme for the pattern, I drew seven different layers of the world: 

1. Outer space, with planets, comets, moons, and UFOS.
2. High sky, with birds, wind, and clouds.
3. Low sky, with treetops, dragonflies, and butterflies.
4. Ground level, with flowers, grass, and other graceful plants.
5. Underground, with tree roots, bunnies, and mice.
6. Shallow water, with sea stars, sea horses, and vividly pattered fish.
7. Deeper ocean, with jellyfish, octopi, eels, naked sea butterflies, larval lionfish, and ctenophores. 

​
I'd initially planned to keep all the cutouts fairly simple, but as I so often do, I wound up getting more and more detailed. I went overboard with the butterflies and dragonflies, and I went absolutely apeshit with the fish, haha.

For those who are curious, I created this by placing a layer of black on top of the color layer, then erasing holes in the darkness, allowing the colors of the flags and the pastel rainbow background to shine through.

​I also added spots and shimmers of white to give it brightness and texture.

I hope you enjoy the result!

If you like this art enough to wear it or decorate your home with it, click "Read More" to see some of your options!

It's been a while since I turned a panel of Just Cause into a wallpaper, and this one seemed especially conducive to it. In this panel, Frisk is wondering if Flowey can wrest control of the timeline from them, and make them relive their most painful moments over and over again.

I'm not entirely happy with it; I feel like the scenes from Frisk's past don't quite mesh with the rest of the picture. They feel slapped-on to me. If you have any suggestions for making them feel more integrated, I'd love to hear them!
​

Time for another snowflake series, this time in my favorite color. :)
 

It took me several tries to get a background that both complemented this pattern, and would look good when tiled.

​Below, you can see one of my earlier attempts; the contrast was so high that it distracted from the snowflakes, but it looked so good on its own that I decided to use it as a standalone art piece.

 

​​​If you'd like to get this artwork on physical items like clothes, accessories and home decor, here are a few of your options:
​ 

​​Here are the links to the items in the collage:
​
​Face Masks
Stickers
Floor Pillows
Throw Blankets
​Dresses
Shirts
Phone Cases & Covers
Towels
Tapestries
Shower Curtains
Coffee Mugs
Duffel Bags
Apple Watch Bands

You can see all the RedBubble items with this artwork here:

Stormy Swirls
Shower of Sapphire Snowflakes

To see more products with these pictures on Society6, check out these art prints, then scroll down to where it says "More featuring this artwork".

Stormy Swirls
Shower of Sapphire Snowflakes

The latest chapter of my Undertale fanfic, Just Cause, is out!

In this chapter, Frisk, armed with a fear of adults and a complete lack of dating experience, finds themselves on a date with a skeleton who's just as confused as they are, but who is nonetheless determined to try his best.

You can read it on my website here, or on Archive of Our Own here.

After seeing how well It Will Be Okay was received, I decided to share another of my Subnautica: Below Zero stories.

Spoilers ahead...


I was playing around with "What if?"s, and I thought: "What if Marguerit Maida had answered Al-An's distress call?

The image began with an ominous scene in which Marguerit stood on top of an ice cliff, inches from the edge.

And then, as the story developed, I was startled to realize just how much the crusty mercenary and the softspoken scientist had in common.

You can read the story on this website here, or on Archive of Our Own here.

And if you want to read my original novels, you can find them here.

I don't quite remember who, but one of the people who was looking at my snowflake patterns had a great suggestion: take a bunch of the snowflakes I've already drawn, and combine them into one pattern.

It took me a while to get around to doing it - too busy making new snowflakes and other art, haha - but I finally did it, and I'm glad I did!
​  

 
​If you'd like to get this artwork on physical items like clothes, accessories and home decor, here are a few of your options:
 

 
​​Here are the links to the items in the collage:
​
​Face Masks
Stickers
Floor Pillows
Throw Blankets
​Dresses
Skirts
Phone Cases & Skins
Towels
Tapestries
Shower Curtains
Coffee Mugs
Duffel Bags
Apple Watch Bands

You can see all the RedBubble items with this artwork here.

To see more products with this picture on Society6, check out this art print, then scroll down to where it says "More featuring this artwork".

A few days ago, ​I was in the process of putting Sea of Violet Snowflakes on RedBubble when Mom came up to me with a picture on her phone and asked, "Can you make something kind of like this, but with lots of sparkles, and put it on a phone case?"

If Mom wants me to make some art for her on Mother's Day, then heck yeah, I'm gonna drop the other art thing I'm doing and make her some special art for Mother's Day.

So I put spots and streaks of the colors she'd requested on a blue-grey canvas, and started tinkering with the liquefier tool, occasionally making adjustments at her request.

Then I chose my favorite sparkly brush and started coating the image with stars. (One of the star layers was actually called "BLING OUT THE WAZOO" - if you've watched Over the Hedge, you'll get the reference.

I thought of calling this image "Sparkling Angel Mist", but given its connection to mothers and Mother's Day, I wanted to have "mother" in the title.

If you, too, would like this on a phone case or other physical items, here are some of your options:
​

​​Here are the links to the items in the collage:
​
​Face Masks
Stickers
Throw Pillows
Comforters
​Dresses
Shirts
Phone Cases & Skins
Duffel Bags
Tapestries
Shower Curtains
Coffee Mugs
Bath Mats
Apple Watch Bands

You can see all the RedBubble items with this artwork here.

To see more products with this picture on Society6, check out this art print, then scroll down to where it says "More featuring this artwork".

I'd love to get some feedback: do you like it when the video is sped up like this, or would you prefer that I go back to the original speed? You can send the feedback via my contact page, or as a comment on this blog post.

After the video was made, I decided to make the background a bit darker, so the snowflakes would stand out more. So if the finished product looks different from the one in the video, that's why.

To get early access to future videos, join my inner circle on Patreon.

To learn how to draw symmetrical artwork like this, watch my art tutorial on SkillShare.

You can see all the RedBubble items with this artwork here.

To see the products with this pattern on Society6, check out this art print, then scroll down to where it says "More featuring this artwork".

Music credits:

​Flickering
By VYEN (YouTube Audio Library)

Pixelated Autumn Leaves
By Jeremy Blake (YouTube Audio Library)

Indigo
By Eveningland (YouTube Audio Library)

Dreaming in 432Hz
By Unicorn Heads (YouTube Audio Library)

You can see all the individual snowflakes with the darkened, wavy background by clicking "read more".