My two new series of cutout art are done!

Feast your eyes on Sea of Pride and Sea of Shapes and Shadows.
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You can get this artwork on clothing, blankets, laptop skins, accessories, and more in my RedBubble store.
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Here are the links to the designs:

Sea of Pride:

Agender
Androgyne
Aromantic
Asexual
Bisexual
Demiboy
Demigirl
Demiromantic
Demisexual
Genderfluid
Genderqueer
Intersex
Lesbian
LGBTQ
Neutrois
Nonbinary
Pansexual
Polysexual
Transgender

Sea of Shapes and Shadows

Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Light blue
Blue
Purple
Pastel Rainbow

To get this artwork on physical items, visit my stores at RedBubble and Society6.

To get me to draw something like this for you, check out my commissions page!

To get early access to completed stories, art and videos, support me on Patreon.

And finally, you can also support me by leaving a one-time tip on Ko-Fi.

Before the creation of the Mortal Realm...

50,000 years before the story begins...

Beings of pure magic and energy danced together, not knowing that the parts of them that mingled would blend into something new, something separate... something dangerous.

This was the birth of Sarovak.

The beings in this artwork are Raina's grandparents, the God of War and the Deity of Emotion.

I was recently given the opportunity to submit a 500-word short story to to Loom of Tales, so I decided to write about the semideities' origins from the perspective of the God of War. His search for purpose and belonging, his joy at discovering the power to create life... and his horror and his lingering glimmers of hope when everything went wrong.

Loom requested that the writers include images with their story, and rather than grab a generic picture of a war deity, I decided I wanted the artwork to match the characters' canonical appearances.

And so, in the couple of days I had before the deadline, I whipped up this portrait of the God of War dancing with the Deity of Emotion: an act that would lead to the birth of Sarovak, the origin and banishment of the semideity species as a whole, and the creation of the Mortal Realm.

You can see the concept art for Sarovak's daughter, Raina, as well as a lot of additional info about the world and characters, in this Patreon post.

Now that Chielle and Quenzin have their own character art, I'm working on the design for Raina: the Mother of All and Mother of None, First Semigoddess of the Mortal Realm, and the person with the most challenging outfit design I've ever created.

Not that her outfit is super complicated or anything, but it does have to accommodate two wildly different body shapes without ripping, because if she's given a good enough reason to, this woman hulks out and flips tanks.

The fact that she's 1/4 war goddess doesn't show often, but when it shows, it SHOWS. She is as gentle and maternal as she looks... until suddenly she's not. >:)

Here's a little preview of her normal form:
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​My Patreon supporters can see a higher-res version of this artwork, a work-in-progress image of her battle form, and a lot of additional worldbuilding and backstory info in this post.

They can also see an image of her in a swimsuit, because this outfit doesn't do justice to how muscular Raina is.

I finally finished Quenzin's concept art!

Behind the woeful visage of a sad, tired old man, there lies a plethora of mysteries.

​Quenzin first enters the story as the sole occupant of a crashed shuttle he wasn't supposed to be aboard, and he doesn't know why he was brought there, where the rest of the crew is, or why they left him to die alone.

To make matters stranger, when Chielle Havello Sai dragged him from the flaming wreckage, he was covered in blood and clearly in distress, yet showed no visible injuries.

And while he alludes to the existence of a sister he loves and children he may or may not have, most of his backstory - ESPECIALLY the details about his estranged family - is off limits to anyone he doesn't trust.

If the style of his clothing looks similar to Chielle's, that's because it is. Between the shuttle crash and the brutal events that preceded it, his former outfit was tattered beyond repair, so she loaned him the biggest coat and pants she had - and they were still noticeably too small for his 6'5" frame.

You can see the height difference between them in the image below. Unsurprisingly, there were no shoes in the facility that fit the towering rescuee, so he'll have to do without for a while.

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You can see higher-res versions of this artwork, as well as some of the earlier versions of Quenzin's concept art, by joining my inner circle on Patreon.

I decided it was time to make a proper character profile for Chielle, a character in my upcoming novel.

 
You can read more about her in the blog post where I first shared Chielle's concept art.

If you're curious about the naming convention I used for her family, it was inspired by the Spanish method of passing on surnames.

Since I'm writing a sci-fi fantasy world that isn't based solely on white Canadian culture, I didn't want to default to the "kids get the dad's last name and the mother's name disappears" formula from my own culture, so I looked to some of Earth's other cultures for inspiration.

I liked the Spanish model better: married women keep their original surnames, and after their personal names, Spaniards have both of their parents' first surnames, usually with the father's first and the mother's second.

But there were still a few things about that system that I wanted to tweak for this fictional universe.

For one thing, the first surname is often the only one used in less formal settings, so once again, the man's name is at the forefront while the woman's is left out.

​And because the children usually inherit the first of each parent's two surnames, the fact that the father's surname usually comes first means that - again - the mother's surname is erased.

That being the case, for the purpose of this book, I gave the system a small tweak: if the child is a girl, her surname is her mother's first surname, then her father's. If the child is a boy, his surname is his father's first surname, then his mother's. And if the child is nonbinary, it's decided on a case by case basis.

That way, both parents' names have a chance to be passed on.

How close is this book to being finished?

I'm in the process of fleshing out the outline, which means filling in plot holes, making sure no characters inexplicably disappear for days or indefinitely, adding foreshadowing, and removing any parts that no longer fit with the overall story.

I'm also writing the first draft of some scenes where I already have a clear and detailed idea of what I want to happen.

I'm currently on page 84 of 138, and the document is 68,664 words long!

Right now, I'm in the process of rewriting and fleshing out a pivotal scene roughly halfway through the book.

The first draft was already pretty much written, but then I decided that, under the circumstances, it would be more realistic and more emotionally compelling if it took place in another dimension, while one of the characters was bleeding into their brain. >:)

It definitely shifted the dynamic between the characters involved, and it gave me a chance to show off a side of their relationship that hadn't been shown in quite a while, while giving a shoutout to a part of their early backstory. All in all, I'm really happy with this change.

Want to see more?

If you want to be among the first to get updates about this story, to get early access to all my completed art and stories, and to get exclusive access to works in progress like the concept art for the man Chielle rescued, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

This is the concept art for one of the major characters in my upcoming sci-fi fantasy novel. Everyone, meet Chielle!
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Out of all the concept art I've drawn for my various characters, this is one of the ones I'm the most proud of. She looks pretty much exactly like I pictured her in my head, I love her fashion sense, and she's got such a distinctive look.

Her right hand is posed the way it is because I plan for her to be holding one of her inventions, when I figure out what said invention looks like.

So who is Chielle?

Chielle is a human scientist in a universe where Spinosauruses, spaceships, and immortal semideities can all be found on the same planet.

Her natural hair color is brownish black, but she's always been a big fan of stark, bold color contrasts, especially between light and dark. So when she started to develop vitiligo, she decided that if her favorite aesthetic was going to take over her face, she might as well run with it.

She lost her right arm in a shuttle crash when she was a child. When the rescue workers finally found her and pried her free from the wreckage, that moment when fear and despair suddenly turned into hope made a deep and lasting impression on her, as did the impact that getting her first prosthetic made on her quality of life.

For the rest of her childhood, she was torn between two dreams.

She became fascinated with prosthetics, and started studying them in hopes of someday inventing one that had the same range of motion and sensation as the original limb. She wanted to make life better for herself and her fellow amputees, just as the inventors who came before her had done for her.

But at the same time, part of her wanted to be a hero in a more direct and life-saving way, as those rescue workers had been to her. She wanted to be the reason someone's terror and despair turned to hope.

Even after she accepted a job in research and development, that part of her still hoped that if another shuttle crash happened, she'd be close enough to save the people inside.

Then, one day, she got her chance.

Chielle accepted an ambitious assignment in a classified lab on a remote planet, to seek a technological solution to a magical problem that had cost thousands of people their lives.

Her mission was to use her expertise in technology and neuroscience to invent machines that would block magic Wisps' control over their host, allowing people to wield the Wisps' magic without fear of getting possessed.

When the impact of a downed shuttle shook her lab, she didn't hesitate to race into the flames and drag the only surviving passenger to safety.

She had no way of knowing how this ragged, mysterious survivor would turn her world upside down.

Update:

Chielle now has an official character profile! You can see it here.

​If you want to be the first to get updates about Chielle and her world, to see higher-res versions of my art, and to get early access to all my completed writing and art, please join me on Patreon!

I had so much fun drawing Lesbian Lake Landscape that I decided to make another piece of pride flag landscape art, this time based on the agender flag. I think this one turned out even better than the first!

I'm seriously considering doing more of these, maybe even going through my whole set of pride flags in alphabetical order.

But that would mean the androgyne flag, which consists of just 3 vertical stripes, is next... *artistic eye twitch*

I've been trying to mostly stick with just using the shades that are actually on the flag, except for some sky gradients to make the clouds visible, so it'll be interesting to see if I can pull this off, or if I'll end up having to bend some rules to make it look good.

​Maybe I could draw a blue waterfall on a purple crystal cliff, adorned with pink flowers... yeah, that could work.

This is an experimental piece, my first attempt at creating art exclusively with the colors of a pride flag, as opposed to drawing black outlines or foregrounds and filling in the openings with flag colors.

It's a bit rough in places, but I feel like there's a certain charm in that, a reminder that art doesn't have to be polished and perfect to be beautiful.

You can get this artwork on prints, clothes, home decor, and more via the links below:

​Get it on Redbubble

Get it on Society6

You can also get an unwatermarked version as an NFT on Voice here.