Spring Birds

Last of the old art, and my favorite piece from 2022. I love American robins and bluejays and I had this in my head for a while. I also have an alternate version, since this piece was inspired by vintage bird paintings after all.

Orion Wells and James Audubon

WIPs:

First I had to figure out how the bird griffins were going to work anatomically. It doesn't look important in the final, but figuring out how they were constructed really helped in the sketching phase.

Thumbnails. It was very hard to choose between the first and second one. The second one seemed more open and friendly between the birds, but there wasn't a great silhouette with the robin. The first had the opposite problem: a much more striking silhouette but the robin looked angry as hell. In the end I adjusted the first to make the robin happier. 

Finally some sketch/line work.

Dinosauroid Fam

 

Fun little piece based off the Dinosauroid. It's a whole thing so here's someone else to explain it:

https://tetzoo.com/blog/2021/8/30/dinosauroid-at-nearly-40-years-old

But yeah, it slaps. 

Space Cat

 A little doodle that got out of control one night.

Alternate look.

Sutekh's Fursona

 

Dead Water

 

  Another old piece. I saw a leaf with holes in it like a skull, so inspiration struck. Also found some WIPs. 

 

 

Hunger

 

I have a very love-hate relationship with this piece. On one hand, I'm still pretty proud of it. The rendering has aged a bit, but the composition and subject I think our dead on and it was a big step forward for me. 

On the other hand, a lot of people loved it, which would be great except I think they also expected this kind of art from me consistently, even though it's the kind of art I don't care to make anymore. I'd rather do cell-shading, sketches, and (hopefully, eventually) comics. Highly detailed art takes too much time and I just don't have the attention span to commit, and I'd rather take that time to experiment. But even after switching styles, this has still been my top eyeball piece for a number of years now, only recently being dethroned by the derpy ichthyosaur comic (thank god). 

I don't hate this piece for that, but it's the centerpiece to my problem with "artist branding". People expect you to make a certain type of art and if you switch it up, it throws them off. I get why it would and viewers aren't obligated to follow an artist that doesn't interest them anymore. But it still puts a lot of creative stress on artists, especially those whose art is their income. Thankfully mine isn't so I can afford to be flexible, but burnout from lack of creative freedom is a real problem. Add in if an artist has an unhealthy relationship with validation, you have a nuclear meltdown in the waiting.

Anyway, I've been thinking of putting this guy in a story idea, set in prehistory. The concepts are still vague tho. Also a lot of people said this reminds them of Homestuck, a thing I know nothing about except that half of all cons were full of gray trolls like a decade ago.

Inktober 2021

I didn't make much art that year due to absolutely everything bad happening, but I did manage to fart out one third of Inktober. Or Drawtober in this case. 

The theme was modern birds as dromaeosaurs. 

European Robin

Superb Bird-of-Paradise

Shoebill Stork 

Scarlet Macaw

 

Pelican

Roadrunner

Canadian Goose 

(fun fact: they really do morph into vicious raptors during breeding season)

 

 

Flamingo

 

 

Emperor Penguin (with koi coelacanth) 

 

My friend's fancy pigeon, Lotus!

Cat Christmas Card

Last year I made a custom Christmas card for my mom and dad. It's of their cats, Ticky and Friday (aka the Black Hole of Love.)

Sona Evolution

 Yes, I have a fursona, a highly stylized "Seth Animal" or "Sha", aka this thing:

From Wikipedia

Why a sha? 

She's not really a separate character, more just an extension of myself. Her name is just my name. Though I don't use her that often, she's evolved a lot over the last decade. So unlike everything else here, I will attempt to put these in chronological order. 

Her first design was an eye-searing fire truck red with green eyes, but that's gone forever (probably for the best). Her next design was a very toned down version of that. Can't remember the exact year, but definitely around the early to mid 2010s.

 

 

 

Kept that for a while until I got sick of it, so round two. Her body plan remained the same but the colors and patterns shifted a bit.

But it must have bothered me because I found a ton of concept art trying to rework her.

Ultimately this is what I went with. It somehow turned out worse than the concept art.

 But almost immediately after I started deviating again.

Up until this point, I suffered from a horrible case of perfectionism. I was very concerned about things being consistent and "the very best end result". I think part of me wanted to present to everyone on social media as the "the very best end result" all the time. Even my sketches had to look "finished". This guided all of my work, but especially my sona, which is why I don't think I drew her that often. She just gave me anxiety, which of course contributed to depression. Basically I had no chill.

Then in 2021, the worst day of my life happened when my apartment burned to the ground. I lost everything; precious stuff, any art that wasn't saved somewhere on the internet, and worst of all, my cat Vala. It was not a fun rest of the year. But, paradoxically, the aftermath turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I stayed with my folks who encouraged me to go to therapy for what happened. But even before therapy I decided I would try to make this a new beginning. I grieved, but I knew it'd be pointless to grieve forever and never move on. While I was in therapy, I discovered that I've had undiagnosed ADHD for my entire life, which explained a LOT. 

So I got medicated and worked on my perfectionism issues with my therapist. I'm not 100% better art-wise; I'm still slow and still have that urge to noodle to much, and I still have trouble staying on track. But now, I have chill. I don't feel guilty for not being super productive or getting distracted. Actually, being distracted has led me down rabbit holes that make life more interesting; turns out I like to learn all the shit. I'm still working on my speed and keeping on track, but I no longer feel guilty for having to work on those. Honestly it feels like not worrying about being productive has made me more productive; I've done more art and writing the last year and a half than I have in the five before that. Should've figured. Best of all, I no longer care about social media. I no longer feel like I must be Brand. I can draw whatever I want.

My sona has reflected this change. After the fire, I wanted to totally redesign her, in part because the orange looked gaudy to me now, but another part because of new beginnings and all that. It was still early in working thru my perfectionism issues, so I tried to make a consistent ref for her.

Then I stopped caring completely and went buck wild. 

These last four images are the most fun I've had drawing her in a long, long time. I think this is what she was always meant to be: chaos and fluidity. Which is fitting, since that's what the sha/Set represented in Egyptian mythology, more or less.

I'll probably make a proper ref for her eventually, but at best it'll be a guideline for other people if they ever want to draw her. 

Anyway, more art of her.