This story was written one word at a time, back and forth between me and Chel.
A long time ago, In a land far away, There was a beautiful princess, With hair as soft as hay.
She swore that she would never dare escape from prison. There was too much at stake for her to stay. So she decided to escape from prison. She waited the changing seasons to jump from the cold stinky season and the king also jumped at the chance to rescue the princess. Things were getting dicey so the princess cut her leg to eat. Later the king also cut the leg of the princess because the king couldn’t stop to get the key for the chains.
Princess and king made some attempts to leave the prison but the chains stopped their movement and the guard had enough wine to sleep so they were loud. A bird flew into the guard and scared itself which made the bird shit itself causing the guard to slip into the coma. The princess watched the bird and watched the bird then watched the bird to watch the princess. The bird then left the prison quickly. The guard was really comatose. Princess wondered if that bird meant something because it was very weird.
She shrugged and King shrugged. They stood except their princess was legless. King remembered that he ate the leg and cried while he vomitted. Princess gasped and the king gasped and the guard was comatose when they saw the Queen enter the prison. She waved them down smirking and plotting and said, “Hey, what do the guards get for sleeping on the job because I don’t think I should be responsible for their pay.” King looked at his vomit ashamed.
The princess spoke timidly saying, “My dad runs like hell and I don’t know if I can run like hell.” The queen laughed. “You will never escape like that,” said the Queen. Suddenly the wall shook and the wall creaked and the wall shook. The Queen didn’t, like, even notice the wall shaking creaking and shaking. King still ashamed said, “What are you doing to me and is Princess in trouble but I don’t care I’m just worried about my own punishment.” Princess looked disgusted at her dad’s behavior but she knew he was, like, right about her.
Queen scoffed. She was going to tell her lawyer that they tried to escape and she was the victim. A bomb went off in the next cell to the right. It scared the King and browned his pants. Ashamed, the King stayed in silence. The smell was obvious and the Queen looked directly at him, disgusted. The Princess vomited and used her wits by escaping from prison. The End.
On July 24th, 2025, I spent 6 hours creating a 60+ post thread about Hare & Feather on Bluesky. It was a lot of work but it was real fun to do. Admittedly, it is kind hard to read through long bsky posts, so this is a single-page compilation of that thread.
H&F is a slice-of-life/romance comic following Penumbra, a kind but somewhat prickly hare everyone seems to gather around.
Silly stuff happens, hearts get broken. Yeah.
Meet PENUMBRA!
She’s the youngest Lagopagos Ranger ever. Dethroning Crow as the previous youngest. She’s insanely capable, dependable, and kind. Her sense of justice and her competitiveness drive her to an almost obsessive level.
She has a quaint home away from the main city. Shes a bit of a loner
From a young age she’s always loved animals, and wanted to protect them from bad people. She had to become a Ranger. Which are basically superheroes that keep the peace between the citizens and the local creatures (gryphons, dragons, etc).
You can read random stuff about her in this “1 💖 = 1 Fact” thread.
Been avoiding this one because I feel like idk what I'd say but enough time has passed for me to have enough info lmao.Anyway hi this is Penumbra, but everyone calls her Penny. 🐇She's probably not what you think. 🤔
The previous youngest ever to join the Rangers. He’s also extremely good at what he does, but has become complacent lately. His passion for the job still exists and he does work hard, but due to various pressures, he’s contently staying put in life.
He also got a “1 💖 = 1 Fact” thread.
this is definitely not a sneaky way to force myself to flesh him out more 👀#oc #crow #haf
It starts with Penumbra getting everything she’s ever worked towards. Her entire life led to this moment.
Crow is a bit wary, a little resentful. This new person is the talk of the academy, supposedly better than he ever was.
(this one got a redraw!)
Penny is super rigid, Crow is super relaxed. This is a wakeup call for him. He should have been ready, but the new girl handled it alone, under his watch.
Shame, guilt, embarrassment, …attraction.
Penny took care of the situation expertly. No one was hurt, and even chewed out the mama gryphon.
The whole display left Crow in awe, and changed his mind about her. The crush begins, and his feelings will only be more complicated from here.
A bit of time passes, Penny is doing paper work. She finally asks Crow about the locket around his neck.
He has a tendency to pick up shiny things and keep them with him. This was just one of those things.
However, this leads to a huge misunderstanding on Penny’s part. I don’t blame her, tho.
She has looked up to him for a while now, knowing who he was before joining.
She never really thought of romance before but this event squashed the possibility of it into the dirt.
He wont look inside the locket for quite some time. It doesn’t matter to him.
The very first comic I made with Penny! It was a one-off before H&F really existed.
It’s still accurate to her character.
Outside of work, Crow is pretty chill and doesn’t wear anything very show offy.
He’s very fit, but only really Penny knows this, and it isn’t a surprise given their work.
But to everyone else, its almost a secret. The beach episode will be fun.
This is very similar to one of my favorite jokes from 50 First Dates.
Just replace Shark with Dragon.
Crow took this opportunity to mess with her cuz she’s always right.
Meet CAMI!
she’s a chameleon, not a dragon.
Cami is depresso emo punk rock girl who likes to rebel, cause trouble, and also do nothing. The kicker? She’s got an amazing family and grew up rich.
She plays in a duo band with her lil bro Leo.
She is hopelessly lesbian, and is in love with Penny.
Cami has been friends with Penny since she was 17 (Penny was 15).
Penny unknowingly changed her life, and Cami has been smitten since. Unfortunately, Penny has never been concerned with love, and is also very hetero.
Cami deals with it by inserting herself into Penny’s life as much as she can.
Cami has been pushing her feelings down for a long time, in more ways than one. She’s got a complex facade that she painstakingly keeps up.
Penny is still oblivious of her friends walls.
Every so often things slip, but Penny doesn’t bother to put 2+2 together.
Crow has been stewing in his feelings about Penny for a while now. His crush has become stronger and is daydreaming about her.
He doesn’t know her all that well, but love is blind, right? There’s true infatuation here but it’s mixed in with his own self image issues (she’s basically him but better)
It’s been a while. Penny has gotten comfortable at work and with Crow, allowing him to use “Penny” finally.
Crow is normally a well put together guy, who doesn’t get embarrassed by anything, isn’t afraid of judgement.
Penny throws a wrench into his entire existence.
shoutout to @spiderdraws.bsky.social for letting me borrow Cav for this one! 🕷
after sending Crow home, she finishes her shift and stops at the pharmacy to get him some medication.
i hope this shows how out of the way she goes to do things for people. easy to crush on for, but to her its natural.
Penny isn’t just a fast runner, she’s got a LOT of endurance. She doesn’t own a car, so she runs everywhere. She runs from home to work! Which is quite a ways away, too.
It’s probably her best stat.
This was near nothing for her.
New comic JUST for this thread! Feel special 🫵
She’s making a callback joke he won’t understand but you the viewer can laugh!
But she /jk’s because she can’t stick to the joke. Coward.
This actually concludes my mental “Chapter 1” of the series. After this, its mostly sillies.
For the eagle eyed viewers that are familiar with my OCs, Nekomancer’s first appearance was a couple panels ago!
On Crows monitor you can see her. She’s his avatar in the MMO he plays. He pulled that boob slider all the way up when he made her. But he also made a bunch of lore for her.
Cami loves to play pranks. Most of them thinly veiled excuses to hang out with Penny.
(also, first appearance of Warren, a mischievous cartoon mascot similar to Hello Kitty in this world.)
Cami is very good at hiding her feelings. As a chameleon, her emotions are almost literally shown on her sleeve.
They change color based on feeling, but she grew up embarrassed by that and learned to keep her cool always.
Unless boobs are involved.
Penny was obviously upset about Cami’s “prank.” And spends the morning lecturing her.
this is a really old comic that eventually fit in. it also features a very busty Penny. I used to draw her with an impressive rack but I’ve been trying to dial it back cuz she’s supposed to be glutes and thighs.
The comic leading up to this hasn’t been made yet. Crow and Penny chill at work one day and discuss video games.
Penny hasn’t really tried any and isn’t too into the idea. But he suggests a fighting game, since she’s already a fighter.
He gifts her a game, not knowing about her obsessive nature.
I drew this to continue the above yap.
Penny’s competitiveness cant be overstated. She hates losing but doesn’t rage (much), instead using the emotion to fuel her drive to improve. She gets good at things quickly and knows how to learn.
Impressive but absolutely unhealthy sometimes.
Another OLD comic. I can’t take credit for the punchline. I saw it on the internet once and it has haunted me for sooo long. Couldn’t ever find the source, but if YOU do, lemme know.
Penny LOVES the Warren cartoon / mascot line. She wears the shirts, she has a sticker of him on her hammer, she keeps his plushies and other merch.
The problem is her plush is secretly alive, but only Cami ever sees it.
It’s not an important part of the comic but it makes me laugh.
Warren in the cartoon is a mischievous little punk who does crappy things for fun. It’s a strange thing for Penny to like, but she mostly focuses on the merchandise and the aesthetic, not the media content.
Here he is deciding which battery to purchase, so he can throw it into the ocean.
Meet ORCHID! (a.k.a. “Kitty, “Kiddo”, “Kid”). She’s the same age as Cami, but literally everyone thinks she’s way younger than she is.
Leon (Cami’s younger brother) has a crush on her. For a long time, the cast thinks her name is Kitty, and her real name isn’t revealed to the reader for a while.
I haven’t drawn this scene yet, so enjoy the old ms paint doodle.
Crow crashes at Penny’s (despite her saying no). Orchid shows up after and says she needs to crash there too. She allows this one (soft spot for Orchid).
In the morning, Penny sees that Orchid unknowingly fell asleep on Crow.
Above image was they met. Crow freaks out, not wanting Penny to get the wrong idea, and drops Orchid to the ground.
Much later, Orchid trips and he offers to carry her like the good boy he is. But when he realizes Penny saw this, he drops her again.
She’s the general manager at the insurance company where Orchid works. She’s the oldest cast member, at 30 years old. She’s got her life together and knows what she’s about.
She can be creatively insufferable but she’s happy.
Anais writes A LOT. She draws, composes, does crafts, sews, cosplays, etc.
All of her money goes into her hobbies. She has stacks and stacks of notebooks full of writings for her stories about her self-insert: Nyx Gunlance Roseblood.
This comic is weird. It’s a bit wrong in terms of continuity. So, Anais was planned to be against showing her chuuni side during work hours.
She gets over it after meeting the gang. But this is her first time meeting Penny and Crow..
It makes me laugh but I might have to retcon it.
One of my favorites. A group photo!
i really wanted to show their personalities in this. i think it speaks for itself.
Meet WINTER!
he’s the newest addition to the cast, both narratively and in concept.
He’s a sad boy with a terrible fuckin past. He had recently started pushing himself to get out and stop wasting away inside.
He doesn’t need money, but he works a couple jobs to fill his days.
Later in the story, while working his barista job, Winter joins the cast when overhearing Cami talk about needing a bassist for her upcoming show.
He tells himself to just say yes to anything he might want to do.
He makes it in and meets the cast. You WILL love him. 🔪
Winter is easily the most based person in the comic. He really respects people being true to themselves, and he isn’t afraid of failure.
He asks out Penny immediately after meeting her cuz pretty. She says no. k np.
When he meets Anais, he loves her personality and asks her out. She says k!
His respect for being yourself also comes with a disdain for being fake. He quickly sniffs out Cami as a fraud and becomes one of the only people that can get under her skin.
Anyway, Anais and Winter are very adult and shameless about their relationship. Hard contrast to the Crow/Penny drama.
Anais has an OC boyfriend named Capt. Lonestarwolf Insano I.
After meeting Winter, she has to break up with Capt. LSW I.
So she uh, kills him off. It’s extremely heartbreaking for her.
Winter and Anais get along REALLY well. They aren’t afraid to talk to each other, they both enjoy each others sense of humor, and theyre both very understanding and patient.
This may seem rude but she definitely picked up on the joke and began to play along at some point.
This bonus panel was suggested by @tiredlulu (currently on hiatus on bsky) and it STILL kills me to re-read it. It’s just the perfect cherry on top (of the pup cup).
Going back in time a bit for context.
Cami and Anais meet. Anais thinks, “oh no, she looks really cool. i have to look cooler than her.”
Anais: “Behold, mortal. You stand before the Incomparable, the Sanguine Flame of Darkness: Nyx Gunl-“
Cam: “mommy”
Anais: “what”
Cam: “what”
Anais is true to herself but it doesn’t mean she’s always aware of herself.
Anais is closeted bi. She’s fantasized about dating women but is scared to actually try. She never even had a boyfriend.
She disliked Cami from the beginning but Cami thought she was hella fine.
Cami teases her a lot.
this was made as a joke but its in character. cami def has thought about it like “nice”
anais has thought about it, but more like “hmmm uh oh.”
She vents her feelings by drawing/writing.
she drew a picture of her and cami kissing but scratched it out, crumpled it up, and threw it away.
Cami often teases / messes with Penny. Penny doesn’t always play back.
This one is out of character for both of them, but it made me laugh.
Crow isn’t showboaty or knowitall. He plays games in a chill way but has decent skill.
Orchid is insanely good but doesn’t think that hard about it. She wouldn’t ever think something like this.
but the dialogue is funny.
Penny yapping to Cami about some latest hyperfixation. Winter and Anais are here, which cracks me up. Penny’s house is a hub for hanging out, even though Winter and Anais have their own places and they barely know Penny.
It just happens to her all the time. She’s used to it.
Bonus content!
Thanks for reading this far.
Here is Cami in a maid outfit for Halloween. Oh btw she secretly smokes. Penny met Cami in high school when Penny caught her smoking. She took it from her and told her to stop, and that she’d be checking on her.
That made her happy. But life happens and she picked it up again.
Bunny Day! Anais became my favorite so here’s her symbolically pushing the actual bunny out of the way and stealing the show.
Christmas! Penny is secretly very vain, and thinks very highly of her own beauty. She doesn’t show this side of her to anyone, and sates it by dressing up for herself and taking selfies. She never sends them to anyone.
Eventually, after a bunch of drama, Penny and Crow are set to go on a date. Here is an early concept of her date dress to impress Crow.
It’s not exactly how I envision her, so I’ll eventually revisit it. I imagine it more simple.
Complicated relationship chart! Good luck deciphering this. I’m so tired.
This is a silly thirst trap drawing of Penny, Anais, and Cami if I allowed my monkey brain to design them.
Absolutely not canon, but was fun to make.
One time, I genderbent them.
They all have little meeple forms. Little animal versions. But I can’t exactly figure out how to do the chameleon siblings oughh
Nyx Roseblood is the Castrellan expy of Anais. Not to be confused with Nyx Gunlance Roseblood. Easy mixup.
She’s full of angst, repressed memories, and self doubt. She’s also silly and a lot of fun, but I really like these shots I did of her. Not exactly H&F related but I wanted to share!
If you made it this far, thank you so much. This post took me 6 hours to make, and I had a lot of fun doing so. It’s crazy how much I COULDN’T include.
It’s made me more enthusiastic to put out more comics.
I don’t remember when I drew this, but it was a bit before I met my wife, Chel, in May of 2015.
I was just doodling at work on paper, a silly idea in my head. I thought the idea of an orc getting made mocked for wanting to be a trainer was silly and fun.
I eventually showed it to Chel, since she was already an amazing artist, cuz I was proud of it. She encouraged me to finish the drawing and I decided to look into drawing digitally. I never had at that point, besides MS Paint.
Everything I had done before that was traditional.
It didn’t go well. I hated it. I didn’t like using a drawing tablet. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. How anything worked. Why couldn’t I draw a straight line? Very overwhelming. I didn’t ever finish it.
Later, after I had gotten over that earlier frustration, I decided to draw something and (at Chel’s request) join DeviantArt.
So yeah, I drew this:
Published on DeviantArt on Feb 12, 2016
Honestly, I was pretty god damn proud of this, at the time. I felt like I did a good job with the lighting, with the shapes, and with just the fact that I made a scene.
I showed it to Chel and she said some nice things. But she also spent a lot of time sitting with me and talking about how lighting works, how shadow works, how colors work. Honestly, I was once again overwhelmed (it was a lot of information). But this time was different. This time, I actually tried my best to keep that information in my head, internalize it, remember it for next time.
I don’t think she realizes just how important this single piece of artwork is to me (because I don’t talk about it, lol). Not because of the product, but because of the lessons she taught me after it.
Importantly, it was at that point that I started to think about how light and shadow affect the color underneath it. Where to actually put light and shadow was a whole nother problem I wouldn’t really tackle until much much later…
I started getting into pixel art, I guess. I didn’t have to worry about fancy art tools or layers or things like that. I wouldn’t call it a step back because I do love pixel art (and it’s super hard for different reasons), but it was kind of just me moving to what I thought was “easier” (wrong).
But, I did put into practice things Chel taught me.
Published on DeviantArt on Nov 30, 2016Published on DeviantArt on Nov, 30 2016
I still love the above art. The Kopaka was done from a reference of the actual LEGO toy (obviously, no one knows how to draw Bionicle from memory).
The lighting in the wraith was me trying to understand my own light source, and you can see me try to change the color of the lit areas based on brightness instead of just “adding white” (or conversely, “adding black” to the darker areas, as was the case with Espur’s Lonely Birthday).
I think I did good! Clearly the lesson was in my brain. Let’s see how it evolved!
Uh
Um…
Hm. I can’t find any art until 2021.
In that year, Dragalia Lost was announced to be coming to a close. End of Service was November 2022. It was about then I started drawing again, but on my phone. Doodles in Samsung Notes (sometimes MS Paint). I drew a lot, but here’s just a few of them.
These aren’t in any order, and the dates on them say they were late 2022, but I dont think it’s right (moving content between devices yaayy).
It was around this time that I joined Twitter. I posted all these there and and got a little following (something like 96 followers). No one really interacted or liked anything but I drew because I loved Dragalia and wanted to do something for it.
I soon after got a Galaxy Tablet and finally felt like I could draw digitally on a screen (again, hated drawing tablets at the time). Made more fanart.
I was still learning but I was trying things out. Chel was always around to help me figure stuff out. Show me what I was missing, point out things I couldn’t see myself. I tried to keep her lessons about proportions, light, perspective, and color in mind.
By the end of 2022, Dragalia Lost was… lost lol (sorry). I still drew for it but I started to draw a bit more creatively again. Much less fanart.
I drew random designs in my head and, shockingly to me, Chel LOVED them. She praised the characters and told me a bunch of nice things, and would then ask me scary questions like, “who is she? what does she do? what’s their story? what about their name?”
I had never created an OC. But, because of the questions, I started to put (a little) thought into it. Soon I had a couple characters. Here were the first ever drawings of what would become Roxy and Nekomancer.
2022 Roxy!!!
2022 Nekomancer!!!
In comparison, here’s Roxy and Nekomancer now.
April, 2025
October, 2024
I never thought, at the time, that I’d draw them again. But they were a hit with my wife, so they stuck around. I created a few other characters that never really see the light of day.
Katya, 2022
Silvia, 2022
Unnamed Elf, 2022
Yeah, none of the elves really made it. I still love my Katya doodle (the right one, not the left one).
I never drew any of those characters again. But they did get a little bit of story in my head.
Now lets move to 2023!
Oh, haha. I stopped drawing.
Cuz Twitter sucked. I put stuff up and all the followers I got from the fanart stopped caring when I stopped posting DL art.
The only things I did were some MS Paint versions of friends and drawing of some frogs.
PSYCH. I DID ONE LAST DRAGALIA LOST DRAWING.
And it was a banger.
For a couple years, I called it my magnum opus. This is an insane jump in quality. Right? It’s not just me that thinks this is CRAZY?
Don’t be fooled. This wasn’t indicative of my skill as a whole. I COULD draw that well, but it took an insane amount of time and effort. This took me days. Maybe a whole week of consistent effort and sketching and lining and redrawing and crying and hand cramping. It was awful. And I was glad to be done with it.
Intrinsic validation is extremely important, yes. Doing things for yourself is what really matters. But, I aint gunna lie: No One Gave A Shit About This Drawing And It Felt Really Bad.
I did get a comment from the VA of Yachiyo, though. Which was extremely cool and I’ll remember that forever. But, yeah, that was basically it.
So, yeah, the ms paint doodles were done in January 2023, the cool Yachiyo was done in July 2023. But nothing else after that. I just honestly dropped the idea of drawing as a staple hobby for a long time.
And then came BlueSky
In 2024 (maybe 2023 idk), Chel got on bsky and started posting her art. She loved the website and gave me an invite code, urging me to join. I love her art and wanted to support her but I didn’t have much to post, myself.
I started posting the art I did have and hoped for any interaction. There wasn’t much, but it was better and more genuine than Twitter, at least. Chel did Artfight, told me I should join. The idea was really fun but I was super not confident in my art. But I said I’d start drawing again.
Here’s some early stuff from 2024
Penny first appearance!
Roxy character reference!
I started writing a book!
I would post some art here and there, and at some point I got 50 followers. I celebrated by Roxy drawing with extra effort and even used a reference. Wow!
This was huge for me. I already knew references were important. I used to do traditional. I wasn’t even bad. I used references for everything, but never creatively. Like, I’d draw a tree or a bike by looking at one. I’d draw my classroom, I’d draw flowers, I’d draw my dogs.
But this was me using a reference to aid my creative endeavors. To shape my original character. And it was A CRAZY IMPROVMENT over what I had been doing. It feels like “woah, when did you learn anatomy.” I didn’t, you fool. I just drew what I saw and changed the details.
I forgot to mention that I had been in my own head a lot. Thinking that my art wasn’t going to mean as much if I used references or something (stupid). I already thought they were important but I didn’t realize I was stopping my self because of… ego? Narcissism? I don’t know.
I told Chel, before I made that drawing, that I wanted to do something higher effort for 50 followers. She suggested references and even showed me how she used them. Girl, I’ve been using that knowledge ever since. Breaking down the picture into shapes, placing things by proportions, looking at positions of things relative to what’s around them. She helped me a lot.
So, yeah, that awesome Roxy picture happened and, for a while, I didn’t draw anything that good. I think I was kinda in a weird slump thinking that if I tried again, it wouldn’t stack up, yknow. I had peaked or something. I’m not sure why.
Some stuff after that drawing:
Some OC stuff here and there, more fanart, lower effort drawings. I wasn’t super confident.
It was around October, I think, that I started to draw a bit more NSFW than I was already drawing.
It was at this point I started feeling like, “Hmm. I dont wanna post this kinda stuff to bsky. What if people think weird of me.”
I argued with myself over whether or not I should open up a NSFW account to post these kinds of things. It would have me practically starting over, following-wise, but that was okay. I kinda wanted it to be anonymous (haha, ha. ha.. that lasted all of like 3 days).
So I decided on just opening a new account and using it for strictly my NSFW stuff. But it wasn’t exactly “ooga booga horny brain, gotta draw boobies” (ok just a little), it was more about taking nude references, drawing them, and dressing them up with some flair/creativity/character.
I decided I needed a mascot. So I invented April.
April’s first appearance! Oct 11, 2024
I sorta became obsessed with drawing the nudes because it almost felt like I leveled up after each one of them. Here are some April drawings in chronological order and you’ll see what I mean. (NSFW WARNING)
It’s kinda crazy. I ended up doing something like 40 drawings of her within a couple months, I think.
After a while of doing that, I started drawing my OCs again. I even created a bunch of new ones. Look at the difference in the art after doing so much NSFW lmao.
Althemia from Dragalia Lost, but this time with my new skill / experience.
Yeah that one Nekomancer pic was from around then.
My FFXIV character. Drew based off a pic I took. Loved the result, tbh! I was also trying to find “my style,” lol.
What you don’t see much is that most of the stuff I drew was in black and white. A lot of these are the highlights. I was doing lots of sketches, doodles, stuff that didn’t take me a lot of time. I was still, honestly, extremely afraid of color. I remembered all the stuff Chel taught me, but I was scared to really give it much of a go again. Or to like… try harder. It sucks to look back and see where my mindset was, even though I was getting out of my comfort zone in other places.
I started to ask Chel for more help. I’d show her drawings, ask for redlines, suggestions, corrections, how to color 101 again pls im dying.
I stayed scared of shading and color lol. I didn’t take many risks.
I went back to April (the vampire cutie on my NSFW account) after watching Chel stream art for a while. I tried to take into account all the little things she did, how she placed light, how she chose color. Honestly, it was stuff she told me before but it was enlightening to see it in action.
This should have gone somewhere earlier in the post but I can’t find the right spot. Chel also gave me some lessons on how to think about poses in my head. Like… probably in early 2024 or so. She’d move herself around, look at her elbow placement, take pictures of her hand, sometimes even just wiggle something without looking at it (which was somehow enough to give her an idea of how to draw it???). She’s awesome.
Yeah, so. I tried to use the coloring and shading I learned from watching her.
Like… you can see a coloring style taking shape. I’m figuring out how light works, where it shows up. Where it gets hidden. Still, I look back at these and don’t see a ton of risk taking. I THOUGHT I was taking risks (like with the heavy black outlined bandage one), but I was still clearly afraid to make waves.
Chel saw this immediately, and was always trying to tell me it’s okay to push shadows more, brighten other things up, just go ham and dont be afraid.
I remember saying stuff like “I am though!” and not really hearing her, haha.
By the end of the year, I still wasn’t pushing things.
I tried to start using other colors for light. And it was cool, I guess. But it wasn’t enough of a challenge yet, to get me out of my comfort zone.
I realized it, and actually started looking for different brushes, tried different techniques, colored differently, thought about texture, and tried to remember to push things more.
The Christmas selfie of Penny got me a lot of praise, so I started messing with that kind of stuff more. And Anais (sheep girl) got the most attention cuz she was so new and I love her.
Yeah, girls kissing, chill.
Then something important happened: I joined Castrella. I was introduced to a bunch of new artists, all hyping each other up and supporting each other. It was really nice. I made a couple characters.
Eru
Juniper
I was just getting into the groove with my process. Lighting and coloring were making more sense to me and I even felt like I did a good job with the candlelit atmosphere in the picture of Juniper.
That was the end of the year. Going into 2025, I made an Art Bingo.
This is the status as of today: July 7th, 2025. I don’t have an unedited copy.
I made a lot of friends on bsky, in castrella, and it felt like people cared about my art. I was having great discussions about art with Chel, and I just felt more and more motivated to create. Chel was also making lots of art and that made me want to make more as well.
I drew a lot for friends. Friends drew for me. It’s been a lot of fun. Look at all the drawings I got of Roxy. People cared???
by nemoesis
by marthdew
by hanny-b
by kenziewebb
by my brother, even. bikelock
Nekomancer cuz i didn’t have another Roxy. by jdbuenol
I made a FUCK TON more OCs. I’m up to almost 30, now. Crazy, right???
From this point up until about May, 2025, I was doing mostly sketches and doodles.
Lyna, for Sophie
A bunch of Chel’s characters
I was just super prolific this year. According to my archiving program, I have almost 900 images (some are references i saved, some of it is gifts, some of it is duplicate images). I think the number is probably closer to 700, which is still insane. Again, MOST of it is doodles and sketches.
I think just the pure amount of drawing strengthened what I already knew. It made me more confident. Quicker. I was more comfortable with my tools and felt like I could afford to take bigger risks and try weird stuff.
So, uh. Here’s some stuff from May.
I learned blush really makes skin pop.
It was about HERE that suddenly I felt like I was making good art. I loved the gift I made for MuffinViking so much that I considered it the best thing I ever made.
I learned a lot from the people I met online. Just passively picking things out of peoples art, looking at it, studying it, absorbing it. Taking note of how someone did a certain color, a certain curve a line, how they draw eyes or lips or fingers.
Sometime in the middle of the above pictures, I drew a sketch of an idea in my head. I just had to put it to the canvas cuz the idea was cool, and moody. Edgy stuff. And then I colored it! I showed people, I showed Chel, and hot damn was there a huge reception. People loved it. The piece:
I was really happy that people liked the sketch. I was happy with how I colored it, too. I felt like I did a good job. Chel was so excited about it that she came to my room and talked to me about it. Asked me a bunch of questions. She understood what I was going for and nodded along with me.
Then she asked if she could sit down and show me how to improve the coloring. I was extremely excited by this and sat her down immediately. She spent a looong time showing me how colors interact, how to blend them, how to even choose which colors to use. I wish I had a video because the screenshots I just took of the canvas aren’t good enough to explain all the stuff I learned from her:
It really showed me a lot. Look how fucking awesome her revision is. This lesson from her completely changed everything for me and drastically improved my relationship with coloring. I stopped being afraid and started being excited.
Soon after, I made a bunch of brain rotted drawings of a new OC, Piper (even though she wasn’t supposed to be a character at all), because Chel designed a girlfriend for her. I also comlpeted an old Penumbra piece I never finished.
By June 2025 I stopped caring about making perfect lines again, and just decided to draw without worry. And for some reason those came out better than when I cared??
WHAT IS HAPPENING
Then, Art Fight 2025 started on July 1st (it’s only July 7th, now). And I feel so strange looking at the stuff I’ve done for people in the past week. It doesn’t feel real. How did I go from this:
to this?
And look at all the other stuff I did this week.
Theres more, and there will be more. You can see the all the stuff I post here or on my ArtFight page, if you’re interested.
But uh. Yeah, looking forward to the rest of the year?
This one had been rattling around in my head for quite a long time, but I never got around to making it. Then, it turns out, yesterday was #MakeATerribleComicDay (2025). It was the perfect excuse not to fuss.
The bonus panel idea came from my friend @Tired-Lulu. It cracked me up, I had to make it.
