Art from April 2025

[901 words, 5 min estimated read time]

While I didn’t make as much art as I did last month, I was happy looking back and feel like there was an up in the quality of the work. I found myself a lot happier with how the drawings for this month turned out, and I’ve started to get a better idea for what I want my style to lean towards!

Ne Zha Art

Over on Tumblr I saw the artist @redundantz‘s design for a Chaos Pill & Spirit Pearl fusion based on the characters Ne Zha and Ao Bing. I thought it was super cool so I drew it!

I was pretty happy with how it turned out, I liked the movement I got with it and the way I had the big blocks of lineart and shadow. I was also really happy with how the background turned out, I thought it’d take me a lot longer to find something I liked but honestly I just took a splotchy brush and then blurred it and it already had the vague impression of a stormy sky. So that made it a lot easier for me! I found myself fiddling with the lighting for the flames and background a lot, so that may be something I wanna focus more on in future illustrations like this.

Drawing my character Morrigan

I wanted to redraw my character Morrigan mostly with their original design, but just spruce it up a bit. Their design has simplified a lot over the years and I wanted to do a drawing where I added back stuff like their witch hat, daggers, and gold eyepatch.

I’ve felt kind of unsure about my art style lately and this was definitely a little boost I needed to feel reassured with it again. I was super happy with how it turned out and I may wanna go back to drawing them with their original design more often! While there are benefits to simplifying their design I’ve also started to find it kind of boring lately just drawing them in the same poofy white shirt and black pants. In particular I was happy with changing the color of their shirt since I feel like it makes their white hair stand out more against all of their clothes.

I made another drawing of them, this time more of a full illustration with lighting and a more interesting pose and angle.

After the Ne Zha drawing where I was messing with the lighting a lot I made sure to make that a big focus for this drawing. With the big witch hat I was able to play around with harsh shadows a lot and had a ton of fun with it. In the middle of the drawing I thought to add the purple flame where their eye would be peaking out from the brim of the hat and I really liked that detail, so I’m glad I tried it out! I think it helps bring the focus in on the face more. I also spent a lot of time trying to get the swirls of the tendrils from the spell to look right and have a nice flow to it.

Website Background Wallpaper

I got inspired to look at some other personal websites online and after coming back to my own felt it was a little… plain looking. So even though it would be a simple change I decided to make a background wallpaper for it and see how it looked.

I made a repeating pattern mostly of leaves but also with a few moths and a small flower every once in a while. I kept the background the same base color it had been as sort of a minty green and then a lighter shade for the pattern.

After I uploaded it I really, really liked it! It was such a simple change but I felt like it made such a noticeable difference to me in making my website feel more personal. I had to go back through and make sure all of the text boxes are readable with a lighter green text box, and unfortunately have had the most trouble with the blog posts (where that’s kind of most important), so hopefully that’s all sorted out now.

I think it’d be cute to make a few patterns I can switch between every once in a while. Like make one with pumpkins, bones, and fall leaves for Halloween! Or maybe just for all through October. I think if I want to do seasonal wallpapers the purple base I have for my heading right now would also look good with oranges for autumn and pale blues for winter. Even just with a quick color swap I like the look of it! The possibilities are endless and now I’m excited to play around with different backgrounds!

Misc Drawings

Some other misc drawings and doodles I’ve done!

A drawing of my character Locke! I really struggled with the background and lighting for this one but eventually just had to say enough is enough after fidgeting endlessly with it.