I can’t decide which one to make her layout out of though…. anthro, or quad? A dilemma I tell you.

Hope you like it!

-Renoir

Normally I wouldn’t post about my anthropomorphic design attempts, just because I DO NOT like them. But in Betsi’s defense, she’s actually 100% cat!
I’m working on stretching my range of art, and maybe by next year I’ll be able to draw a semi-reasonable standing cat. Until then, please give a warm welcome to Betsi!

Her character is based in an alternate dimension called Terra, a virtualization world where governments run free. The time is a couple hundred years ahead of real life, and nothing is as it seems. All of the inhabitants are anthropomorphic animals, bipedal and completely functional, though none are real people. They have long since forgotten, but they were once all human; in order to spread an “animal” mentality, the government changed everyone’s appearance to some kind of animal.

In this world, everything is high-tech. There is no need for trees, sun, flowers, bugs, or any of the other wonderful commodities earth boasts, since the government has found a way to assist life in every aspect. The people of Terra are totally dependent on their powerful government. As such, everyone works, but no one profits. Yet the people have become complacent, happy in their virtual world. To keep the people under control, the government mixed several “created” beings to work alongside the real humans. And that’s what Betsi is.

But Betsi is not like the other moderators; she was born with an insatiable curiosity, and a desire to create. Though she was placed in the humble position of a clockmaker’s assistant, she had a positive outlook. She learned quickly, and thanks to her creativity, she began fashioning some of the most intricately beautiful clocks in the entire world of Terra. Eventually growing bored with clockmaking, however, she taught herself the art of origami. Her reluctant mentor encouraged her to continue in her paper-folding, and within a few months she could create anything she wanted out of paper. The lei she wears around her neck is entirely made of paper, and she is usually seen with many origami flowers braided into her hair.

All was well, until strange things began to happen in the tiny clock shop. Betsi’s paper creations started coming to life!
The butterflies she fashioned started flapping their wings, and the flowers could bloom on their own. Fearing the omni-powerful government, Betsi began hiding her creations. But the people were so deceived in their minds, they claimed that Betsi was simply insane, imagining her little paper coming alive. After a few weeks of ridicule, she decided it was safe to continue making her origami, under the excuse of insanity.

But not everyone was fooled.

……..ANDDDDD that’s all I’m going to type up for now, maybe I’ll continue this later. 8D Her story does get much more interesting, and eventually she ends up in Torú. But I won’t spoil anything. ;P
For now, enjoy the introduction, Betsi!

Hope you like it,

-Renoir

On another note, I started doing something I’d never done before a few days ago. I was up in my room, and I didn’t have any plain paper within sight. Due to my incredible laziness, I decided I’d use graph paper since it was sitting on my desk anyway. I doodled something quick, but then I noticed something: it was really easy to measure distances using the graph! I could accurately recreate the same proportions much easier, because I wasn’t trying to draw on what LOOKED right. I could judge on what should be PROPORTIONATELY right.

I’m not sure if I’ll use more of this in the future, but I have a feeling I might be going somewhere with my newfound proportion helper.

But back to Jynsei. I used the other coloring method again, and this time I added a couple of different highlight colors. It’s a very simple method, and really helps when I don’t have time to sit down and color for a long period of time. I’ll probably use it for her other form as well.

Hope you like it!

-Renoir

After a -coughcough-RIDICULOUS amount of work, both halves of Jahq’s reference were finally combined into his reference!
Guhhhh. Remind me again why I gave him those heinous scales? x_X
Click the image to see the full version, or browse my full Flickr album. I doubt you’ll be able to read the text as is. x)

Hope you like it,

-Renoir

Finally finished Jahq’s land form! Guhhhhh this was hard. @_@

His scales on his legs were absolutely IMPOSSIBLE. Ack. D:
I hope the ref works well though… it’s finally time to combine his water form picture and his land form picture into a single reference sheet!

But not tonight. Sooo not tonight. x_x

Hope you like it!

-Renoir

….it’s strange, because I feel like I haven’t actually drawn Nolani in a long time. XD It’s just whatever I have already scanned and ready to color on my computer. Hopefully soon I’ll manage to scan things and get working!

But anyway, I took a quick trip down memory lane and did a bit of photo manipulation with Photoshop. Gosh, it’s been SO long since I’ve done this kind of work, I’m definitely rusty. Guhh. Nevertheless, I think I did a semi reasonable job converting a normal king cheetah into a Leucistic one. It’s interesting to see how a normal cheetah looks once it’s been whitewashed and… uh… gilded?

Below are the before and after pictures:

Photo credit its original owners, I found it on Wikipedia here.

And on a completely different note, remember my sleeping kitties from before? Well, I decided I’d make them into adoptables. Woot!

Hope you like it!

-Renoir

Life is chiiillll today, so I decided to dig up an old sketch to finish coloring.
I used my new painting method again this time, and hey. I might make these into adoptables later! It’s certainly versatile method, though I’m having trouble with making things look less… shiny…

I’ll work on that.
But in the meantime, here’s a sample of before and after:

Hope you like it!

-Renoir

On a happier note of life, some art! Yayy~
I discovered some pretty neato tutorials on Youtube for Flash on how to draw horses, and after a while I decided I just /had/ to try some of the new methods out. These were much more like painting, and I thought they were pretty fun and easy to do. It was a little hard though, considering pretty much everyone draws horses with references for tutorials. Sadly, my lineart for Jahq was just a quick doodle for his aquatic form reference. So no ref for me, darn. D:

It was also ridiculously difficult turning the real life Choc into the digital, aquatic Jahq. Appaloosa spots are hard to create to begin with, but trying to make something fictional look like a particular horse challenges me every time. His tailfin also changes from picture to picture, so I have no idea how anyone but me will try to draw him. Ugh.

Anyways.
Maybe next time I’ll use a photo ref to draw, and I might continue to use this method in the future. We’ll see. ;D

Hope you like it!

-Renoir

It’s funny to think just a week ago I was going to blog about forgetting to blog, and after that I wanted to write about getting a stomach bug. But only yesterday everything just faded.

It’s hard to believe that an animal can change how you live every day, but incredibly, they can. I woke up this morning for the first time without my dog, and it felt like a part of me was missing. I won’t go on endlessly about how I’ll miss her, or how good of a dog she was. But it’s weird thinking that now she’ll never be home again.

Life goes on is such a horrible, horrible term. I sort of chuckle when I think about how often we disregard other people’s suffering because we just don’t know that words like these sting, rather than comfort.
“Life goes on.”

I think God allows us to have times like this so we don’t get comfortable. Are we not a people of amnesia? So often we forget the pain of loss, or even the suffering of a stomach bug.

Waking up and immediately thinking “Time to take the dog out,” was a cruel way to say good morning today. But I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like if a person was missing! If it were my mom, my dad, or my best friend Kayla.
The pain would have been too much to take, and yet people every day have to face the morning with those situations.

And yet all we can say is “I’m sorry for your loss.” Or worse,
Life goes on.

Sometimes it takes a pretty hard slap for comfortable Christians to wake up and realize why we’re here. And as sad as it is that our friends, family, and even pets sometimes have to leave us, we can’t lose focus on our purpose here. Of all the people who lose so much, and endure so much pain, and have nothing to live for. Who’s going to comfort them?
Imagine if you had the pain of memories, of a friend you just lost. Some people dull the pain by submersing themselves in drugs, alcohol, relationships, work. Others just live in denial. It’s much easier just to push the hurt aside, and go on in life as an empty shell.

Thank God that if no one else, we have Christ as our comforter!

In 2 Corinthians, the kindest words of life are found:

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, ⁴ who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

Through the whole Bible, we find passages to back this huge statement up.
Guess what? Christ doesn’t just say life goes on.

I think it’s fitting that the day I’m writing this, it’s Good Friday. As sad as it is for me to know I’ll wake up to another day without my beloved dog, it’s sadder to think of all the hurting people this weekend who have no idea Christ came for them. Some who don’t even have a clue that the God of the universe cares about things so little like that my dog just died.
While it will hurt for a while that my companion for 11 years won’t be here to pick up my food, or sit underfoot, it must hurt God more to think of all his crying children every. day.

Maybe this Easter we should focus on sharing his love, even if it hurts us to just keep living.
Because you can’t find the phrase “life goes on” anywhere in the Bible.

But you can find comfort.
Maybe I’m just rambling, but maybe we’re meant to spread the message of hope this Easter, even if life isn’t going so well. Keep your eyes on what’s to come, for He promises us in Isaiah 60:20 some beefy stuff.

²⁰ Your sun will never set again,
and your moon will wane no more;
the LORD will be your everlasting light,
and your days of sorrow will end.

No more sorrow, no more pain. Rest in peace Shadow, and all of those who are no longer with us. We’ll honor you, and you’ll be missed.
But there’s still some work to do around here.

-Renoir

….sadly it took a nasty stomach bug just to get me to FINISH the darned things. Hm.
Oh well.
I’ll probably start taking requests and stuff for these, I (hopefully) made them pretty edit friendly for myself.  While I was making these, actually, I stumbled across a pretty annoying PS bug that I’d never heard of. For some reason, Photoshop thought it would be funny to draw huge white squares on ALL of my layers. Every single layer from a certain point up had enormous–and I mean ENORMOUS, we’re talking 900 x 900 pixels at least–squares that had been filled white. That was an interesting thing to edit out and redo, I’ll tell you. 8I
It certainly added a twist to my normal adoptables routine.

I made the four basic of these, plus my mom’s purple one. I’ll probably add more later, but maybe not. Flickr hates transparency, and I wanted to make these transparent… ugh. So here are a few of them, they lead to their full sizes if you click them:

Hope you like them!

-Renoir