My year of the snake art for the lunar new year! I had originally planned to have more red lanterns and the like, but ended up sticking to just the red accent on the qipao. Looking through the process I feel like I can hear the audiobook I was listening to while drawing in all the scales. Rendering this whole thing was more of a relaxing process, where I wasn’t thinking too hard about the drawing as a whole, but just drawing in the details.

Trying to sip some water! But I’m too high up-! This drawing was an excuse to draw the stone pillars. Its fun mashing the uneven shapes together to form the structure. I’m also continuing with using the pencil textures. It’s been a lot more freeing than sticking strictly to my lineart.

Painting from a photo taken by my dad’s old schoolmate. I also have this quick smaller version I made before the big one!

With some of the recent pencil-y drawings, I’ve tried fitting them together as one town/world. I made a map of one potential layout, but it doesn’t necessarily stick accurately to the illustrations The central point of the map is based on the tulou from fujian province. I have hakka ancestry and have always thought those communal homes are so beautiful! I would love to draw more based on it in the future.

I wanted to draw something inspired by the water towns in China. And it’s been a while since I drew crocodiles, so I thought they could be like a ferry in this little world. I changed the roof from linework to finish, to break up the similar textures across the top.

Panda ghosts for spooky season in 2023! I initially wanted to focus on drawing the street/alleyway with this lighting in mind, but as I was thinking about it I thought it would be a cute place for the panda ghosts to float around in. Color wip! The coloring was more straightforward since I knew vaguely what I wanted– for the alley to be in shadow with the back street being brightly lit (from the thumbnail).

A little piece for the mid autumn festival. I wanted a closely packed area full of props near the walls to give off a warm and cozy feeling. I’ve been focusing on my lineart, and it was a big part of my drawing process for this. I wanted more variation in line width and for my lines not to feel too structured with some sketchiness here and there.

I wanted to make use of grays for the background, with warm colors coming from the van.

The architect behind ant homes.

I was looking at doll houses recently and it made me want to draw diorama art.

Crocs and cats living together. I wanted to focus a lot more on improving my lighting skills for this drawing. I tried to make the shadows and lights more clear than my previous art. For my initial idea I just wanted to design an outdoor space for crocodiles. I was inspired from running around Animal Crossing and imagining decorations I wanted– the end result might be quite different from Animal Crossing though!

A cozy little book room! I wanted to draw a comfy space with warm colors.

Cats on a fishing trip! This started off as a simple doodle-ish drawing, but I played with the colors and decided I wanted some darker lighting with glowing lotus flowers as the background.

This is a commission I did for Mistreil’s characters in their procelain world, Myag Mell.

Baby geese going for a swim. I tried my best, but they’ll probably be mistaken for ducklings since I didn’t add much brown to their coloring ToT. The initial linework felt a bit unbalanced while I was flipping the canvas, so I ended up adding some flower petals to the right edge of the water. At first I thought it might’ve been too small a detail, but I think this helps a lot because of how the pink color pops against the other colors in the area.

Exploring an elevated flying-croc city! When I started this I was just experimenting with how I wanted to stylize my crocodile. I wasn’t planning to draw a background or make this a full illustration until I realized how attached I was to the crocodile I drew (lol). I think the end result as a drawing feels a little stiff overall because I approached it this way, but it’s still cute I think.

Trick-or-treat in the cat neighborhood! I wanted to draw cat life with cardboard houses, in time for Halloween. Here’s some sketches for the composition and cat poses, along with the sketch for my cat tower drawing:

A cardboard box house for the kittens! I’m hoping to expand this idea into a cat town.

This my first time trying to work on an interior for the purpose of having an interior. It’s very impractical, but the crocodile’s presence is cute to me. Since I wanted to get some practice in with interiors, it was initially just a laundry room, but I eventually added a crocodile, and then it turned into a room with water on the floor, however impractical. I thought having lots of props would make it feel more home-y.

I was just imagining a world where crocodiles fly. I felt my coloring/painting in some of my other drawings felt a bit muddy, so for this one most of my coloring was done with just the hard circle brush (no special opacity property). I used an opacity brush for bigger gradients and the clouds, and I didn’t use any smudging/blending properties in my brushes. I think this works pretty well for the cartoonish way I draw, but I might try to bring back blending again later when I think I can pull it off.

Best friends. I drew the background from a photograph I took in Iceland.