Art by Nicolai

Hi! I'm Nicolai, an artist based in the USA Find me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/artbynicolai Find me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/artbynicolai

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A little fledgling spent a week in our garden, and I found the little bird very enchanting

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Spring Gardening, April 2026

We've been spending a lot of time in the yard gardening lately, and all the different plants inspired me to play around with oil brushes in Clip Studio Paint

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My wife and I are fans of Drawfee, as well as Jacob Andrews and Julia Lepetit's other show, Secret Sleepover Society. One of our cats, however, is a fan of their cats specifically, Joy and Olive. Whenever we watch one of their gaming videos, he comes up to the television in the hopes of seeing them. I like to imagine that it is The Joy and Olive Show for him, which is what inspired me to paint this piece.

We had the opportunity to see Drawfee live earlier this month, and had a blast! I even got to give Jacob and Julia a copy of this as a print, and I hope that they enjoyed it at least a little bit.

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The cat himself

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My wife and I are fans of Drawfee, as well as Jacob Andrews and Julia Lepetit's other show, Secret Sleepover Society. One of our cats, however, is a fan of their cats specifically, Joy and Olive. Whenever we watch one of their gaming videos, he comes up to the television in the hopes of seeing them. I like to imagine that it is The Joy and Olive Show for him, which is what inspired me to paint this piece.

We had the opportunity to see Drawfee live earlier this month, and had a blast! I even got to give Jacob and Julia a copy of this as a print, and I hope that they enjoyed it at least a little bit.

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Cherry Blossoms, March 2026

These beautiful flowers have struck me with artistic inspiration for this spring! You can read more about it on my ko-fi

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Mending, February 2026

My wife had a bunch of her clothes tear all at once, and the task of patching them all up inspired me to paint this piece. You can read more about it on my ko-fi page.

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Experimenting with digital markers

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Impressions of Colorado, January 2026

My wife and I took the California Zephyr out to see family this month, and I wanted to capture the feeling of seeing Colorado by train. Read all about it on my ko-fi!

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Holly Sprig, December 2025

This December brought a wave of cooler temperatures and a pronounced beginning to winter, including the first snowfall of the season. My wife was very excited to watch the snow fall at midnight, when its subtle brightening of the sky was most noticeable. We watched it slowly pile up all over the yard together. Thankfully, it did not melt overnight, as it often does, so we got to see its beauty in the morning sun too.

Personally, I found it to be very striking against our holly tree. The white of the snow really brought out the pop of red from the holly’s berries (which is a feat in and of itself, as the red berries already contrast well with the green leaves in more mundane weather). Texturally, it also brought a cool airiness, playing well with the roughness of the branches and the waxy smoothness of the leaves and berries. There’s a simplicity in its beauty that made me better understand why holly has been such a symbol of winter (and especially December) for generations now.

This feeling is what I tried to capture with this month’s print. I chose to work in linocut again, as the medium is better suited by focusing on shape, which would keep me from getting so into tiny details that it would detract from the overall scene. I went through a few mock-ups, playing around mostly with the number of berries, leaves, and branches, but ultimately I found that the simplest option was the best one. I kept the background white as I felt it was evocative of how the snow brought the holly’s colors into the forefront for me.

Once I was happy with my mock-up, I carved my design into stamp form to make prints with. I even cut the stamp up into different parts (leaves, stems, and berries), so I could make the prints multi-colored, by separately coloring the component parts before putting them all back together into a singular design. Overall, I am happy with how my first multi-colored linocut experiment turned out, and I hope that this month’s print brings you joy in the winter season.

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Ode to Fall, November 2025 Autumn is generally my favorite season of the year. I love getting to see the leaves change in color. Unfortunately for me, I had to spend a lot of this fall resting due to illness, so I didn't spend much time outside enjoying the season. My wife took matters into her own hands and brought the fall inside to me, giving me leaves from her walks. These leaves are the ones that inspired this painting. I'm starting a Print of the Month Club, and this is my piece for November. Anyone who is interested in getting this piece (and a letter about it) in the mail can sign up for my club on Ko-fi or Patreon.

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The Trick-or-Treaters, October 2025

All the way back in May, my wife and I went on a weekend trip for a family wedding. This meant we couldn’t ask my in-laws to watch over our cats, so we had to get a pet sitter. So, to help prepare, I covered our whiteboard with information about our cats for the sitter, including a big doodle of them right in the middle of our board.

My wife ended up loving the doodle so much that it stayed there for her, untouched, all the way until now. I just couldn’t bring myself to erase it. So, I knew I only had one option: figuring out how to give the doodle a home somewhere else. This is what gave me the idea for this month’s print.

For a long time, I've admired the look of linocut pieces, but had never experimented with it myself. I knew that the kitty doodle would be the perfect first piece for me, and so I used it to dive right into the medium. I took the above picture and recreated it digitally in Clip Studio Paint, but focused on developing the cats’ shapes to be both more distinct and more readable in black in white. When I was happy with it, I printed the design out, transferred it onto a linoleum block, and carved it into my very own stamp to make block prints with.

I decided to turn the first prints I made with my linocut block stamp into Halloween cards for friends and family. To better celebrate the holiday, I drew simple costumes onto the cats with ink and gave them a little jack-o-lantern pail to turn them into cute trick-or-treaters. I chose to make them a devil and an angel for two reasons: they form a classic duo, and thematically fit perfectly into a trick and treat dichotomy. I made Lito the devil as he is the more mischievous of our cats, so it fit him better. It also helped me spatially balance out his tail, as his is a lot shorter than Ronin's. Ronin, on the other hand, was given the angel costume as he constantly wants to cuddle on our laps, and all the curves give him an overall softer shape (which is also true for him in real life).

Overall, I’m happy with how this piece turned out, and I’m excited to get to explore the medium of linocut printing even more in the future.

Prints of this are available on my Ko-fi shop, for anyone interested.