The Gaze, watercolours on cold-pressed paper (2026)
Bathed in gentle morning light, with his head pillowed in his arms, Do'vassha laid his gaze upon his still sleeping lover. Still slumbering when I'm just about done getting ready for the day, hmm, he thought, a light, affectionate chuff escaping him. Not for the first time, he found himself wishing those soft, quiet moments they shared could linger on a little longer, granting them a little more time. But he knew it would not stop for them; time would not stop for anyone. One day, they would be old and aching and their memories would fail them. So he watched. He watched and hoped to sear the image in his mind so that, in a lifetime, he could recall it.
A late ArtFight revenge for @strigoium, featuring her Khajiit character Do'vassha. She drew a looping animation of my S'hodantuh last year, and I keep going back to look at it. This painting is my thanks!
Pensées, the flowers he has in his hair, mean "thinking of you" in the language of flowers.
I haven't done any creative writing in a little while, and English isn't my first language, so bear with me!
Process shots and rambling under read more.
Sketching... As usual, I posed in front a mirror to serve as a reference.
Final sketch, scanned. I do all my sketching with a Rotring criterium (can't tell you which model, I have no idea. I've had this criterium for 15 years or so and none of the models on the website seem to be it) with 0.5 mm HB pencil leads.
I transposed the lineart on a sheet of Montval 300 mg watercolour cold-pressed paper (I don't have a light table so I just use my computer screen... aha). I lined with watercolours using my Witch Hat Atelier dip pen! The trick is to dilute the pigments quite a lot, so the paint does go down the reservoir, and to apply layers. The watercolours also fix some of the pencil underneath! I erased the excess and then started with underpainting with raw sienna.
And then, I'm very sorry, I pulled a "draw the rest of the fucking owl". I just locked in and forgot to take process shots.
The fur was painted using raw sienna, raw umber and sepia, more or less mixed together or simply layered upon one another. I also added ivory black for the darkest parts, alongside a light wash to desaturate the fur to fit Do'vassha's colors. Then, it was a lot of painting individual strands of fur. It might seem boring to you, but it's actually one of my favorite parts! I love short-haired animals for that, aha.
All the blue is turquoise; the gold is raw sienna.
And then, I just finished the painting (shaded the tunic, reworked the lineart. I think some charm got a little lost on the arms; I could have re-added fur textures where they got erased from the layers, and I used too much ivory black in my mix for lineart fur on the arms. Oh well! Mistakes are bound to happen when you overwork your watercolours.
In the end, I'm still quite happy with the result! I especially like the expression I gave him. I hope you'll all like it! If you've read this far (thank you!), a reblog would always be appreciated!
Op I have to let you know that this artwork single-handedly made me go read the manga (I’m about halfway through as of now so don’t spoil anything!) and I’ve never read manga before or anything. Until yesterday I did not know what Witch Hat Atelier was. This is was done so beautifully I needed to find out where it was from.
commission for @nian101, their party's human fighter Farvald with his young moorbounder Blackmoor! thank you for commissioning me and giving me another opportunity to draw my favorite weird cat steeds 💜
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headshot | half-body | full-body
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