Wings of Fire Designs

design archive of the characters from the book series Wings of Fire main account on insta - cypress.fox25 tag me if you use any designs!

[cywofdesign]

design suggestions HERE!!!

pinned post for a bit of extra information about me!

i'm cy! I am a long-term fan of the series who has been reading since 2016 (after escaping peril came out). I started drawing at around the same time, and I have been pretty consistent about drawing dragons in all those years. I decided to make some designs for the series upon rereading it in December of 2025, and continued with it because you guys are nice and lovely.

main account: @cypressfox - I post full art on here (example above of my wof oc, fox!)

my carrd (contains all other links) - this has my artfight, insta, toyhouse, etc!

I am most active on here and insta, but I really kick into gear every july for artfight

questions that are not quite "frequently asked" but could be potentially-

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favorite characters? - cycles between the og bad guys (blister, morrowseer, scarlet, etc) and darkstalker cast (darkstalker, arctic, clearsight, etc)

favorite ships (healthy)? - sunlow probably (tui writes subpar romance imo); moonajou

favorite ships I don't condone? - clearstalker and arcticslayer

favorite book? - darkstalker (is that obvious yet)

favorite arc? - arc one (dragonet prophecy arc)

favorite tribe? - seawings

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art program? - medibang paint but I don't recommend it

requests? - no, sorry!

art trades? - sometimes I open them on instagram or on my main, but not often. best way to keep up is to follow me on one of those

commissions? - would love to set that up but not right now

is there any way to get art from you, you freak? - yes! I go crazy during artfight, so keep me on your roster and there is a huge chance I get back to you with something special

can I see your process? - I post speedpaints of my art on instagram, so that might interest y'all! high chance I try and do something like that here sometime?

anatomy help- I made a post right here going over some of the basics

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i would love to answer any other questions you have, either in the comments of this post or through tumblr's question system! I don't bite so ask away. if there's anything else you guys think I should add to this, go ahead and tell me and I will. until then!

[cypressfox]

did someone say pride month? #gay

[cywofdesign]

Hellooo!!

I absolutely love your art and the way you draw wings. I was wondering if I could use the way you draw wings as a reference?? Mainly the two wing fingers and the wing muscles. If not, it’s completely okay!! I just thought I’d ask to make sure it’s alright with you :3

Absolutely! You (and anyone else) can reference any parts of my art and designing style that you would like! I've got no problems with that personally, and I actually encourage it because it can be a great way to learn.

Thank you for the compliments!! <33

[cywofdesign]

Favorite queer characters / headcanons??

IT'S PRIDE MONTH and you know what that means! THAT'S RIGHT. Extra gay designs and extra gay art for the next thirty days.

So tell me! What are your favorite queer characters and relationships in Wings of Fire? Headcanon or canon. I'll draw some and post them periodically throughout the month.

[cywofdesign]

Sunny

little update to bring her up to speed with my other sandwings!

[cywofdesign]

I’m a liiittllee bit late to the questions about art things but I NEED TO KNOW. How do you render/shade your art? I’ve been looking at that icewing art piece you posted alongside the question post and I just,,, how?? I’ve been trying to learn rendering and texture adding for so freaking long and I can never get any good tips or speedpaints to learn off of soooo you’re my best chance lol

This is such a fun question! It is so fun that I am dedicating a whole post on my main account to answering this, because it is complicated and a little messy at times haha

Here is a link to it! I reblogged it on this account too.

It is sooo long I'm sorry lmao

[cypressfox]

Shading w/ Cy

I have gotten some requests for me to explain my painting / shading process recently, so I figured I'd try and make a helpful post!

Keep in mind that shading and especially painting are processes that come with time. BUT, I think maybe I can point y'all in the right direction towards developing a style that works for you. Feel free to use any of the strategies mentioned here; hell, if you want to "steal" my entire process, please do! Totally cool with me, I don't own this concept at all.

Disclaimer before I start! I use the free art program Medibang Paint on my normie Samsung tablet. Would I recommend this program? No. It crashes pretty easy sometimes and has a shit ton of ads (although you can turn the wifi off to make it more bearable). THAT BEING SAID, I don't spend a dollar on any of the things in this tutorial. All of my brushes are free, and every setting I use on here is easy to find there. Just food for thought if you are bummed with your own program.

1 - Simple Shading / Color Corrections

I think that this part of shading is the easiest to apply and requires the least amount of explaining! I made a little graphic for you all. You may have to click on the picture to read it all.

This is step one for all the shading I do! It takes three seconds once you get used to it and is an amazing starting point for me. I do this on every piece, even the ones I don't end up shading. Helps to make things pop!

Everything else I do might be considered too complicated to put in a graphic, so it's time for some detailed explanations.

CONTINUE AFTER THE READ MORE PLEASE

Switching to Mysticshade ;)

We are starting with this (ignore the background)

2 - Basic Texturing + Deeper Shadow

Following the shadows laid out by my gradients in step one, I take some simple texture brushes and apply the same dark/light values in the same places. Generally, I use these specific brushes below. These are free on Medibang Paint (watching an ad will unlock them for a few hours), but I am positive you can find a similar texture brush on whatever program you are using.

Once I have these values down, I will take the layer and turn them into overlay layers, the same as before. If the character is either super saturated or super light, I may choose to make the dark layer a multiply layer instead. In this instance, I used dark blue for the shadows and a bright, slightly desaturated pink for the lighting.

First image is what this generally looks like without a base color so you guys can see what I am aiming for.

3 - Full Shading

This next step varies depending on what I want to do. I literally have, like, seven different shading styles that I use based on what I am feeling in the moment. I will show you what I did for this piece specifically.

My strategy here was to select my character and put down a dark shade (the same blue I had been using previously). This resulted in my character being completely covered in blue. From there, I used the lasso tool to select and then erase certain sections that would be catch the light. I think a lot of people do the opposite (where they color in the shadows), but I like this strategy because it puts down more values overall.

It is hard to explain how to do this without having experience in shading, but my tips are to take the parts that naturally stick out (like the cheeks) and erase the shading on those, and leave the parts that don't untouched. This comes with time, and, if shading is uncomfortable to you, looking at a lot of references!

If you want to make the shading softer (which looks very nice imo), then you can individually select each of the sections you erase and pull a transparent gradient from the corner using the same color you are shading with. This works really well on fur.

Most of the time, I duplicate this layer once I am satisfied with it. The bottom layer I turn to "multiply" and bring the opacity down to a low number (15-25%), and the top layer I turn to "overlay" and keep at a higher opacity (50% or higher). The effect looks something like what you see below (although in this case I hid the layers showing the color corrections of the previous steps, so it's not confusing). In this example, I used another layer to add a couple shadows myself, and you can use as many or as few layers as you want here.

looks pretty good!

4 - Painting

This step is going to be far more complicated than a lot of you want to go. Realistically, at this point, your art looks beautiful and perfect and you don't need to touch it! If you want a bit of a challenge though, painting it fully can be SUPER fun and super inspiring and so I will show you what I do for that.

First thing is that you are gonna need some nice, watercolor brushes. The ones that I use most are listed below. You can find your own as well, anything that works for you!

I had a beautiful gif prepared showcasing how I do this, but it is too large. I will do my best to explain how I go about painting my pieces, but it may be confusing.

Create a new layer on top of everything you've done so far. Using your watercolor brush of choice (in my case, my Flat Brush), blend the edges of distinct colors by using the eyedropper tool. Basically, take the surrounding colors and reapply them with this new brush. Because you are using a watercolor brush, it should create a nice blended effect at every point where two colors meet.

My end goal is to make it so that most colors meld into each other and there aren't super hard borders.

Because I am using a brush that is meant to mimic fur, I will try to follow those lines. For my dragon drawer, I often use this brush on scaly beasts too. I actually like how it looks on everything. In those cases, I just make it more subtle to look less like fur and more like paint.

first picture is before, second picture is after. I decided I didn't like her pupil anymore, that's not a part of the process LMAO

you can see here, I use the brush on dragons too.

Once I am at a good spot with that, I will go in with the other two brushes on that sheet and add little texturing in the places I think need it. I think my art of Fox (above) is super helpful for displaying how I use the last one. It is way bolder, less watercolor, and works really well to put noticeable detail. It's there a ton in the background. If you can find a cool brush that you really like to add extra texture at the end, it can add a lot of personality! I would definitely recommend it.

5- Final Touches

once I'm done with all of that, I just go in with a normal brush and touch up the lineart in the places where it disappeared, add a bit of contrast in the areas where parts blend into each other too much, add a shit ton of extra overlay gradients until everything looks perfect, etc. If you've got a kitty, add some whiskers, If you've got a dragon, maybe draw in some little circles to look like scales. On this piece, I took a standard brush, made it super small, and then added in some pink and purple highlights / scribbles to make certain areas (like the head) stand out. I gave her some of the kitty snout speckles (I don't know what that's called). Obviously, this is the point where you just do anything you think needs doing, it's unique for every piece.

Final Thoughts

I can only imagine how impossible this "guide" is to follow so I am sorry about that haha. It's hard to explain something that you do without thinking! At the least, I hope this was interesting or enlightening into what I do personally to get the results I do for my pieces. If you want to try any of these things yourself, good luck! Send me your results or tag me in pieces where you used this strategy! I'd love to see what you guys make of it.

I am always open to answering questions, clarifying anything I said, or helping you guys in the DMs! If you want help trying to find features on your program OR if you are using Medibang Paint and need some assistance finding my brushes (or likewise), definitely shoot me a DM. I will do what I can.

Overall, my final tip is to go all out! It's digital art, if you don't like the way the shading looks, you can always delete those layers and try something else. Might as well do it all! Don't get too frustrated, I am still learning things all the time and you WILL get better at it the more you do it.

I hope you all learned something! Again, ask me ANYTHING you want, I love helping people. Until the next tutorial 👋

[cywofdesign]

I have gotten some questions about shading, and I locked in yesterday to make a post and some graphics explaining my process! It's kind of messy and a little hard to follow (I am a rambler), but you guys might be able to make something of it.

Feel free to DM me or ask me any questions at all! I love helping and I might be easier to learn from one on one.

[cywofdesign]

Snakeroot

[cywofdesign]

Do you have any advice on improving the stability of linework? I've struggled a ton with my lines looking wobbly, especially with longer lines. I'm sure part of it will simply improve as my hand becomes more adept, but is there any other advice you can give on making really smooth linework? Thanks!

This is a really good question! I honestly don't know any super consistent tips for getting smoother lines, but I can tell you what kind of stuff I do specifically to get the linework I get.

1 - I DO use a tablet with a bigger screen. Not a drawing tablet necessarily but I don't draw on my teeny phone screen anymore.

2 - I have a stylus but tbh that is mostly for my wrist. I can and do draw with my finger sometimes with decent results, I don't know if it makes a noticeable difference. You can decide for yourself, I got a stylus last Christmas and was using my finger before that point haha

3 - I do not draw super long lines! I know that some people say to do this for nicer lines, but long lines do not work for me. I am a big fan of sketching out my curving lineart (like on the tail) with one long line (wobbly) and then doing smaller brush strokes for the actual lineart. Personally, this gets me stabler lines, but it might be a bad habit.

4 - I go over my lines a couple times normally to make the thickness vary (thicker in some areas and thinner in others). I also go in and erase some parts occasionally (make the tips of lines pointy). This evens out a lot of imperfections in my opinion!

I am sorry for everyone who wants guidance on stabilizers and app settings... because I have no idea how to set up any of that. Basically any of my expertise comes from brute forcing art for ten years lmaooo

[cywofdesign]

Mulberry

guess who read the hybrid prince! this guy!!

[cywofdesign]

Fatespeaker

she's purple now W

edit: I feel the need to clarify for everyone who is confused, my old design was blue but I updated her to be purple. tui didn't introduce some new fatespeaker lore to turn her purple or anything hahah

but! for the people interested, fatespeaker is technically described as being black with hints of blue and purple in her scales! so, is she purple in canon? maybe... maybe not ;P

[cywofdesign]

Third poll about the next few months! Read this post if you need context

Assuming I post updated designs separately, should I delete old posts / designs once I redo them?

Yes

No

Voting ended onMay 6

i think this is my last question lmaooo

[cywofdesign]

Second post about the next few months! Read this post if you need context

If I post redone designs, what spread of posts would you prefer to see?*

Updates Designs First (Most posts are updates)

A Mix of Updates and Completely New Designs

Focus on New Designs (Occasional updates)

Voting ended onMay 6

*this is not counting designs for The Hybrid Prince, which I hope to start posting regardless in the next few months!

[cywofdesign]

i love seeing any of your designs it would be great to see the updated ones even though it’s the same dragon 🐉!!

I really appreciate this feedback! I would love to show you guys the things I am working on so long as y'all don't feel too spammed! Thank you so much for the compliments <3

[cywofdesign]

First poll about the next few months! Read this post if you need context

When I update a design, do you want me to...

Make a completely new post (pops up on your feed / notification)

Edit the post I've already made (no indication but visible if you look it up)

Voting ended onMay 6

For context, this is about designs that I actually update (pose, colors, etc). If I am just tracing my old design, I will edit the previous post (no change after all).

[cywofdesign]

Some updates to how I'm doing designs!

okay Tumblr, some things are boutta change around here 🤠

I will give you the same shpeal that I gave Instagram, so if you read that already then you can skip this post! I will post some polls next that you can vote on instead

I want to thank you guys for the crazy support you have all given me on here! I am being completely serious when I say I had no idea this project was going to get to this point. I figured I would be drawing some designs of the protagonists for my own fun, maybe some villains. Generally, whenever I have done designs in the past, I kept it at that and then lost motivation, but you guys have made it different this time. I wanna keep this going for a while, if I can!

Because of my small-scale vision, though, I've run into a few hitches that I need to iron out if I want to keep this going though, and I am tackling this now rather than later.

My first problem is that I worked on a crazy small canvas. This means my designs are mega pixel-y if you zoom in even a little bit, which is super annoying to me. I did this originally out of habit: I work on small canvases normally to make my files smaller, which is better for toyhouse and artfight and all of them. I don't like it for this though, especially if I am making them for a wider audience

this is a good example. you can basically count the pixels when you zoom in. it's not the end of the world or anything, but I figured it is an easy fix to up the canvas size a bit.

SO! Because I am doing this, I intend on converting a lot / most / maybe all of my designs to this higher quality. This is for a number of reasons, but the big one is because I am not happy with a lot of these designs, or more that I feel like I can do better. If these designs are what I'm known for, I want them to be my best work, you get me? They aren't right now.

This is going to look like a complete revamp for some, shiny new poses for others, maybe some brighter colors on a couple, and for the ones I like, I will just trace the art I've already got on a larger scale. I plan on making some tribe-specific features more prominent (I want to give NightWings bat features! I chickened out last time and now all my NightWings look the same).

An example of what I mean with Fatespeaker ^^ new pose, new colors, and bat features (more personality)! Some characters need this more than others, and I will focus on those!

I also want to take more time with my designs so I can put out stuff I'm proud of! Got some more edits to give this Moonwatcher design before I am sold with it (gotta edit her little bat nose a bit).

Now that you have read my essay, I will post some polls separately so you guys can have a say in how my next couple months of posts are gonna look. Thank you for reading and thank you guys for the support!

[cywofdesign]

Foeslayer / Hope

why do the most beautiful women end up with the most roadkill men