It's that time of year again!
Imma be real with you guys, 2025 was a rough year, both in my personal life and with everything going on outside it.
But that doesn't mean I'm giving up on what I love to do, and that is to draw, drink coffee, talk about astrology and fandom stuff, be with my friends and family, and hoping for the better days to come despite the bullshit happening around us.
Just like last year tho, I'll link back to each picture for visibility sakes.
January: Same Soul (this was both fun and difficult to draw, since it's a movie-poster-like drawing that splits into two, and the title was inspired by the PVRIS song of the same name).
February: Darts (legit as it says on the tin, I got bored one day and I looked at some It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia screenshots of that dart scene and I just had to do it with Ezra and the Qualifiers).
March: Ezra in a 16th Century Inspired Dress (I infodumped this to a friend already, but there's gonna be upcoming lore stuff regarding this dress as I continue writing Into the Dark Night of the Soul, my Soul Calibur fic. For now, it was fun pouring research into what French nobility dresses might've looked like back in the 16th Century, not to mention also recreating it in Soul Calibur 6 itself).
April: Perfect Cell (Oh look! Something completely different! But I would like to say that I wasn't 100% honest. While yeah, the nostalgia bug did come to bite me and it got me to draw Cell again after not touching Dragon Ball Z for almost a decade at this point. AKA, this piece was exposure therapy for me).
May: Bats and Spiders (Technically I drew this in April for my bestie cos let's be real, there wasn't enough Minthara x Astarian fanart out there. But what if I told you this drawing also made it onto their birthday cake? It took a while for it to actually come out as it should, meaning I had to change a lot of things and make a few details bolder, but the cake came out perfectly fine in May, so that's why I put this as May, cos I didn't have a drawing in May).
June: Morning Coffee (Ah yes, that steamy but soft piece I drew of Kasta and Grøh together, made during a bad heat wave. I've been meaning to draw something like that for a while, but I got a little worried that I might get slammed with the maturity filter. Glad I didn't tho. And I was experimenting with watercolour brushes to give it that soft look).
July: Ivy outfit design inspired by Cruella De Vil (I loved putting this outfit together! I had a vision one day and I just had to draw it. The most important things I had to keep in mind for this outfit was to, 1. keep true to Ivy with the battle lingerie get-up, 2. to make it as close to Cruella De Vil as possible, and 3. cos Soul Calibur is a fighting game and I had to make sure the outfit wasn't going to get in the way of her arm and leg movements.
August: Rumi and Mina (Basically, I tried to do a smart and jump on the KPop Demon Hunters hype train as soon as I watched the movie with my family, and what better way to do that than to make a crossover with my current hyperfixation? It was so much fun to draw Rumi and Seong Mina together, them being Korean women with long braided hair with demon/half-demon love interests and fighting monsters and demons).
September: Red, Amy, Viola (I've wanted to do a piece with a younger and older versions of the same person in the same picture. So, with Soul Calibur 6 solving the identity of Viola and Amy's disappearance at the same time, I had to draw this with them in it. But then I also got an idea and also draw Amy--who was nicknamed Red when she lived in the slums--before she met Raphael, and it made me realize how this same character basically lived completely different lives within one: Red was a street urchin, Amy was a noble's daughter, and Viola was a fortune-teller with amnesia. If I have to make an observation using astrology, this feels so much like Scorpio Rising/Pluto in the 1st House energy playing out).
October: Grøh shows Kasta how his people party (There were so many choices for this month, but I had to go with this piece since I wanted to show off my chibi drawing style. This was inspired by a Tumblr post I saw about how Scandinavians used to light shit on fire to have their parties before Christmas Lights were invented. Kasta could not believe what they saw. Link to the post can be found in the art piece post).
November: Whatever Tomorrow Brings (That day-late birthday piece for Grøh based off of the 7 year anniversary drawing from the producers of Soul Calibur 6. I noticed that most of the birthday art pieces I make for Grøh have music lyrics attached to them, and this year I was inspired by Drive by Incubus, but mostly the acoustic version cos it feels like a somber but soft medieval version of the song I grew up listening to. I felt like it fit Grøh like a glove, cos it talks about showing up in life without letting the fear of the unknown or his Malfestation get in the way and, if you chose to wield Soul Calibur in Libra of Soul, spends to rest of time using his powers for good, as did the Conduit).
December: "We keep meeting like this..." (I literally posted this drawing this morning, and I question my decision-making skills when it comes to drawing and posting things some days. I was listening to Hatef--k by The Bravery, remembered this Alice Madness Returns fanart I saw a long time ago, and they inspired me to draw this).
Happy Holidays! Happy New Years! Let's hope 2026 is a better year!
