Well, here's that last bit of currently-completed art I was hinting at. It's fanart for a certain awesome comic by @the-exiled-comic, The Exiled, featuring my absolute favorite character from the comic, OceanClan's medicine cat Whisperleaf!
I'm always a sucker for the snarky characters, and "snarky medicine cat" is one of my favorite character types in Warriors (there's a reason Jayfeather and Yellowfang are two of my alltime favorite Warriors characters), so I was already predisposed to like Whisperleaf. But oh, did this guy turn out to be so much more than just that snarky character. He has honestly brought so much compassion and clear-headed perception into the true anxiety and pain underlying much of Fishpaw's earlier behavior, and a clear understanding of how badly other characters have been treating her and why it was wrong, to the story and to Fishpaw's life.
I don't think Fishpaw has had anyone (in a positive of authority) this truly supportive, understanding, and comforting in her life up until this point - her mom is completely overbearing and controlling and awful, Coralclaw was awful, Crowstar publicly humiliated her by refusing to make her a warrior even though she caught prey during her assessment like she was supposed to and refused to even let her ask why she was being denied and refused to offer an explanation (why no, I'm not still salty about that, why do you ask? XD)... Firespots is a good dude, but he's a rogue without much power to really help her other than letting her vent to him, and Cloverfall was good and tried to help her, but was a bit too busy to really be there for her the way that Whisperleaf has been.
You can just see such a change in Fishpaw since she started training with him. With Coralclaw, she was defensive and yeah, maybe a bit bratty, but the more we see of how Coralclaw treated her as her mentor, the clearer it becomes how much that was a defense mechanism against the treatment she was getting. But now that she's training with a mentor who actually respects her and is supportive and kind, she respects him in turn and is an attentive apprentice to him, even trusting him enough to tell him about her sneaking around, something she was absolutely terrified about telling Cloverfall about. Even if she isn't meant to be a medicine cat in the end (not sure whether she is or not), whether she eventually returns to warrior training or not, honestly, I think this time of training with Whisperleaf was sorely needed and is doing a hell of a lot to boost her confidence and make her feel more secure and more loved and supported, not just by Whisperleaf, but by the Clan as a whole, because Whisperleaf is helping her see that a lot of her insecurities about how her Clan perceives her come from her anxiety rather than reality (though Coral, Sandy, and Crow being awful to her wasn't just her anxiety fooling her, sadly...)
Also, the fact that this guy is straight-up willing to chew StarClan out for harassing Fishpaw with frightening prophecy dreams when she's already dealing with enough anxious and guilt over Cloverfall's death... I swear, every new page that comes out just makes me love Whisperleaf more. He is just such a solid, kind guy, as well as being delightfully snarky and 100% done with StarClan and Crowstar's nonsense. XD
Anyway, I'm not 100% happy with how this turned out, but I'm still pretty pleased. I was trying to draw a sand dune with grass as the background since OceanClan lives near the beach, not sure how well I actually got that across... ah well. I'm really happy with how Whisperleaf himself turned out, though I feel like I went a bit far with the texture and with trying to get sort of a dappled lighting effect due to the nearby foliage... again, ah well. This guy was super fun to draw. He's got this droopy cheek fluff in the comic, and looks like he might be on the skinny side, so I leaned into that here, hopefully I had the right idea when drawing his build, apologies if I didn't. It was a lot of fun drawing him in my style, getting that trademark serious/exasperated expression of his down, peppering those leaves throughout his coat, and all of that. I hope you like it, @the-exiled-comic!
