A soft owl's perch

A sketch of a barn owl, perched on top of a chair's back, looking forward at a computer screen. They have one Talon held forward, hovering overtop of the keyboard.

"me drawing," November 17th?, 2024, digital

This is a sketch I made almost a year ago, and have been adding small touches to ever since! I intended to "finish it" at some point, but, I'm trying to get better about being able to end pieces as sketches rather than making them into fully colored, shaded, backgrounded, etc ordeals, so I went ahead and uploaded this as is!

This is what is going on at the other side of the screen whenever I'm active online :>

A cloudscape of oranges, reds, pinks, purples and blues. Distant clouds lit brightly by the sun, juxtaposed by nearer clouds cast in shadow. Overtop the clouds are flocks of dragons flying in a direction away from the viewer, some quite distant, and 3 near the viewer, one pink, one blueish purple, one red

"untitled," October 11th, 2024, digital.

One of our coworkers had been letting us draw on their ipad on the shifts we worked together during downtimes, this is the culmination of a month of those shared shifts! :>

A branch of leaves stretching up into the sky, above the other branches around it. Most of the branch is cast in shadow, but towards the top, the sunlight hits it instead. Behind the branch, is the sky, a bit before sunset time, with some clouds present

"Untitled," September 21st, 2024, digital.

A doodle I made while sitting outside, of a tree branch that caught my eye :>

A black dragon, flying just over top of very large plumes of greenish, blueish, yellowish clouds, with the night sky visible above those clouds. The cloud the dragon is flying over is lit with orangish pinkish glow from below. The light from that cloud is subtly showing through the dragon's outstretched wings

"Smoke," May 28th, 2024, digital.

A piece made in collaboration with the fox!

this piece began as a vent by the fox, which I helped with a lot of the finishing touches on!

a sideview of a red fox, pointing their snout up at the sky with one eye focused towards the viewer. Their fur is very vibrantly colored, with sharp oranges and reds, and deep blues and purples in the shadowed areas along their neck, the same color as their ears. They have subtle glitchy effects on the underside of their neck and along their back. Behind them is a cloudscape, made of blues and purples and pinks, all of the clouds moving in the direction the fox's snout is pointing in the sky

"Untitled," March 31st, 2024, digital.

A piece I made in collaboration with the fox!

It started as a vent piece the fox was making, and we ended up spending more time on it than intended, I helped a lot with the final touches. We tried a new way of coloring than usual for the fox, and are very happy with the results!

a view from a tree branch, overlooking other tree branches, at either sunset or sunrise. The leaves on the trees are pink. there are clouds and stars in the sky. There are three ravens perching along the branches, each closer to the viewer than the last, one quite close to the viewer.

"Shimmering Scales 10," February 8th, 2024, digital.

This ended up being the final piece we made for the shimmering scales patreon. We were quite happy with it!

a purple dragon, standing on a top of a snowy hill or cliff side, overlooking a frozen landscape of mountains and hills that lead into a flatter area, with trees behind it. There is a large, floating, sci fi ship in the distance that the dragon is looking at, as well as two smaller ships following the large one.

"Shimmering Scales 9," January 13th, 2024, digital.

This piece is where it really began to hit us that we were increasingly making pieces we didn't care too much for, and that shimmering scales unfortunately wasn't really going anywhere. We realized that we may be wasting our time and hand spoons, when we should be spending those elsewhere on things that could hopefully help improve our situation more. after all, if we're making art regularly that we don't care too much for, we would hope we were at least getting something from it, and well, we weren't, and it became clear we probably aren't going to.

a castle-y cityscape at night, lit up with green and blue and pinkish colors. closer to the viewer is a purple and pink deer, who is climbing a spiral staircase and looking at the city ahead of them.

"Shimmering Scales 8," december 28th, 2023, digital.

This pieces was a struggle, but something we were quite happy with at the time! We wanted to do something different than usual, and so attempted to do some architecture rather than just natural forms!

We attempted illustrating a fun little world building idea we've had in our head forever, of magical fairy deer (and perhaps other critters) in a forest, who live in a city the forest creates from gradually moving abandoned human structures to its center.

It feels like the idea didn't get illustrated quite as we wanted it to be, but we were still happy with the outcome as a piece. In the time since, we have come to look more critically at this piece, but it was certainly a helpful learning experience!

The text, 'A Soft Owl's Perch,' with a barn owl perching atop the S in 'Soft,' and waving one of their wings outwards at the reader

"Website header," December 18th, 2023, digital.

A piece I drew to be the header of this website!

I was working on setting this site up, and had initially been using "Flying" as a header image, but I realized that I could just... draw an image specifically for the header instead, and it sounded fun, so I took the opportunity to stop fighting with css and draw that instead ^v^

a dragon, with wings that look like they're glowing with stars and a nebula, flying overtop of clouds cast in the red and purple lights of sunset. there are silhouetted mountains behind them.

"Shimmering Scales 7," December 14th, 2023, digital.

This was a piece that Luna played a large role in creating! While the concept is similar to others we have done, we like this one the most, and are very happy with it!

a forest, filled with trees and bushes with orange, red, and yellow fall leaves. to the right is a large hill. in the foreground is a stream of water, at which a deer is drinking

"Autumn forest," November 26th, 2023, digital.

This was a piece that we made for shimmering scales. We have very mixed feelings about it. We want to like it, and we do, but we also feel like it highlights a lot of the weaknesses of our art style.

3 green dragons, on purple and red rocks along a cliffside. The top dragon is sitting and looking up at the sky, with their wings splayed out. The middle dragon, on a rock below the top dragon, is walking down to a lower rock. The third, lowest down dragon, is laying asleep on another rock. There are large clouds in the sky behind the cliffs.

"Cliffside dragons," November 7th, 2023, digital

This was a piece made for shimmering scales. It was meant as a followup to the first piece we made for it, featuring the same dragons!

a pumpkin patch at midday, during the fall. there are two crows standing on some pumpkins. there are red and orange trees in the background, and behind those, are large clouds!

"Pumpkin patch," October 24th, 2023, digital.

a piece we made for shimmering scales, we were quite happy with it at the time!

3 dragons, one close and the others in the distance, flying over ragged cliffs and rocks, with big clouds behind them

"Dragon flight!" September 16, 2023, digital

This was the first piece we made for the shimmering scales patreon! Essentially, we gave ourselves a goal to create a piece every 2 weeks, that could be used as either a phone or computer background, and put the full resolution versions on a patreon! It was also an opportunity for us to release art as a system, as these were often big collaborative pieces with us all, and allowed the more anxious critters to have their art posted publically.

Unfortunately, it never really worked out, and the patreon has since been paused, but we are happy with the works that we made during that time! As well, we still want to use the name "shimmering scales" and make more collaborative art like that, but we aren't sure what we want to do yet, as we're trying to focus our hand spoons on other things right now.

A barn owl, flying high in the air at either sunset or sunrise, torwards the viewer. there is hilly land far below them, and clouds behind them.

"Flying," July 4th, 2023, digital.

A piece of me flying, initially intended as an uncolored sketch, but that I got carried away with ^^;

I'm still very happy with how it turned out, it's one of my favorite pieces I've made!

A barn owl against a blue background, looking torwards the viewer with their wings folded in.

"Self portrait," June 8th, 2023, digital.

A piece I made so I could have an icon on my mastodon account that I was setting up!

I also just wanted to have another go at drawing myself, as it had been some time and I felt pretty rusty ^^;

A barn owl perched with one leg on the top of a chair, and the other leg holding a stylus. in front of them is an ipad on a table, which they are currently drawing the piece you are seeing on!

"Drawing!" February 5th, 2023, digital.

One of my favorite pieces I've drawn of myself!

I had had the idea of drawing myself drawing myself for some time, but I never felt confident enough for it. I went ahead and made the jump for this piece, and at first it felt like it was, indeed, too complex for me to handle. I kept at it for a few days though, and it turned out to be well worth the time, as well as a very helpful learning experience for getting better at drawing bird bodies!

This piece has continuously given me so much species euphoria since I made it, I really need to make more things like it. just... illustrating myself, as my true form, doing the things I always do, is so helpful for fighting dysphoria.

A white scaled hydra against a red background. Their heads are being stabbed by spikes, and they are bleeding static colors

"untitled" December 28th, 2022, digital.

A vent piece from a rough time