Chai's Art - Blog Posts

oh egg?

occasionally I am struck dumb by the sublime beauty of the world in the small moments, you know?

egg

i redrew an older OC of mine - Sebastian

i don't have much lore on him, except that he was hired to assassinate young bartender Azrael, but was unsuccessful. i hope to expand on their world soon, why he was hired to assassinate Azrael, why he failed, and what they do next.

older drawing of him and Azrael under the cut

tattoo ideas

new profile picture

a simpler version of my last one (under the cut), but it feels more true to my art style

I've been struggling a bit with my digital art lately. i think I've hit a wall, but when i get over it, I'll have figured something out about my art for the better

final painting in my art class, took about an hour and a half

fish for my dad

my bedroom

brennan lee mulligan

from left to right, Thomas Baldwin, Oliver Lee, and Dominic Brodie from the YA fantasy story I'm writing

the plan is to have the three enter a poly trio relationship at some point. so far, I'm only on chapter 6/7, so we'll see how it plays out.

i am not a writer - i am primarily an artist - however i do enjoy writing little short stories and poems. a couple months ago i went back to a short poem i had written and became inspired, eventually building a bigger plot around the original paragraph, and now here i am!

I'm very excited for where this sorry is going. i have only a vague idea of where to take it. I'm not sure if I'll post it online anywhere until it's finished, but i am going to include illustrations in the book, which I'll post here. this drawing isn't one of them - I'm just using it as a way to better figure out my boys' designs.

Loki

haven't been drawing much lately, instead dedicating all of my spare time to a cardboard sculpture that I'll be posting photos of soon

this drawing was to help get me out of that rut

here's my rabbit in a similar style to my current profile picture

if i ever remake my vtuber avatar it'll definitely be something like this, leaning away from the super cartoony rendering style

drew this on an airplane

dragons. I'm not sure how i feel about this rendering method, but it is fun to try sometimes.

beautiful sea creatures, i love you

a painting i did for class for the prompt "superhero"

i binged all 3 Sonic movies the other weekend, and I'm absolutely obsessed, so i drew Shadow

the 2am urge to paint

based on a screenshot of the nether in Minecraft. the basalt deltas are one of my favorite biomes. it's so simple and barren, but it's oddly calm, especially with the ash floating in the air. i wasn't really sure how to portray the glowstone, so it's a little bright, but other than that I'm very happy with how it turned out

beautiful man drawn at 11:30 pm

reference below

the diner

find the speedpaint here

i mention this in the video as well, but i realized partway through this drawing that i was accidentally using an AI image as a reference, so i changed up a bunch of stuff and got new references once i realized. you'll never be as upset about it as i am, so just know I'll be a million times more careful in the future to avoid doing that again

my art progress throughout 2024! each piece is from a different month. i tried to pick the ones that focused on people (or people-ish) as the subjects so i can compare them easier. some of these i've posted here, some i haven't.

i've been doing more digital again the past couple months, because i've missed the feeling of digitally painting and rendering details. it's hard to get that kind of thing traditionally, even though i feel i've improved a lot there, as well.

i think my biggest improvements have been in anatomy and stylization. it's always hard to balance those things. if i lean too hard in one direction, like you see in March (primarily stylization) or August (primarily realism), i can make a piece that's GOOD in that regard - but doesn't feel like my art. i don't feel like my own emotions are in them. combining them is the hardest part, like you can see my attempts on in most of the other months, where they aren't as aesthetically "pleasing" but you can still see my style in there somewhere. i think January, May, and June were the one's that suffered the most at this.

in these latest months on the bottom row, i've gotten much more confident combining those skills. each of those four pieces i think was the best i've done in each of their mediums so far (ipad with an apple pen, traditional with alcohol markers, phone with my finger, and tablet with a stylus). i've been branching out a lot, and bringing the things i've learned back to my digital pieces. i've also gathered the energy to dabble in new fandoms to fuel my spark (like COD, which i've never played but i've found a love for the characters).

i had a bit of an art rut all year but i'm finally breaking back out of it. i'm going to college next year (hurray!) so i hope to take that newfound confidence with me as i continue to grow as an artist, meet new people, and venture out into the world.

my newest self portrait done on ibispaint on my phone last night

my previous one was also done on ibispaint, but in a much simpler style

(i also lost one of my piercings since that portrait to irritation, sadly)

more Ghost fanart. i still haven't played COD. Merry Christmas

see the speedpaint on my YouTube here

ghost fanart. I've never played COD in my life

see the speedpaint on my YouTube here

peace and quiet

digital piece drawn on an ipad with IbisPaintx, color techniques partially inspired by my current favorite artist Nathan Fowkes

another Merlin drawing

according to IbisPaint, this took me about 7 hours. i did it all on my phone, though i didnt sketch as much as I'd normally do, and instead used the reference as a guide. i exaggerated their proportions, simplified the armor, and created the colors and rendering entirely on my own to give my desired effect, not really following the lighting in the original picture

vvvvv SPOILERS UNDER CUTOFF vvvvv

merlin and arthur screenshot redraw

i know this show is older now, but his death still destroys me and i had to do something for it

i didn't do the chainmail texture; i might come back to it sometime, but for now im happy with it, especially since i just drew it on my phone

A L I E N S

a digital drawing using my favorite lyrics from the song "A L I E N S" by Coldplay. i wanted it to look lonely - a single spaceship in a silent night, surrounded by forests and stars and a single house. i used IbisPaint on my iPad for this piece

the lyrics are the first verse, and they read:

"We were just about to lose our home

Diamonds ate the radio

Moving in the dead of night

We took photographs just some just so

History someone to know

We were moving at the speed of flight"

Edgar Meelow

I've finally drawn my favorite boy! Edgar is my oldest and most beloved OC, and i used to draw him all the time. I've never drawn him from this angle - but I'm super proud of how it turned out! i used alcohol markers, ink pen, and colored pencils.

my first digital drawing of Edgar (from 2020) as a comparison. this piece was made before i had decided much about his story, so all the royal details were undecided and unused since. this was also during my early days of digital art - when i first started looking at programs outside of MS Paint, but i still had a screenless drawing tablet.

mortuary

fanart of Will Graham from the Hannibal tv show. my prompt was mortuary, so that's the setting he's in. the background is drawn with alcohol markers, and Will is drawn with pencil on a separate paper that can be moved

cowboys

two of my newest OCs,

this was my second attempt at this piece! the first didn't turn out how i hoped because i tried using chalk pastels for the first time in a while and i made a few mistakes

for this, i used sepia-toned alcohol markers and ink pens for the lineart and woodgrain