#xella

In August of 2000, my dad bought a first generation Wacom Intuos.  I don’t remember if he bought it for himself or for me, but I promptly appropriated it regardless and started the long path towards digital art literacy.  Twenty years later, it seemed appropriate to take one of the earlier pieces I have saved from back then and give it another go.  The fact that I finished the one I’d chosen within the same 24h period as the anniversary of the first version was just a happy accident, even if I didn’t have the internet access to actually upload it anywhere until today, heh.

I sometimes wonder how baby Xella would feel, seeing her little Mary Sue OC all gussied up by a demonstrably more skilled artist.  If I’m being honest with myself, she’d probably be some combination of incoherent with excited babbling and absolutely (if mostly silently) furious if she didn’t know it was done by a version of herself from the future—I think she’d be awed at the technical skill (which is still a long way from perfect but significantly better than when I started out) but mad that she got “shown up” on her own idea.  Then again, she’d probably have similarly mixed feelings about the evolution of my style and preferences over the years if she did know she was the one responsible; I’ve come across some of the artists I used to idolize around this time again lately and their stuff from back then doesn’t look nearly as cool and flawless to me as it used to (now that I can “see behind the curtain” and the flashy photoshop tricks aren’t as mind-bending as they used to be I guess), but also I draw noses and chins a lot more frequently now, and little baby Xella was in the deepest depths of her weeb phase at fourteen and would have hated that, lmao

M E M E S . 

I stole this meme template from a friend on twitter a month or two ago, but I was so busy with badge season that I didn’t get a chance to work on it ‘til recently.  My original plan was just to draw Alex in everything, but somewhere along the way I decided that I really ought to diversify and I was tired of trying to draw Alex, so I went with all five points instead, lmao

Alex and James stole their outfits from Sno’s characters Janus and Adian, who are both from their recently (re?)launched webcomic, Mirrored Promise.  Both outfits are pretty on point for the characters in question (though I don’t usually draw Alex in teals, now that I’m thinking about it).  Alex/Janus’ was the first of the set that I drew; I wanted to try (once again) to practice being kind of pin up-py but by the time I got to his feet I realized that because Janus is an anthro wolf, he doesn’t wear shoes.  And then I was like “well, I could make up shoes, leave him barefoot, or I could go all in on this “wearing a Janus costume” thing I’ve got going on with the ear headband and the belt-mounted tail.  The fact that Alex is a shapeshifter and could actually create all those body parts is irrelevant, okay?  James got sneakers because James is not even remotely as extra as Alex can be, and that’s okay.

Sevvie and Karra stole their outfits from Cioara, who is from @delphina2k‘s webcomic Sombulus.  Cioara has a lot of good outfits but two of the three Del gave me to choose from seemed to fit Sevvie and Karra really well.  Rachel told me once that Sevvie doesn’t like wearing chokers or high collared shirts or anything like that because she thinks it’s rude to cover one’s neck (aka it makes it harder for vampires to eat you) but gosh darn it I keep drawing her with stuff like that on anyway!  It’s an aesthetic!  It fits her so well!  I’ll just... keep it out of BA canon as best I can, lmao :P