Lai Ayerus- revisited

After visiting Rainfurrest furconvention in Seattle, I was deeply inspired to start up drawing my own fursona again.

I haven't drawn her since 2009, and this is a big emotional decision for me... there were several factors as to why I stopped drawing, and I had to come to some realizations that some of the factors just weren't true and that I was the only one losing anything by not drawing anymore...

So here's my fursona Mana Lai Ayerus. I mostly created a fursona just for the fun of drawing. She's based off of my favorite animal (fox) my favorite colors, and I added leopard spots/tiger stripes to her, and a lightning bolt horn.

She has a "black mage" version where she has a mech wing and 3 angel feather wings, and her eyes are red when she's in that mode. I like to call it that her eyes are red because she's focusing magic.

I will be sitting down next to redesign the mech wing, possibly with steampunk inspiration.

What I came to realize with this drawing- all of the fox/hair/expressional features were done purely by memory from the knowledge I gained from drawing a lot from 2007-2009.

For anatomy, I'm still clueless. I relied heavily on a visual reference almost curve by curve, but I was able to correct/change up the lines from the original to something that made more sense to me.

There was a while where I even considered just starting up natural art; drawing purely animals, plants, naturalistic elements and stopping anatomy all-together but even though I'm not perfect at anatomy, I'll do it for the sake of interacting with other peoples' fursonas, and to just let loose and enjoy that aspect of my life again, on my own terms, and without negative influences.

This started off as a pencil sketch, then I inked it in 0.8, 0.3 and 0.1 pens. Colored in watercolor pencils, blended by dampened Q-tips.

Applied some knowledge of layering I've gained from painting acrylics on ponies so much.