Starlight, AKA Vlue, and I organized an art trade a while back, and we both got it done last week. We asked for very similar themes from each other, which makes sense given how much our tastes and subjects in art overlap. However, as you might expect if you're at all familiar with their work, we both took rather different approaches to the crinkly hijinks we were going to subject each other to.

You can see their absolutely adorable half of the trade on Twitter and FurAffinity!

As I'd mentioned while working on this in stream, I was really excited to do this since I'd been looking forward to getting my hands on them again. Back when I still made direct art rewards for my crowdfunding patrons, Vlue was one of those who I drew a lot of, and very fondly remember enjoying experimenting on over the years! (NB: You'll need to be logged in and set the search range to "All Time" to see them)

And yes, I do mean "experimenting," as you'll see in that collection.

I genuinely had a blast making this, and I think it's some of my best work in quite a while. Although the planning that went into it to make all the layering work with zero redundancy (or as little of it as possible, anyway) was a bit of a headache, it was a fun challenge that I enjoy giving myself, and it worked out especially well in the end. I'd love to do more trades in future, it's always a good time.

I'm especially fond of the outfits I dressed up 73 in, as well as how menacing Soul Chocolate looks. Since Soul is very much "artist surrogate" in pieces like this, I figured it'd go all out on 73, much like I did when making this. It knows what a good mark they are, so might as well dial up the shenanigans to 11.

My friend Bianca offered to do a couple of trades with me as part of her advent calendar of TF art project.

The third and final prompt was "Therapy." All three of these prompts genuinely challenged me as far as keeping them within the context of TF art while not making anything too complicated, and I suppose this one was definitely a case of biting off a little more than I should've been chewing. That said, even though it added a fair bit of work to the process, it was a fun little experiment to play around with the translucency and the transition between her body's normal and balloon forms.

I did find it quite amusing that the process involved Chocolate repeatedly giving Bianca very severe Chinese burns (AKA Indian burns) at every one of her joints. Not exactly what I'd call very therapeutic, but I expect there was an easing-in process before she got as far as that. Conveniently, it doesn't look like Bianca seems to mind very much anyway.

You can see her half of the trade here.

My friend Bianca offered to do a couple of trades with me as part of her advent calendar of TF art project.

Today's prompt was "Retro," and lemme tell you I struggled to come up with an idea for this that really resonated with me. Then I figured out what I wanted to do, and I struggled with making it too.

I don't remember the last time I've had to dig so deep to research the parts I needed for this piece, and I gotta give props to my friend Rulare who helped find an archive of VCL that included the exact page I needed to complete it. Those of you who got this reference are the real ones, lemme tell ya.

If you don't know what a VCL is; in a phrase, it was quite literally the oldest furry art gallery to ever get shut down. It kinda sucks how hard it is to browse its archives nowadays, but consider this my part in spreading a tiny bit of awareness about our community's history. With soft-core smut, of course.

I included the full size version of the drawing too, for your enjoyment, and you can see her half of the trade here.