Category: Blog Posts

Project Status: Birthstone Goddesses – New Calendars Launch!

Hoo boy, who has an ADHD Muse this month because they’ve been running between projects that got delayed and overlapped with other planned projects? (Hint, it me!). The Birthstone Goddesses, which were this Patreon’s previous theme, still had a lot to give, especially because they were specifically created to make calendars!

After much blood, sweat, and tears, I’ve refreshed the first calendar with 2025’s dates/holidays, as well as created two NEW calendars featuring the Masquerade, Little Gems, and Visage collections from the Birthstone Goddesses series!

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I’ve filmed a little tour of all three you can watch here. Give it a watch and let me know which calendar you’ll choose!

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I’m printing these calendars with a printing partner so that any profits made from them will directly support the artist. There is no publisher as a middle man, so getting one of these lovelies means you’re directly supporting me!

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Find them in my shop here.

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This launch wraps up the final FINAL chapter of the Birthstone Goddesses. I hope to still revisit them for an art book, gift bundles, etc at a later time, but for now, I’m just about done with what I had endeavored to achieve with them as a body of work.

Thanks for all of you who were here throughout that years-long adventure! Your support over that time really warmed my heart and kept my husband and myself going.

Enjoy the loveliness and may my shining gals guide your year with inspiration and elegance! Maybe we’ll see them again someday once my muse circles back around to future gemstone-themed offerings.

– Ang

The Exalted Art Challenge 2024 Begins!

For the folks who might be new here, I am also a big tabletop RPG nerd! October has come once more, bringing with it the latest Exalted Art Challenge! Exalted is a TTRPG setting from Onyx Path Publishing which I adore replete with epic Wuxia-inspired battles, long dramatic names, and off-the-wall gods and spirits. If that sounds fun to you, be sure to follow my Exalted Ko-fi where I’ll be sharing my challenge entries.

(An example of some of the sketches I did for the Exalted Art Challenge in years past.)

I don’t want to overload you all with work you might not be interested in, since this Patreon is currently more focused on art for Fantasy novels, so I’ll be relegating this Exalted-themed art over to my Exalted project’s Ko-fi and maybe sharing the complete collection here once the challenge is over and done. Be sure to follow over on Ko-fi and The Uncrucified’s socials (listed over on the Ko-fi page) if you’d like more Exalted goodness!

I am just so happy for spooky season and all the art challenges happening right now filling the world with loveliness and inspiration. Let’s gooo!

– Ang

“Cassiel’s Servant” Art Archive

EDIT 12-24-2025: Now updated with the most recent Secret Sketchbook entry featuring a peek at the process for the “Cassiel’s Servant” cover along with the public previews attached at the top of this post. Happy holidays and enjoy!

I wanted to give my Free Members a peek at all the art I’ve been creating inspired by “Cassiel’s Servant” from Jacqueline Carey. This story of a warrior monk’s unknowing rise to meet his divine destiny has just as much resonance as Phedre’s origin in “Kushiel’s Dart” and I’ve been enjoying it immensely!

Along the way, I’ve been creating art inspired by the mythology and fantastic worldbuilding of the world of Terre d’Ange, the “Land of Angels”. I’m planning for all this exploration to culminate in my own fan version of the book’s cover in the style of this one I created for “Kushiel’s Dart” and perhaps other book-inspired pins, stickers, etc. I hope to make a physical reality (more in that in a future post once plans and designs are more finalized).

(My fan version of the cover of “Kushiel’s Dart”, the book that started the Kushiel’s Legacy series which “Cassiel’s Servant” is a part of.)

I’m happy to share all of this art for free, but if you’d like to help support me while I work on this project, check out the following Patrons-only posts available to all paid members at all tiers for the deep dive into my process, inspiration, and research that my free posts don’t go into.

List of Posts So Far

You can also watch the experimental video I made combining art and narration about Elua here, since Patreon doesn’t support video embedding within the body of posts yet.

I plan to keep sharing art for free with optional paid perks this way so you can all get the best of both worlds!

Want to join me as I book club “Cassiel’s Servant”? Hop in the book’s discussion thread on my Discord server! This server is open to the public and free to join, though my Discord also has a Patrons-only area where you can browse my private sketchbook and more. Come hang out!

Have you finished reading “Cassiel’s Servant” yet? Are you planning to read? Or reading something else? Let me know what you’re up to, book wyrms!

– Ang

Art Fight 2024 Collection

(Patrons are getting an early peek at this vid before it goes live elsewhere. Enjoy!) The dust has settled and 2024’s Art Fight has ended! It’s always a fun opportunity to practice my skills and draw some unexpected characters, all while bringing a smile to another artist’s face, which is my favorite part of the experience!

(Don’t remember what Art Fight is about? See my 2023 wrap-up which was my first experience in participating and includes an introduction to the event and how it works. The tl;dr is it’s an event where artists trade art of their characters and ‘battle’ in teams.)

My Attacks for 2024

I had a ton of fun this year trying to keep my style loose and energetic. All of them were rendered in Procreate on the ipad, which seems to be my main digital painting tool of choice these days.

Scissors for AnnaCoryKulikova

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Zhenlin for MissSunnySweden

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The Seraph of Promised Silence for Hamsandlich

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Kai for CherryFlash

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Valerian for DungeonDelves

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Ray for Viday

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Goku for Erdending

(My first time drawing a monkey and they have such fun anatomy quirks!) 

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Attacks on Me

Here are the Attacks featuring my characters by other talented artists participating in Art Fight this year!

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Aurora by AnnaCoryKulikova

 

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Aurora by Erdending

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Rabs by MissSunnySweden

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The Crucified Dreamer by DungeonDelves

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The Crucified Dreamer by Viday

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The Crucified Dreamer by CherryFlash

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Kalara by Hamsandlich

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Don’t forget to check out the video at the top of this post for timelapses of how I created my pieces. If you’re an artist who needs a pick-me-up or to work through art block, I highly suggest this event! It’s satisfying to do an activity that’s lighthearted with no other lofty aim beyond making another artist happy and drawing some cool characters.

And now to return to our regularly scheduled programs!

The Usual Reminders

[Cover Art & Sketches] Revisiting “Kushiel’s Dart “

Now that I’m about to enter the part of the CASSIEL’S SERVANT novel that crosses over into the events of KUSHIEL’S DART, I wanted to revisit some of the work I created for DART during my first time creating my own cover art and sketch explorations for a novel.

I’ve already shared a deep dive into the development of DART’s cover, but I wanted to revisit some of the old character sketches here as well. Enjoy a trip down memory lane, as these were done 10 years ago!

 LEFT: My very first try at drawing Joscelin! Inspired by his first meeting with Phedre, the main character of DART. Now that I’m reading CASSIEL’S SERVANT, I’ve learned why he was so cranky at the time. I love this old design, but I may simplify the wrappings on the sword and daggers even more to emphasize the Cassiline devotion to utilitarianism. I’ll be exploring equipment concepts in a new post soon.

RIGHT: Grainne, one of the twin Lords of the Dalriada, Gaelic-inspired warriors we meet in DART. I’m amused that even back then, graphite felt suiting for drawing art for this world.

An assortment of characters we meet early on in DART. Looking back on this, I feel like I very much had the distinguished actress, Maggie Smith, in mind when envisioning the discerning Dowayne of Cereus House.

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Now, back to reading with me and teaching myself new video editing software so I can keep bringing you fun storytelling snippets like my recent try at narrating Elua’s origin myth  from SERVANT that was shared on my socials.

Did you all enjoy this audio+visual format for Elua’s sketch? It was a lot of fun for me to make and I hope to explore more narrative imagery in this fashion.

More art soon!

– Ang

Ang Plays Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, Dancing with Demons!

(If the above embed ever breaks, you can watch my stream recording here.)

Dusting off my Twitch channel to play games I find artistically inspiring! Check out my first impressoin of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, a new release from Capcom featuring a dancing shrine maiden, her faithful guardian, a corrupted sacred mountain, and a beautiful Japanese-inspired aesthetic.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it! Hope to stream more art and games in the future.

Art Fight 2024 Begins! + Character Art Feature

It’s July and that means it’s Art Fight time! I participated for the first time last year and it was such a wonderful experience that helped me reconnect with other artists and a sense of optimism during all the chaos and social media shakeups in 2023. After that event, I swore to do it again this year.

(I made a video about last year’s experience and how it works, for the curious.)

The time has come once more this July! If you would like to participate in an event where artists trade images of their characters, check out Art Fight. You can find my profile here. Feel free to share yours in the comments, if you’re participating as well! Perchance I’ll have time to Attack you, if something catches my eye and I have the time.

I’ll be participating when I can, but can’t promise I’ll be able to respond to each Attack. We’ll see how it goes! I’ll share a compilation of art made for the event once the month is through.

Here are some of the fun portraits I did for last year’s Art Fight event (which you can see what other folks did for me here):

This year, I’ve added some new character art, as well as a new character to choose from, both rendered by the amazing Sam Hogg.

First up, here’s newly added art of Ramah, an exiled prince from my story project, Song of Exile. After a failed rebellion against his tyrannical father, he spends his days in exile honoring his mother’s legacy as a healer. Until the day years later, he is called by his ex-wife to return once more to tend to the gravely ill king, only to be drawn further into facing his family’s tarnished legacy and the simmering violence of a coup.

Then we have Nils, a mortician-turned-monster hunter who is a new character choice for attackers to choose from for this year’s Art Fight. Nils uses his skills as a former mortician to retrieve the bodies of fallen hunters. It’s the job nobody wants, but he doesn’t mind so much.

Nils is from another story idea inspired by my D&D adventures with Blood Hunters.

  Are you in? Go team Stardust! See you in the art trenches.

– Ang