His skin stung and his ears echoed with a painful, high pitched noise that was taking its sweet time subsiding.

Why? Why had he used self destruct?

He didn't want to look, but he had to know.  Carefully, he opened his eyes.

Blackness.  His already rapidly beating heart attempted evacuation out of his mouth.  Was he blind? Had he not shielded his face in time? Pinpricks of light seared his eyeballs, and thankfully the blackness lifted, revealing the impact crater the force of the explosion had left on the battlefield.  Song's sore eyes darted around his side of the field.

"Scruffy!" Relief escaped him in the name as his badly damaged umbreon staggered up, paws splayed out wide.  Earlier in the battle it had been in defiance, head down as a show of aggression.  Now he was barely able to stand, and his head was down because lifting it was too much effort.

They had won the round, but at what cost?

A couple of years ago (eep!) I started doing sketchies of starter pokemon I either chose or would have chosen.  Part of the reason was to keep trying to do this "warm up sketch" idea I kept reading about (it doesn't seem to work for me) and another part was trying to post daily on steem (I failed, and given how tiring it was I started advising especially new artists to make a post schedule if they wanted to maintain some semblance of routine but not to try daily, and given how many people burned out trying I keep advising this).

A comment on the chikorita piece on deviantART recently reminded me that I hadn't finished the series so I decided to continue it.

And bashed out Piplup so fast I thought I better do the rest of them and post them in one post rather than posting several crappy sketchies over the next few days XD

Wondered how long it would take me to start backsliding rapidly into realistic Pokemon tendencies.  It was already an epic struggle with the last two (Pikachu and Chikorita) to keep it looking at least vaguely like it might be pokemon style.

10yo: CHIKORITA! :D Why's its leaf glowing?
me: Magic leaf.  [thinking: mission accomplished]

This one went a lot quicker than the Nereid sketch now that I know how the brush works.  Doing the background takes FORRREEEEEEVVVVAAAAARRRRRRRR.  Horrible, horrible lag.  Turns out I can do some detail work with it (if I make the brush miniscule).  Definitely not doing tattoos with it though, it will drive me insane.

This is the starter I would have picked if I'd played Gen2.

Quickie because I spent most of the day playing PokemonTCG Online (I made a deck and play tested it, and had the computer crash, so then I started stress testing it by continuously playing and the computer started hanging more regularly, I think I have a ram issue so there is much memtesting in my near future, yay).  Might do the other generation starters I picked or would have picked (because I didn't play every single game, repetitive plot points were too repetitive even with allegedly exciting new storylines) if I'm not sure what else to do for sketchaday.

This is my Pokemon Yellow starter, Pyxi the pikachu (don't question, I was a stupid teenager XD).

My entry for JWiesner's Great Pokemon Underwater Race.  Version with background posted everywhere but dA because I think it looks better, transparent version on dA as that's what's required for the collab.  As with the last one, not quite down to the wire, I lost a lot of time being sick for a month and then most of the time spent was in the render (there was a fair bit that went into retopo but purely because I'm not good at it and will probably need to redo it at some stage).

Only just managed another Before the Race, and only because I took way too many shortcuts with Lyric (think I'm going to have to completely redo her whenever I get around to it).  Unfortunately the shortcuts were necessary as I lost a month to unexpected sickness -_- (of the kind that quite literally flattens you)  Here she is fitting in harness in preparation so he of course has to try to turn around and slobber all over her face because that's what anything remotely dog-shaped does.

Just need to make the mask and then I'll do final pose and render.

Learned heaps for AER characters at least :)

I wanted the texture to be like the viewport render, but it ended up being one glossy vaporeon.  He'll do.  Working full time on this now to get it done by the deadline.  I was doing really well til I got sick, stupid sickness XD

On the bright side, I learned a fair bit about 3d Coat and going back and forth between it and Blender.

After Pokemon Go was officially released (with some very agonising teething problems), one of the other field testers/admins of the Western Australian Pokemon Go community I'd made the wapogologo for said it would be cool if there was a similar logo with the legendary birds (who are the official mascots for the three teams).  So I made one using the same colour schemes as the eeveelutions.

Next up, team logos/patches.

Quickie logo I knocked out for a Western Australian Pokémon GO community.