Here I am once again. Trust me, it's some kind of satisfaction to have reclaimed my grown to love art, amidst the stress and adversity of life. That means no longer letting stress into my drawings.

This piece is all about a starry night.

It's been a while since I watched a series of tutorials how to draw starry nights. But, when I tried to recreate them, I failed miserably. This time it didn't help though; that picture needed a starry night sky, no matter what. That meant: Even more videos at night about starry nights. Afterward, I tried out a few colors, a few brushes, a few strokes on test papers, and when I felt like it was coming together, I started on the actual sketch.

Easier said than done - before the colours the sketch had to be done. And this time the sketch didn't quite work out with ease. No, it was more of a "hard" mode for my skill level, so I ultimately wondered how the paper survived the eraser.

It survived, and so I added the water and then the paint to the damp paper, hoping the colors would blend together and form these abstract structures that could be perceived as a night sky with hints of galaxies. Even if it's not quite as perfect as what the tutorials showed, it's 80% of what I wanted. That was more than I hoped for; that was enough by far.

Another problem arose: This time, the characters needed a sharper contrast to make the darkness in the shadows and an invisible light source – possibly a campfire – visible on their bodies. To do so, I roughly cut out the "camping" drawing (https://www.furaffinity.net/view/61829878/) in PS, placed it even more roughly in a ealier state of this drawing, and played with contrasts until I had colors that I would mix and apply (this is, what it looked like: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/61867598/). Unfortunately, that didn't work very well. Since watercolors dry much lighter than they appear wet, I had already mixed the colors considerably darker, and they still didn't come out as contrasty as the test image. After the third retouch, I gave up so as not to ruin the final result at all. Yeah, I think the characters' colors are quite okay, but I had hoped for a nicer effect though.

The only thing that really annoyed me were the black outlines, which didn't work out at all this day, as even the finest brushes created very thick lines, no matter how often I wiped off the excess paint. This really diminishes the elegance of the two cuddly kitties under the tree. Despite the difficulties, I really like Tigress's pose. Can't wait the day, when I can omit some of the outlines, simply because the shading works better than it does at the moment.

However, I'd call this piece quite nice, considering the expected difficulties and everything that could have gone wrong along the path creating it. I can't do much better at the moment, and I have to accept that and appreciate it accordingly. So, with the joy of a challenge mastered, here it is: A Starry night.

PS: Even though I can't quite explain the effect, the cotton paper is much more pleasant to the touch with water and paint than lower-quality paper.