What I created this month // August 2025

August has flown by and my favorite months are about to begin! 🎃 Before that happens, let's look back on how August went. Here's an overview of everything I created this month ✨

This month's tutorial was on techniques for soft blending! This has been my favorite way to paint lately. I'm hooked on the smudge tool and the soft, gentle look it creates! That's why I wanted to share the full workflow with those of you who also want to create a soft, blended look in your art. I also made some smudge brushes for you - grab those at the bottom of hte post!

Since it's my latest tutorial, it will be available on the $5 spark tier for another month! After that, it goes to the backlog, along with 50 other tutorials. Join the spark tier if you want to grab it for $5! And if you want to access the massive backlog of over 50 tutorials, just upgrade to the $10 flame tier 🔥

This month's challenge was on iridescence! That's the shimmering, rainbow-like effect that you can see on gemstones, bubbles, butterfly wings, and more. I think it's a great phenomenon to study because you learn so much about blending colors, and there's also a wide variety of subjects you can draw with this look (including pigeons)! Here's what I created:

For next month's challenge, we'll be doing master studies again! This time, we'll specifically be focusing on studying energetic, dynamic brush strokes - which is why the reference images consist of close-ups of masterpieces that show incredible brush work.

If you're not yet a flame member, be sure to upgrade your tier to access the challenge - all information will be posted on the 1st!

As always, flame members also got access to the process video of my challenge artwork, as well as a resource video with tips and advice. This is a 20 minute long video in which I discuss my process, common mistakes, and run through the artwork that you guys posted in the discord! If you want to draw studies like this in the future, you might find it helpful. Watch it here!

This month, I continued on my quest to draw softly blended art with some chromatic aberration effects! That's a filter I've been using forever, but it's also really fun to manually paint into the art and incorporate into the rendering style. I created a flower portrait and some darker sketches!

I also went on a short trip to Iceland with an artist friend of mine, and we could not stop talking about painting the beautiful scenery. When I got home, I got to work and created some landscape speedpaints! Here are my quick iceland landscape studies:

If you're curious about the photos and videos from my Iceland trip, there’s a story highlight on my Instagram profile!

This month, I shared the full process of my flower painting! I feel like this is a great companion video to this month's tutorial on soft blending, because I used a lot of those techniques to make this process. There's part 1, part 2 and a phone recording where you can see how I draw on my tablet!

This month's session was the first one streamed directly onto Patreon! I'm so happy that's possible now - it's a relief to bypass Discord and all the workarounds I had to use in order to stream there. This session had double the number of attendees as usual, and it was so awesome to hang out with you and talk about social media, superpowers, and drawing techniques! Watch the full session here.

This month, we did the No Girl Travel Challenge in the server! So many of you contributed awesome ideas for No Girl's summer journey - from midnight ramen to Hyrule to skiing in New Zealand! Check out the Travel Challenge channel in the server to see everyone's submissions ✨ Thanks so much to everyone who joined ~ the winners will be chosen in the coming week!

Friendly reminder: all paying members have access to the discord server! If you’re not sure how to join the discord, just follow the steps outlined here.

Thanks for your support this month! Are you ready for the "-ber" months? 🍂

Thank you so much for supporting me in creating this month's content and art! I'll be sending out links to this month's google drive folder today! Keep an eye on your inbox.

Thank you for being a part of this Patreon! If you're interested in getting access to all of the above plus content from previous months, upgrade your tier here!

If you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to share them with me through a direct message or e-mail to loishh@gmail.com. Any and all feedback is welcome!