Readers have asked me many times whether shih-aan looked more human or more animal. I’ve always told readers “Shih-aan look as human or animal as makes you happy.”
Nevertheless, I’ve had it explained to me at length that it’s important to give people who are thinking of reading my books something nice to look at. I’ve worked with artists before with excellent results. But in most cases, I’ve had reference art to hand over. There is no reference art for shih-aan, because they don’t exist.
I needed an artist to create the reference art. This would not be a small job. And I knew that once I had a picture in hand, shih-aan would always look that way to me.
I spent some time evaluating artist portfolios, emailing artists, and not hearing back from artists before a mutual friend put me in touch with doodlebloom. Doodlebloom did the very difficult job of digging in my head for ideas and rendering them into this beautiful portrait.
I hope that you, whoever you are, will still feel free to use your imagination when you read my books. But now you know what Styrax looks like to me.
If you like doodlebloom’s work, here’s where to find more information.
https://bsky.app/profile/doodlebloomm.bsky.social