*Old Work*

Look Ma, no lines!
Well this is a long time coming. As you can see, I experimented with a new painting method by not having any lineart and painstakingly shading the whole thing. It was a good experience that taught me a bunch, so I plan to incorporate it into a few more pictures. Anyway, this is my fursona Mara Stonewing and the mutant Flaw.

Mara Stonewing

Mara is more or less my avatar for art, meaning I like to put her in various scenarios according to how she'd react and what she'd be like. Mara is a very outgoing, arrogant, and an athletic tom-boy. She's quick to act as conversation and negotiation are not her strong suits. She's very sure of herself, especially her flying ability. However, she can be too sure of her abilities, to the point that she has trouble listening to the advice of others. Her headstrong personality does make it hard for most to like her at first. She's also an unbelievable showoff: nothing makes her happier than being in the spotlight. Because of her fierce desire to uphold her reputation, she isn't very good at letting others see her emotions, especially if it concerns sadness or love. However, this doesn't apply to her parents, whom she sees as her role models. She takes every opportunity to make them proud of her.
Now this isn't to say she doesn't have friends; they're usually similar to her in personality or act as foils. She tends to have a habit of being coolly sarcastic around others, hence the "hard-to-like" at first. She does, however, have a soft spot for young kids, at least enough to reign in her more vulgar tendencies. Whenever she wants to be alone, she prefers to fly high into the clouds to clear her head.

Interests: aviation, rock and pop music, action/sci-fi/horror movies, little bit of punk culture, stand-up, great clothes, lounging
Dislikes: rainy weather, long talks, salad, confined/crowded places, swimming, uptight people, dolls

Flaw (aka "Sola")

(This one took some time to develop. I made her design years ago without much thought to a story. I hope this will suffice).
Flaw, or Subject 68, was once the latest in a bioengineering experiment to create a creature that could produce rare hormones crucial to the cure for many diseases and conditions, including diabetes and CAA. Subject 68 was a hybrid of human DNA and certain species of reptiles, sharks (there's a small fin along her back) and bats (yes, I know I love them too much). Though that webbing was present at her birth, it grows too slowly; add that to her still dense bones and she does not have the ability to fly, barely gliding from perch to perch. Unfortunately, she never produced the desired chemicals, even when her genetic code was believed to do so. She was labeled a failure and kept away for further unrelated research. On the upside, the staff in charge of her care came to see that she possessed some humanlike awareness, and they treated her similarly to a child. They gave her the codename "Sola".
Though she was blissfully unaware of her position, Sola started to notice things missing in her life from the books the staff read to her. Why didn't she get to leave the building, or why didn't she have friends that were the same age as her? Not knowing how to answer this, the staff decided to give her a friend in the form of an extra lab rat. Sola was overjoyed with her new friend. It didn't last long, though. The head of the bioengineering department, Dr. Barns, thought that any emotional attachments would just make Sola more difficult to control and bring unnecessary variables into the experiments. It was determined that Sola have as little human contact as possible to hopefully reduce her need for emotional fulfillment (a trait they never expected her to have anyway). So at the age of six, Sola was taken to live in a blank-walled room of only two dishes, a cushion and a small jungle gym in the middle. She would remain here, bitter and resentful, for the next eight years. In that time she abandoned the name Sola and stuck with what Barns had always called her: Flaw.
When she was fourteen, she put into motion a plan of escape from the horrible little room and the people she though were her friends. She faked an illness, accompanied by her refusal to eat and forced vomiting, and was taken in for an evaluation. Once left alone with only an assistant in the corner, she leapt up and killed him quickly. The guard outside the room didn't fair any better. She dashed back in the direction of her own room, knowing that a staircase lead upwards to where the staff entered. Once there, she managed to stun the interns and make her way to the front door. Though some of the staff was hot on her heels, she lost them at a nearby river, which she jumped. Though she fell in and was carried miles, she managed to snag a root in a shallow area and pull herself to safety.
She has since made her way into a nearby town and seeks the city as a more sustainable home and hiding place, for the staff are still looking for her. She trusts no one, barely leaves the abandoned barn she calls home during the day, and has only one desire: to live somewhere free of people.