A Life For Love

     He breathed in her sweet scent as she bent over him. This cat, more than any, was the one with whom he wanted to speak, because the time they had had together had been too short to let them share their true feelings.

     "Spottedleaf..."

     "With this life I give you love," she murmured in her soft voice. "Use it well, for all the cats in your care - and especially for Sandstorm."

     There was no pain in the life that poured into Fireheart now. It held the warmth of the high sun in greenleaf, burning to the tips of his paws. It was pure love; at the same time he experienced the sense of security he had known as a tiny kit, nuzzling his mother. He gazed at Spottedleaf, wrapped in a contentment he had never before known.

With Spottedleaf's new design complete, as well as Firestar's, I decided I wanted to have a shot at the scene where she gives him one of his nine lives. A lot of other fanartists have done their own version of this, and I apologize if this resembles one of those in any way. I tried to make it my own.

Here, I was mostly experimenting with how I want my StarClan cats to look. I think I may have fallen a little too much in love with the Overlay layer mask thingy lately, so I probably overdid it here. I might change how my StarClan cats look later, as I have several times in the past. We'll just have to see.

I'm really, really happy with how this turned out. I'm insanely proud of how Spottedleaf turned out (though we do have another example here of Jayie being unable to replicate her own patterns), I'm fairly happy with Fireheart, though his neck is a bit too long, and I'm really, really happy with the swirly blue mist.

The only thing really bugging me are the stars. I used a texture since I'm too lazy to draw all my own stars, not to mention I wouldn't know how to make them look good without a texture. I'm just not terribly happy with the texture I used. Maybe one day I'll be able to draw my own stars.