#just in case. Mainly because of my DF design but also I guess my StC design too

[boilingrain]

Rain Draws Ashfur Several Times

So Ashfur won that poll I made about which Warrior Cats villain I should draw, so instead of doing the normal thing and drawing him once, I decided to rotate him in my mind for a bit and then draw him multiple times

I am completely normal about this greasy, melodramatic loser

I tried to stick to canon (or at least, the depiction of Ashfur in his sprite on the wiki), but this looks wrong to me

So then I drew my own personal design for him! His stripes n stuff aren't meant to be that dark, I messed up while coloring him but I didn't want to redraw him. The only problem was the stripes, so I didn't feel like it was bad enough to justify completely redrawing him

While usually it's something I save for cats with the -heart suffix, I gave him a heart shaped marking on his chest. It was whole when he was a kit, but as he got older the heart "broke"

Realistic? No. A fun design choice? Yes

Also while I'm not very good at drawing spotted tabbies (or tabbies in general tbh), that's what I draw Ashfur (+ Ferncloud and Brindleface) as

Then I drew him in the style that I draw Starclan cats in! I've been meaning to talk about how my Starclan/Dark Forest designs work, but the more important details for Starclan cats are that they're lighter in color than their living appearance, any markings are sharper or star shaped if applicable, whatever killed them sparkles and that the longer they're dead, they start looking less like cats

That last one is a bit hard to explain in words, but for example Firestar would start looking like he's actually made of fire, Longtail's tail would get even longer or Hollyleaf would start growing actual holly leaves out of her body

Body horror, but not as disturbing to look at or as painful to the cat as it is for the Dark Forest residents.

While Ashfur's death technically didn't have anything to do with fire, I think he'd always be surrounded by smoke as a reminder of what he tried to do (I was mainly thinking of Holly, Jay & Lion when I put that in, but it could also be easily connected to Ashfur's part in Firestar losing a life to the fox trap)

I imagine the smoke would be there as a reminder to him that just because he was let into Starclan doesn't mean that he's completely off the hook or that Starclan didn't see the shit he tried to pull. I also think that he wouldn't really get to deliver prophecies or anything particularly important.

I have to imagine that he was trying really hard to not lose it when Hollyleaf was allowed into Starclan (considering the Starclan trial stuff, Ashfur was probably at Hollyleaf's trial, because we all know she definitely had one)

Also I made a little doodle of a wet Ashfur. My Ashfur isn't very big or muscular, he's actually short and scrawny. He just looks a bit bigger than he actually is because he's really fluffy

Dark Forest Ashfur (as he should've been in canon)

I'm not sure why the picture quality on this one is shittier than the others

I'll talk more about how I draw Dark Forest cats at a later time, but some of the more important stuff is written down here already.

All Dark Forest cats have red outlines, though. No exceptions.

If I remember correctly, it's mentioned that there's no prey in the Dark Forest/Place of No Stars, so my Dark Forest cats are all real skinny. The longer they've been there, the more starved they look.

Unlike how Starclan cats will have their appearances change based on their names, Dark Forest cats will have their appearances changed based on their deaths (or the circumstances around it) and their crimes. Much like Starclan cats, your appearance changes more the longer you've been dead.

Cats like Ashfur or even Hawkfrost will have begun to change, but it isn't as bad for them yet as it is for cats like Mapleshade or Thistleclaw.

(Since I'm probably not going to draw Thistleclaw any time soon, I'll just tell you that one of the things done to him as a result of being in the DF is that despite being still mentally the same age as he was at his death, his appearance is that of an apprentice, and probably on the younger side at that. His treatment of Tigerpaw, Spottedpaw and Tiny, as well as being why Bluefur had to get rid of her kits, leading to the death of Mosskit, means that I get to hit him with the baby stick. Have fun being intimidating and using your power against people now, idiot)

Additionally, whatever killed a Dark Forest cat is still there. Yes, this means Tigerstar 1 is solidly Not Having a Good Time(tm)

Ashfur is burning from the inside out, both because of Firestar + the Fire Scene, but also because he fueled himself with his hatred of Squirrelflight after she ended their brief relationship. He let that anger and hatred fuel him, and now he will become the fuel for a fire. Naturally, this means he's now very hot to the touch and he radiates a ton of heat.

Dark Forest Ashfur gets an extra eye stripe that he doesn't have in his living design and also longer eyelashes because I wanted to try and make him look more like he has mascara running down his face... it made sense to me when I drew it.

And here's something a lot dumber

I wanted to draw a quick & silly bad doodle, so here's Ashfur as that one Elmo meme but I was too lazy to look at the actual meme for reference

(This is what color his stripes n stuff are supposed to be btw. Dark gray, I just accidentally made them black before. The only one of these designs that's supposed to have black stripes is the Dark Forest design, and that's just because the DF cats are darker in color than their living designs)

I was going to add more art to this post but then my brain decided we were done drawing for now despite how I had more ideas, so this is all you're getting, I guess.

Admittedly, this was really fun to do and I might do something like this with the polls again at some point. I'm actually really proud of this art, too :)

Sorry that I'm really bad at drawing spotted tabbies, I wear I'm trying to figure out how to draw them better