Goldeen works primarily with traditional media, favoring colored pencil, watercolor, graphite pencil, and brush pen. A self-taught artist, she developed her skills by practical application and studying the art of those she most admired. Her favorite subjects include animals and the natural world—usually with some fantastic element added. Her illustration style varies in order to serve the story, ranging from realism to cartoonish and sometimes combining them in the same picture. Thematically she enjoys depicting scenes that are suggestive of a story and bridge the gap between reality and imagination. Her work has been inspired by artists such as James Gurney, Jill Barklem, Bill Watterson, Rumiko Takahashi, Hayao Miyazaki, Trina Schart Hyman, Charles Vess, and John Picacio. She also admires work of the classic painters Diego Velásquez, Vincent van Gogh and Ivan Shishkin.
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Recurring Themes and Characters
Much of Goldeen’s art has a strong fantasy element, such as her Celestial Equines. She also enjoys depicting whimsical characters like her Strange Owls (inspired by the work of Strange Hours Atelier) and Weekday Cats. Some of her pieces feature characters from her stories, like Mother Chaos, while other pieces develop stories behind them, such as Death and the Cat. She also enjoys painting landscapes, both real and imagined. Several of her pieces have referenced images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Some of her recurring subjects include:
Death and the Cat
Originally a watercolor portrait, it quickly spun off into a short story and generated a series of cartoons. Although fans have noted the similarity to Terry Pratchett’s Death of Discworld, in fact she created it entirely independently. However, she allows that if fans want to see it that way, she won’t contradict them.
Horses
Goldeen’s first love as a child was horses, and they continue to be one of her favorite subjects to paint. She has reimagined horses as the embodiment of planets and other astronomical objects in her Celestial Equines series, as elements in her Elemental Horses series, and as fantastic beasts like the Tigerhorse.
Valdelluna
Originally a collection of pen doodles in a Moominvalley themed notebook, Goldeen began illustrating a cast of unusual creatures in her own fantasy valley of Valdelluna. Currently she is in the process of developing it into an organized project, and posts weekly additions to her Patreon.
The Volcano Chimera
A combination of lion, wolf, bighorn sheep and snake, Rhondi the Volcano Chimera is an original character Goldeen created to evoke her own artistic creative powers. Part animal-persona and part spiritual embodiment, Rhondi sometimes appears as a bipedal anthropomorphic creature wearing clothes, and sometimes as a quadrupedal wild animal. She is often depicted with a small red dragon, a reference to Goldeen’s plush dragon toy that she brings with her to conventions.
Rhondi is part of a triad of characters, along with Astrhopi the Heliopause Pony and Dagrhi the Lake Wolf, who together form a Creator-Preserver-Destroyer trinity. Astrhopi is the mascot of Goldeen’s publishing company, Heliopause Productions, and Dagrhi is She Who Devours, the Eater of Evil. Rhondi is the one Goldeen most closely associates with, and appears as her avatar all over social media.
Comics and Illustrations
Goldeen has been illustrating stories for as along as she has been writing them, and sometimes isn’t sure which one came first: the words or the picture. Her first webcomic, Angeldevil, spanned eleven volumes and over a thousand pages. She collaborated with her brother to make The Iron Wizard, which ran for five volumes. Both were heavily inspired by manga and anime, as was her third webcomic, Year of the God-Fox, which featured full color illustrations and was published online in 2014. Her comics are visually dominant, with text mostly limited to character dialogue and only a few instances of narrative exposition. Although she formats them for English (reading right-to-left, top-to-bottom) her panel sequencing is influenced by Japanese manga; she utilizes irregular panels shapes, variable gutters, and splash pages to help convey action and environment.
Illustrations
Goldeen has produced interior illustrations for her Bouragner Felpz books and over twenty full-page illustrations for her novel Lucena in the House of Madgrin. She has used pen-and-ink and graphite pencil to create her interior images, which are evocative of the story and illustrative of the action. As the author as well as the artist, Goldeen sometimes uses her illustrations as a way to express elements of the story not conveyed in the text.
Goldeen illustrates and designs all her own covers, for which she has used a range of media depending on the book. Some covers, such as Bouragner Felpz and Driving Arcana are a combination of traditional and digital methods, while Lucena and Professor Odd are done by hand in colored pencil. She enjoys challenging herself with new mediums and styles to better represent the story within.
Tattoo Design
While not a tattoo artist, Goldeen has been honored to create custom art for application as tattoos, and many of her brush pen pieces are done with tattooing in mind. Although inspired by traditional irezumi (Japanese) designs, she endeavors to keep her own work fresh and original while being respectful of the long history and diverse culture of tattooing. She can be commissioned to create custom tattoo designs, and permissions can be obtained to adapt her existing work into tattoos.
Commissions and Licenses
Goldeen can be commissioned to create custom artwork and most of her existing pieces can be licensed for commercial use. For rates and other information, see her Terms of Service. If you would like to order a commission or use an existing piece, please send her an email.