I wanted to draw Perfect Chaos in a shallow depth of field, which is an effect that's really hard for me to paint. I actually wound up making Chaos's water texture by accident. I use a dragon scale brush all over him to make him scaly, but it didn't look right. So then I tried scribbling all over it to make it look like foam, and suddenly it looked amazing.

This is concept art for the third fanfic in my Knuckles Boom series (a Sonic Boom fanfic series starring Knuckles as not-dumb).

Brushes: dark-dragon-stock.deviantart.c…

Fanfic series: archiveofourown.org/series/793…

Kind of a spoilery teaser:

The island settled beneath Knuckles, touching down in the sea with a light shock. Now he was lower than Chaos, looking up at the huge, rippling head in the morning light. It was impossibly blue, turquoise at the edges, indigo in the middle. Could it really eat him? Did it have a stomach? It didn't seem to have any organs at all, aside from the suggestion of a brain between its eyes.
Knuckles drew quick, panicked breaths, the floating feeling of unreality settling over him again. "I want to negotiate the outcome of this sacrifice," he heard himself say.
In his headset, the AI Ramussan said slowly, "What did you just say?"
Chaos studied Knuckles, the huge head swinging closer. "I will hear your terms."
Knuckles drew a deep breath, trying to speak without screaming. "Lift the blood curse from the line of Solaris."
"Guardian, no!" Ramussan screamed. "Someone stop him! He's about to throw himself to Chaos!"
His friends' voices broke into a panicked clamor. Knuckles ignored them. He gazed into the monster's nearest eye, which was focused on him intently.
"Much depends on you," Chaos replied. "I will draw power from your death. If you contain enough, I can, perhaps, lift the curse. It was laid with the power of my beloved's death. Perhaps you can match that. Perhaps not."
It was a good a bargain as he was likely to get. "And you'll keep your word?" Knuckles said, his voice faltering. Annihilation stared him in the face. His entire being wanted to turn and run for his life.
"I can't find him!" Sonic was yelling. "Shadow, where is he?"
The black hedgehog appeared on the path up the hill from Knuckles, a hand pressed to his headset. He and Knuckles exchanged a long look.
"He's not at the dock," Shadow said coolly.
Chaos lifted his head higher, stretching upward on a thick neck made of water. "I always keep my word."
The huge head curved over Knuckles, the jaws opening. Teeth made of water lined the jaws, clear as icicles. Knuckles looked up into the maw, detached, terrified, and saw there was no throat. It was all just a shape made of water with no real body.
Then the shape fell apart into a crashing waterfall. It struck Knuckles like a tidal wave, sweeping him off the rock and into the sea with the speed of a rip tide.
Shadow watched. "We're too late," he said into the headset. "There was nothing I could do. Chaos took him."