A (very) belated Christmas gift for @kingdomblade, author of the delightfully funny webcomic Lesser Than Three. Some of his characters have very different reactions to the cold, and I thought I’d depict that!

In This Scene

Wheeler Rockwell the polar bear was invited by Rory Donavan the husky to join him for a calisthenics workout in the park. By the looks of it, both of them have been working pretty hard. Their friends Elijah Staley the otter and Annie Goldwin the red panda were walking by, coincidentally, and Eli decides to tease friends about their natural immunity to the weather. Annie, meanwhile, who can’t wait to get back to her place for some hot chocolate and a nice, cozy fire, stares dumbfounded at her friends’ apparent insanity.

Behind the Scenes

@kingdomblade draws a disproportionate amount of my suggestions in his Suggestion Box on Patreon, so I decided that he deserved some fanart from me in return.

This took a while. I traced the poses and the pull-up bar for Rory and Wheeler, but everything else came from my imagination. I rarely draw this many characters, let alone a background, but I’m pleased with myself for putting in the effort and the final result is exactly what I had in mind.

Hope you enjoy, @kingdomblade, and thank you for being an inspiration to the rest of us!

Leo and Ariel’s Christmas Workout

Leo and Ariel King gave each other matching holiday workout gear, so they celebrated with a couple’s workout. Got to work off that holiday ham and Christmas cookies, after all.

A belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

In this scene…

Leo can be a cheeky little tease, can’t he?

Leo and Ariel are once again doing a couple’s workout at Ed’s Boxing and MMA Gym. Leo always likes a challenge, so he volunteered to climb a rope with Ariel on his back. Ariel was a bit nervous, but she trusted Leo. Leo’s jokes help keep her distracted and calm while he climbs higher and higher, but so far, things are looking good—Leo doesn’t even have to use his feet!

Behind the Scenes

Just another couple workout with Leo and Ariel. I was inspired by a photo of a guy carrying a girl while climbing a rope on Pinterest, so I used to as a reference—but no tracing!

Still working on smoother inking and on shading.

Leo and Ariel like working out together, and yes, they are the kind of couple that try cutesy couple workouts every so often.

Leo and Ariel were high school sweethearts who were just starting to date when Leo’s sister, Maddie got pregnant at a party with her boyfriend, Kyle MacLeon, who promptly disappeared from their school. Leo stepped up to help his sister watch her cub from the end of high school throughout college, becoming something of a surrogate father to his nephew Samson “Sammy” MacLeon. Ariel found herself babysitting alongside Leo a lot, and the two developed a close bond throughout college. It was actually during a board game on one of those babysitting nights that Leo realized that she was the lioness he had to spend the rest of his life with. As soon as he took over as manager of his dad’s boxing gym, he proposed, and the rest, as they say, is history.

This picture was a tracing of a picture I found on Pinterest, which I then fleshed out according to my own tastes.

Ariel King loves running. Her husband, Leo, less so.

Running poses are actually pretty hard, so I traced the poses for my characters from the picture on the bottom and filled out the rest of their legs with my best guess.

Trevor Khan has been Leo’s best friend since they were cubs. While Leo is the manager of his father’s boxing and MMA gym, Trevor became an English teacher at his old high school, but he never gave up his passion for martial arts—specifically, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu—and continues to train at Eddy’s Boxing and MMA gym, where he moonlights as a jiu jitsu coach.

He is one of the most requested English teachers at his school, and no one has the heart to tell him that it’s not because of his award-winning poetry.

So what has Leo been doing during quarantine?

Well, he had to close down his boxing gym until the shelter-in-place orders pass, which isn’t a huge financial loss for him since his wife is still working and some of his other friends are still paying for their memberships. He’s more worried about the financial impact on his parents, who own the gym and aren’t quite ready to retire.

He can only video-chat with his friends. His best friend Trevor Khan the tiger is busy trying to teach English online to students who may or may not be paying attention. He misses sparring with Leo too.

His wife Ariel is working a lot at the local hospital, taking care of patients. She’s currently providing the steadiest income to their household, and he’s proud of her for taking on extra shifts to relieve other nurses with cubs. But he misses her all day and is constantly wondering if she’s being exposed to the coronavirus—and if her body is strong enough to fight it after working so long and hard with little food and even less sleep.

Leo knows he can’t fight the coronavirus by throwing a right hook. But sometimes, as he punches his bag in the basement, he pretends that he can.