Still feeling like a kid with a new toy, you and Adria wandered into the park a few blocks from your apartment; the place was fairly large, being just on the edge of the city, with a little bit of everything; wide open plains good for a picnic or soccer match, a playground for little kids, a quiet creek and some heavily wooded areas to enjoy some shade in the summer heat, with smooth paved paths weaving their way through it all. It was the kinda place you’d wished you’d had access to growing up.
You weren’t really sure how many people you’d find here who’d be sitting still long enough to improve them, but there’d likely be at least one old lady feeding pigeons or something, right?
You come up to the playground, a fairly big metal and plastic structure, with high monkey bars, curving slides, and swings, all in a big sandbox. There were already several kids playing in it, three women, presumably their mothers, watching dutifully from the benches on the side.
“Thinking about trying out your artistic skills on the kids, are you, hun?” Adria asked, noticing you gazing toward the playground. “I would love to see adorable young toons out making other kids laugh.”
You looked back to the playground, watching as two girls, one looking about six, the other eight, the older pushing the younger on the swingset, while the boys, each looking around seven, raced across the monkey bars, down the slide, around the playground and back to the monkey bars again. They would definitely be a lot harder to paint with their constant moving around, not to mention the fact that you were a lot more experienced in drawing adult physiques. Their mothers would make much easier targets (the fact that it would also make them hotter was a pretty big bonus as well). But at the same time, you didn’t want to disappoint Adria.
“It’ll be a bit tricky,” you mutter, “but I’ll give it a shot.” You set up your easel a little distance from the playground, to give them some room to run around while still “inside” the canvas frame.
You go for the easiest target first, the eight year old girl currently pushing the other girl on the swing. You dab a spot of orange around her torso, instantly giving her a slightly rounder, scaly body. Her legs come next, pants vanishing under a layer of orange paint, while you dab five little blobs on each of her feet, then smooth them out a bit, giving her a gecko’s sticky toes.
You wait for moments between pushes to perform quick strokes across the arms, giving them bright orange scales, with a couple of darker orange stripes running down their length. Giving the gecko-girl-in-the-making sticky fingers is a bit trickier at this distance, and you accidentally leave a couple spots of orange sand from times where she moved a little faster than you’d anticipated, but you eventually manage to give her the wider, padded digits of her new species, as well.
Moving up to her head, you paint her skin orange, while replacing her hair with a little crest of raised scales that go from above her eyes and down her back. And speaking of eyes, you make those quite a bit bigger and rounder, looking cute even with a slit pupil. Dragging along her nose, then her chin, you draw out a modest, rounded snout. Finally, you slide out a thick, tail behind her, giving it little bumps and ridges as you go.
The little gecko kid continues pushing the still-human girl up a few more times, finally catching her and holding her steady in an instant when the other girl asks to switch.
“Aw, isn’t she just a little sweetheart,” Adria says, leaning over your shoulder. “You’re doing great hun, keep it up!”
The girls switch which one is pushing which, giving you an easier time painting the second than you’d been expecting. You paint over her torso with white on the front half, and light gray on the back, giving it a little oval shape. A few thin strokes behind her create a set of tail feathers hanging off her back.
You run a couple thin black lines down her legs, at first leaving a black streak down her pants. Once you paint the remainder of her pants to match the color of the sand behind her, her legs suddenly become the thin legs of a little bird. You paint a few long, thin talons, like those of a bird, spreading out over her shoes, then match the rest of the shoes to the sand again, leaving her feet matching her legs.
A blotch of black goes over her forehead, drawn out over her hair, with another blotch below on the chin, with white filling in the rest. A little pointy triangle covering her mouth and nose becomes a tiny beak, while her eyes are made into little black dots. Several broad strokes are carefully made during the seconds the new chickadee girl is not pushing the gecko girl, giving her big grey wings with feathery “fingers.”
You breathe a sigh of relief. That went easier than you’d hoped. Now for the real tricky part.
The boys were still running and climbing all over the equipment, and not showing any signs of slowing down. You try to go for the shorter of the two first, one dressed in a green striped shirt. A goat might be a good pick, you think to yourself. You reach for white paint, trying to paint one a bit at a time as he passes, but even that proves harder than expected.
You manage to dot a little stub of a tail at the top of the boy’s pants, by some miracle, but the rest of your attempts are spotty at best, in the most literal sense. You get spots and smears of white over the boy’s shirt and pants, with a few patches on his arms here and there. Looking around the canvas, you see that the boy now seems to have holes in his clothes above several toony fur patches in his skin, a few more forming on his exposed arms. You groan. It doesn’t SEEM to be hurting or hindering him, at least. You decide to switch your targets to the three mothers, figuring they’ll be easier to do a portrait of. Maybe the boy will slow down before you’re done.
You dab a bit of light blue on the first woman’s chest, to start, getting a couple sizable spheres going before spreading the paint over the rest of her torso, her shirt and the top of her pants disappearing. You don’t alter the waist too much this time, and instead, focus on making the hips wider and wider. A hefty swab of paint thickens up her thighs as you paint on more blue scales, giving her a rather full figure.
A few dabs toes with rounded tips and sticky pads. Careful strokes down her arms are followed by a couple of dabs on her fingertips to give her a gecko’s sticky fingers, as well. You swipe a thick blue line draping down on the ground from behind the bench, implying her tail’s connection.
Painting over her head, you give her large, yellow eyes, a short snout, and paint away any trace of hair on her head. As a finishing touch, a few darker blue lines streak down her body, and several black splotches appear on her scales to add a little variety.
Mother number two is in your sights next, an older looking woman with black hair in a ponytail. You turn the ponytail into a natural crescent of black feathers, white feathers over her face, with black below the jawline.
Her nose and mouth are painted together into a cute little beak, while her ears are covered over to blend in with the rest of her head. With wide strokes, you give her a rounded, ample figure, covered in bright yellow feathers in place of her shift, with a chest that probably wasn’t very aerodynamic. (Though for all you knew, maybe it was? You majored in art, not physics.)
You don’t make the woman’s legs quite as thin as the younger bird-girl’s, but you do give them a scaly, brown coat of paint, with long, thin talons for toes, replacing her pants and shoes. And of course, you give the Chickadee mom her a pair of wide yellow wings, ending in toony, finger-like feathers.
For the last woman you decide to try again with a goat, since Goat MILFs had seen a rise in popularity in the last couple years. You paint white fur all over her body, covering skin and clothing alike. As before, you widen her hips, and give thick dabs to her rear and chest, giving her a hefty, rounded chest and rear, with a tiny tuft of a tail at the base of her spine. Her feet are covered and turned into brown, rounded hooves. Her fingers are painted over, five digits becoming a thicker four. A few short, curving lines of brown on her head create a pair of horns, and a thick rounded cylinder over the mouth and nose is smoothed out into a new snout, with a little tuft of fluff under the chin. Her eyes are changed to a bright green, though you decide to skip giving her plus-shaped pupils.
You look over the three lovely ladies with a sense of pride at your improvements. And it looks like you finished just in time, as they start to get up, and all call to their children.
To your surprise, the human (mostly) boys run into the arms and tail of the gecko mom, the gecko girl clings to her chickadee mother as the bird woman takes off, and the chickadee child flaps alongside the goat mom.
You try to hide your award feeling with a half-hearted grin, as you realize that if you’re going to paint more pairs in the future, you should probably make sure they’re all in the proper pairs BEFORE you start.
Adria burst out laughing, showing her large sharp fangs while slapping her knee.
"I gotta admit! I kinda saw that one coming!"
"You knew who was with who?" You asked surprised.
Adria waved you off. "Naw! Not a clue! But you only what? A one-in-nine chance of getting it right? Or is that one-in-six? Point is, you weren't likely to get it right! But hey! I can't say it certainly isn't funny! For me at least! Okay, the joke's on you, but hey, a good joke is about expectation and subversion!"
You said flatly. "I am pleased that my goof amused you."
"Hey, I'm a toon, amusement is my middle name."
"I thought your middle name was Francis."
"Not anymore!" She reached into her bosom, she pulled out an ID card showing her toon self that said indeed, Adria Amusement Wolffe.
"Ask a stupid question," you lamented.
"Ah don't feel so bad," she patted him on the head. "Just think of all the jokes you've set up for them when people confuse who's mom is who's! Don't worry! We're toons, it's all in good fun!"
"Yeah. I guess."
"Wanna me to do a quick set up a 'Free Sketches for happy families?' For Gecko mom and her kids?"
"But the canvas would just fade."
"Oh no! And it's the only canvas in the universe!" She poked you in the chest. "Then smart guy, JUST USE A NORMAL PENCIL AND SKETCH PAD for the actual sketching!"
"I... didn't bring them."
"That's okay," she reached into her cleavage again, revealing one of your sketch books and some colored pencils. "I did!" She stared at you expectantly. "Come on, do you really wanna leave a work half done?"
"Maybe. I think I tired myself out trying to paint those balls of energy."
"Ah dangit."