My Dragon Artwork

Actually, this one was originally called Through My Eyes but my mother kept calling it the Into The West picture, so it changed in my head. As you can see, I never finished it - I was very interested and motivated and inspired and then I knew exactly what it would look like and became too bored to finish.

This picture is one of those that doesn't work too well on the screen, but looks fantastic printed out as a poster (I know, because people were actually buying the posters at the convention I went to).

Through the Mask Poster by Flynn_the_Cat
See the other art on zazzle.com

Wallpaper: 1600x1200 (and will fit sizes downwards, of course)

An hour or two in ArtRage 2.5 on my tablet.

Christmas day, the very first page in my new black paper sketchbook... learning that I can layer colours. A dragon because I could, stars because the sky looked empty and a waterfall... somewhat inspired by the Rimfall of Discworld.

Prismacolour pencils and silver pen for the stars, four hours.

I actually made little postcards out of this for art conventions - they printed beautifully!

6 hours or so, for a contest - Theme: Satan's mother. Painted in ArtRage 2.5

Anyway, to draw Satan's mother, you first have to know what Satan is (or else go down the mystic 'anything you want' route, but there's meant to be a theme here). SO I went and looked it up.

The BASIC list goes:
1. Lucifer, angel, fallen one, pretty, child of God. Or another angel :D
but honestly, drawing God is either boring or could be anything you want. What else...
Further back...

2. NOT Lucifer, that's a malapropism. Satan was the Prosecutor/accuser of God. Instigated the bad things for him (all things are by God's will, later on they just blame Satan). Lucifer was someone else entirely.
Possibly still God's, possibly... depending on whether you have a suspicious mind and have been reading His Dark Materials and To Reign In Hell (by Pullman and Brust, respectively, VERY good books - see below)... which obviously, I have ^_^... then they may actually have sprung /from the actual universe or some quality of it and God just came first. And possibly lied a bit.

3. Ze Snakeee, a dragon, or the great World Serpent-type thing

4. A djinn raised up into heaven and therefore the only non-angel, and thus the only one able to refuse God's order to bow to Adam.

5. A random Djinn.

6. Shaitan - djinn connected to Solomon (who trapped/commanded a lot)

7. The darkness in people's souls, not actually a being.

8. Completely made up, from stories etc.

So I figured I'd try and draw several - layered. People telling stories/fearing the dark, then an angel gazing down from heaven and then a nice big dragon.

The people didn't make it, but can be found in the little refuge on the right (I expect they got eaten)

What resulted - heaven/hell clouds and fiery pit type on the left, with poor angelic mother gazing down. AND behind her - literally, and metaphorically - we have a djinn (conveniently formed of 'invisible smokeless fire', allowing me to continue the hellfire theme)* and wrapped around and behind is the dragon, or great world serpent encircling creation.

This was a birthday gift for a friend. It took me over a week... had great fun painting the tree and sketching the little dragon then promptly got bored and abandoned it. Then had to go back and finish in a hurry!

The geese I found references for, although the plumage design is just me.
Was originally named 'tree', is now called 'geese' and I REALLY need to do something about these titles that get stuck in my head.

Could have done a bit more work on this, landscapes are easy to get sucked into, just adding 'a bit more here...' but I had a Deadline :nod:
Could also have painted the detail a lot more carefully in many places, but... >.>
Looked at it at the end and realised it need a bit more on the left, for space, and went aaaaaaargh. Problem with the way I do the trees, is, it's very hard to make it match up... But I did it. I is good

I wanted to paint the dragonling's wings, but I'd have had to move him, or really distort his anatomy. So to speak. I meant to include his mate, flying, but it ended up being a bit crowded, and I'd have had to change how the geese were flying (help! dragon overhead!)

Dragon design is a development of the practice one I did a week or two before

Anyway.
Time to paint... not sure, kept abandoning it and wandering off to play on the internets, but probably four to eight hours.

Spent hours on this and another matching (water) dragon, but couldn't finish the rest of it, in the centre. So he becomes tall and lonely. So I dug it out and added star spatters.

I like him ^_^ Meant to be very elemental. The colours are all 'earth and copper and molten and green growing things'

Tools: ArtRage 2.5, tablet

Prismacolours and black paper, A4 sized.
Total time..uh, somewhere between 2.5-5 hours

Lots of sketches of her and the dragon below...

Drew these in a little square sketchbook. First four are graphite or plain pencil, last one is charcoal pencil.
My favourite is the dragon in the second one ^_^
Why yes that IS dartmoor. Again ;P

This little dragon takes up half the back of a postcard.
For the design... well, I'd been out meeting lurcher/greyhound crosses, which I also tried drawing (from photos on my camera). So I experimented with drawing the head in a similar way...

I drew this in England, while travelling, for my little brother. I took my tin of Prismacolors with me, and it nearly made up for not having ArtRage! I just sat down every evening and drew a postcard for someone - I didn't think to buy blank postcards (assuming I could have found any) so I had to cover the back - but it was great when I ran out of things to say!

This is the corner of a larger and more ambitious painting - there was going to be a wingless Chinese sort-of-dragon and the little one flying overhead. But I got bored, and just scribbled out a sky and some trees and put this up!

This is the corner of a larger picture . The dragon is flying over the castle under the moon... watched by a mysterious figure ^_^

The larger painting took me hours, was my first major and complicated work, and I was incredibly proud of it. It was then completely ignored on DeviantART! And probably deservedly...

Drew this on the back of one of my thesis surveys, during the four hours of presentations on marine reserves yesterday ;P

(Some of them were actually quite interesting. But I DID have paper in front of me!)

So yes, a fish hunter, with little teeth and scribbly fishies and vague water droplets and pebbly scales.... the problem with this picture is the 'crop' - the actual dragon keeps going, and I know exactly how big the wings are, where the legs, are, but of course, they can't be drawn in here without creating a contorted monster ...

Yes, I got carried away with the pretty colours.

...unicorn, the water, and the stars, little creatures all around the edges... Frogs and a snake, and a dragonfly and a lizard and other things...

Just to be clear, I only took the photograph, I didn't make this!

"My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!" - The Hobbit, Ch. 12 'Inside Information'.

We were read this as we grew up. The Hobbit has always been rather special to me ^_^

A marvelous bronze statue of Smaug, in a case at Auckland Armageddon, 2009. It's about a foot high.

Available from Zazzle

ArtRage 2.5 and tablet.
About 10 hours.

Scales and dragonlings and wing webs took over half of that (see closeups below for dragonlings)
This was one of my longest and I enjoyed it a lot, and learnt a lot, and ...well, there's a part of my head still rushing around in the waves there

Waterborn was my most popular image for a very long time....

There are many stories of dragons. Wild, blatant fancies and ancient legends of fire and eggs, mist and flame. Of taloned mosters and reptilian mages. Of cunning wyrms and low, crawling beasts. Some tell of mute, ferocious animals, children of earth and flesh. Others proclaim sly creatures of darkness, lurking venom and cruelly slitted eyes. Yet others laud the gracefully scaled spirits of the air, the bright and majestic roaring flames, the shining talons, the clever speeches and shining hoards...

This is not one of those.

This is the Child of the Sea, who melds with water, and flows with the waves. This is the Daughter of Salt, shining and precious, invisible in the vast seas and yet hidden in every drop. This is the seadragon, who brings the water to life with her turbulence, creating kinspirits from the froth and foam of her passing, and from sleek shining water, and the glimmer of sunlight on a droplet forms her scales...
This is the leaping splash that startles sailors, the dancing krakenmaid flying out with the spray.
Old, old and deep as the seas, resting in the dark waters before the first fish formed from her tiny kin, and young, young and new formed with every wave.

Everywhere and nowhere, she leaps up, dragging forth wings out of waves, dancing on the swells, whirls and rises and falls, crashing water, shining scales...

You will never see her. Be grateful for a quiet life.

Available from Zazzle
Total of eight hours, and six of those were trapped under a cat. For the last couple of hours, she rested her head on my arm, which made things...tricky. She never stopped purring :paranoid:

I completely changed the wings, because I wanted to paint them with the light glowing through, also the stretched backwards posture was completely wrong considering how I have them crouching.

I wanted a background, but I couldn't decide what and then it wouldn't have been visible at night anyway.

ArtRage 2.5 and tablet
Fullview for earrings, dragonflies, hair, facial features and so forth...

There is nothing in their hands but light, and from that is flying little dragon creatures.

Remembered to use more than one type of blend tool... the wings took hours.

I'm VERY fond of this one - again because I spent a long time on it and am very tied up in it. I KNOW that the expression kept changing to mimick my expression as I drew. It was the joy after a busy artless period and a light shining through the loss of being able to draw (mostly due to exams and work >.< both at once is a bad combination). And it embodies my comfort in being in the dark, and my fascination with glowing fire. And again, I just love it as an artwork, it's one of the few pieces that I don't see faults and skimped areas leaping out at me (possibly because it's still shiny and new :XD: if you DO see any, please do let me know)
Right, got my head sorted... now for the story
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working title was 'Arson' :D I was trying to draw this, then it changed and then ...well, the 'blank demands of the submission page comment box' destroyed my brain. Also was about 1am)

The Silent One had no name for its kin, they were all Silent ones.

The Silent ones weren't really silent - venting a constant crackling susurrus of harsh whispers - but never louder than a whisper. And one never knew whether or not the kin were nearby, unless they were close enough to hear the whispering. And the whispering was often masked the whisper of the mountain streams...

The kin of the Silent one dwelt in air and darkness, they lived in the dark caves and the cold, cold, night over the mountains. Cold whispering pools and black icy water filled the passages and lurked in the stone.

Daylight had not been seen in a thousand years. They lived and hid and preyed in the darkness and the night sky and the caves, cloaked by the night and lonely distances from more mundane eyes. And light... it carries very far, at night.

Fire and light and dance and heat, dryness and movement and noise. These are forbidden.
Magic, while innate in some, attracted attention and opened the paths to light and life and danger and daylight. It was outside of the caves and the night. And the working drained the dark still power from the waters in the rock, and the vibrations of enchantment warmed the cold silent caves. Magic, and fire, destroyed the peace and the cover of night. Magic, and fire, were utterly forbidden.
No.
Not forbidden. Unconscionable. Anathema.

But this Silent One loved firelight. And fire, and magic, which created it. But mostly, the Silent one loved firelight.
Night after moonless night, deep in a lightless cavern, crouched on wet rock, as light danced in the reflections of the water, away from farseeing eyes in the wide open skies, the Silent One raised firelight.

A dragon-angel being, flying around the universe, through dying infernos of planets and stars. Whether she brings the chaos or follows it, she is always there, dancing in it...

Also I screwed up the neck, I know. I'm a bad artist-person. An experiment in my newly acquired Artrage Studio Pro

This is based off the myth of the Lamia, who's been changed into all kinds of things to suit the whims of the tellers, over time.

In original greek mythology, she was changed to a half-serpent monster by Hera, for having children by Zeus (same old, same old). the children were killed - some stories say by her in madness, and she wandered the night stealing and murdering children...At some point Zeus took pity on her and took her eyes, in exchange for second sight.

Later stories have lamias as succubus-type women, or vampires, naga or winged, passing for human, or horrendous monsters...
I've taken the wings and the eyelessness. and tried to give her scales, and left her reaching for a butterfly, bearing eyes...

My favourite part is definitely the arms/wings :D
Butterflies kinda spoilt it...

Prismacolours and black paper, A4 sized.
Practice/concept sketches - 1-2 hours
Final image - 3 days/5 hours

It was also made somewhat harder than it need to be by our little Egyptian Mau, as you can see below ... (you can also see the drawing in progress)