In the past I’ve posted a few dragons here, both of the cute and more traditional varieties, but it’s been a while. It’s dragon time.

As you may have noticed, I often construct my inspiration out of pieces of geekery and intellectually stimulating fantasy, as in this old illustration. In this case I was flipping through this month’s issue of National Geographic, and on page 68 there’s a small color picture of a creature called Phyllodoce Madeirensis.

Without exaggeration- it’s a tiny dragon. Well,  it looks like a tiny dragon in that particular picture anyway. I’m pretty sure it would look more millipede-ish were you to encounter it in the water where it lives, but the picture was great inspiration for a speedrun.

Yup, this is another speedrun. About an hour total?

A word about ‘constructing inspiration’. As I’m mentioned previously, I rarely feel inspired by a single idea. It’s when ideas collide that my brain says ‘Hey, neat! Can I play with that?’

Even more interesting from a ‘how creative brains work’ perspective: When those interesting ideas or factoids run into each other, there’s a pause. It feels much like solving a simple mechanical problem, such as assembling a doorknob. All the pieces of a great idea are in front of me, but there’s a moment before I figure out how to put them together. And sometimes I put them together wrong, and then have to dissasemble and reassemble until I hear that little *click*.

Not to worry, the *click* is metaphorical. I’m not hallucinating. Yet.

I figured I’d do my own version of a very popular subject in WoW art. You see a lot of fan-created versions of Alexstrasza, because, well… Alexstrasza is extremely hot. Plus she’s a very powerful queen, and leader of an ancient people with mysterious motivations. Also a dragon.

Korialstrasz doesn’t get nearly as much airtime, and when you do see them together, he’s usually in the background somewhere.

I really like this pose for them. It’s your classic ‘dragonrider and dragon’ or ‘witch and familiar’ pose, and the dynamic gets turned on it’s head a bit when you know who these characters are.  Korialstrasz has no official power, his title is ‘queen’s consort’. Plus Alexstrasza could clean his clock any day. So although he’s visually in the ‘power’ spot, he not only takes orders from Alexstrasza (as a witches’ familiar would) he also is not the most physically powerful.

I’m not sure yet about the style. The shading makes them look a bit like stone sculpture. In this case I don’t really mind, because this would be an awesome thing to have in the lobby of the red dragonflight, but for other pieces it might be a little incongruous.

Edit: Hahaha, I forgot the irises. Ooops. I am too punchy to put them in now though. I guess they are stone sculpture after all.

Nothing really new this week, just thought I’d show you some of my wootshirt submissions as a break from posting ladies. (We are not done with the ladies.  In fact I have a backlog of ladies. And how often do people get to say that?) Though I worked at a tee shirt printing/design company for almost a year, I still find it a challenge to adapt a design originally meant for a page or poster to work on a tee shirt. I keep wanting to use the whole shirt, which is actually a bad idea because you hardly ever see the whole shirt at once. During normal wear, you really can’t plan on a viewer getting a good look at anything more than what is referred to in the business as ‘midchest’.

It’d probably help to draw something with the intent that it would be a tee shirt design, but that would require planning and foresight. *Pfffft*

So I gave in to my tendencies and made a very, very blue dragon. Well, I guess he’s sort of violet, but it’s balanced by the super-cute teal belly.

And he has pads! Eeeeeeee!

*Cough* Sorry. Regulations require at least one squeal per use of adorable paw pads.

Okay, so I’m probably out of inventiveness as far as titles go.

I’m playing with texture a bit here. It’s subtle (and what do we know about subtlety?) but I like the concept anyway. I was trying to get the skin of the body to have a different taste than the armor scales. ( Due to my synesthetic brain, taste, textue and color are all very closely intwined. Actually, there’s a sound component too, but when I get that far in a discription most people start to get incredulous.) I don’t think I quite have it here, but it’s an interesting thought anyway.

I think this is my best expression so far. The face is cute, sure, but it’s the pose that really does it.

This one went through a few different color changes. I knew I wanted the spots, and I wanted the tail to fade to red, but everything else was up for grabs. For a while he was a sort of grey/blue. But I use blue too often, and I know it.  So I decided to go a little more…vibrant.

Another take on quick scales. I think this one worked out a bit better, although it doesn’t follow the curves of the form as the earlier try did, and I want to fix that. But later. These little studies aren’t about driving myself crazy trying to get it perfect, and I’m finding I like how much that frees me up to experiment and learn.

Funny enough, that’s exactly what nine-dozen art teachers have been trying to get me to do for years. But I never could really do it in a class setting. (Strange thought: this is the first extended period since third grade or so that I haven’t been under some sort of standardized art instruction.) The constraints of experimenting now, on the clock and using the materials/references provided just made it so artificial that it was hard to actually be excited about learning. Worst for me though was the core concept: if you’re getting it right, you’re doing it wrong.

In my mind, the platonic version of this drawing is powerful and impressive and just this side of discomfortingly alien. Unfortunately the execution is just sort of… awkward. I mean, awkward works too, but it wasn’t my intention.

I do like how the head joints to the neck, and the neck to the body. It’s just the body itself that seems to be the problem.

A bit more of a mammal than the others, but who said dragons have to be reptiles, anyway? Besides, if I’m going to be absurd (I think the earwings count as absurd, don’t you?) than I’ve offically renounced any friendship logic and I have previously enjoyed.

I blame the whole thing on the cold medicine I’m taking. Wheeeee.

First attempt at scales. Well, I should amend that: First attempt at scales in which I did not individually draw every scale by hand. Clearly I don’t have a total grip on this technique yet, but I think it has potential to reduce cramping in my facia over adductor pollicis.

I think of this body type as a ‘regular’ dragon. Nothing fancy, but with all the necessary boxes checked: membranous wings, the previously mentioned scales, and it’s green. Very few animals in the world are quite that green, (the color reference for this was a green tree python) and none of them are quite that large. Therefore, large+green+scales+bat wings = dragon.

Everyone’s brain does math that way, right?