Dragons

Since about December last year, this household has been alive with Dragons. Dreamworks Dragons to be exact.

Myself, and both my two girls have been madly watching every little bit of this world we can get our hands on, particularly my youngest who recently had her fifth birthday and a Dreamworks Dragons party to celebrate.

I made icecream cake.

And a skrill pinata that kinda got out of control and huge.

And fun was had by a handful of five year olds.

But why am I posting that here? Apart from the arty stuff required to make the two creations above, this dragon craze had an effect on my art. But for another moment, I have to go back a few years to a piece of artwork I played with while my youngest was still under the age of one.

This drawing was never finished. It was done using the very first version of online DA Muro, probably with my left hand as I had a baby in the other, on my old laptop sitting on the couch. Back in 2010, there was no Save button on DA Muro, so you had to do whatever you were doing all in one session, hence the unfinished factor. I started with the eye because I love drawing eyes, and then needed to situate that eye in a living creature so I chose a dragon.

Since then I have attempted to draw various dragons, but, until recently, my confidence has not been in creating realistic images straight out of my head. I’ve always wanted to draw fantasy art, but haven’t had the skill.

I’m fascinated with drawing eyes, and at some point earlier this year I was fascinated enough to actually get my paints out for the first time since before Christmas.

It’s a small black canvas, about 250x250mm. This is the first layer.

The second layer.

And the final piece.

You might say, ‘but that is not a dragon’… and you’d be right, it is a cat. But it could be a dragon. There is definite influence from the main dragon character in Dreamworks Dragons, Toothless. It was the eyes mainly that had my interest and I had fun doing the detail on them. Stare is currently on display and for sale at the Goolwa Rotary Art Show.

So what next? Well, then I decided I was going to create my own dragons. So I got out my sketchbook and scribbled. After at least one horrific attempt, I came up with this little guy, Skip the Dragon.

I have a tendency towards cartooning apparently.

Another go got me this.

Which is the one I decided to paint.

Transferred with conte crayon.

Background blocked in.

Most of the body blocked in.

And the eye has been started, but not completed. And this is where it has sat for the last two months as I have been web designing instead. I had hoped to get to it today, but I’m sick and spent most of the day in bed ::grrr:: Hopefully I feel better tomorrow and can tackle it then.

Oh, and in other news…

This is a photo from my studio a couple of years ago, but it gives you the idea of what it looked like.

This is what it looks like right now.

 

It is under renovation by my wonderful husband – with the aim to get more light in there by painting the walls and installing some seriously good lighting and a decent type of flooring. Of course, for the meantime I’m restricted to a corner of our loungeroom with even worse lighting and a fear of what pastel dust might do to our carpet (I have a canvas sheet down under my table, but pastel dust is evil). So painting is at a minimum for the foreseeable future…aaargh! Except for what I can do outside.

But I’ll make do, because when it is finished, I will have a fantastic studio and will be able to paint and make mess to my heart’s content 😀

Best wishes,
Liz