Smaugust Finale!

By request, a Lion-Dragon having fun on the beach:



Toothless from memory:



And a bonus Meatlug (also from memory):



Steven Magnet!



And finally, since the theme for Folklore Thursday was Pirates, here's Leon Lyngbakr and Captain Stupidbeard about to have a real bad day.



Whew!

Smaugust Week Four!

So... I needed to draw something cute with dragons after the latest "Game of Thrones". So here's Axew dancing to her favorite song. (It is, of course, Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk".)



And speaking of "Game of Thrones", have some massive spoilers (and a "Die Hard" quote.)



If you like cats and dragons, let me introduce you to the strange Alpine mythical beast, the Tatzelwurm:



A little dragon with a fabulous array of headgear:



The Folklore Thursday theme was Fairies, so here's a Pyrallis. These tiny Fairy-Dragons from Cyprus are attracted to light (indeed, they're said to live inside forges) and are so small, they look like dancing sparks.



A friend on Facebook asked me to draw Falcor from memory, so here he is:



And finally, here's an Oroboros who has just watched this and is just so happy to be trendy again.



Five more days of dragons left!

Smaugust Week Three!

Guys, I really like drawing dragons!



My sister called this scene in the latest episode of "Game of Thrones" the "Well, if my cat lets you do that, I guess you're okay" moment.  But I couldn't help but think it could've gone bad really quick...



I did not care much for "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (more like "Wizard Politics and How to be Bored by Them"), but damn did it have some nice-looking dragons.  Here's an Occamy guarding her silver egg and wondering if it's still fanart if you did not care for the movie?



And talk about crap endings.  Seriously, where would those idiot Wizards be without this sweetie?



I looked at some of the old Dungeons and Dragons sourcebooks for inspiration. Is it me or does the Red Dragon on the old Monster Manual look like a big goofball?



For Folklore Thursday, I painted an Eclipse Dragon who immediately regrets so many things:



Finally, here's the dragon drawn on the last page of a Sketchbook:



...and the dragon drawn on the first page of a new Sketchbook:



And here they are together! 😄

Smaugust Week One... and Two

Smaugust!  The month of daily dragons!  This is the first of what will hopefully be a weekly wrap-up of all the dragons I drew in the past week.



Got to wondering, if the "Game Of Thrones" dragons have only the two legs and two wings, why aren't they quad-launchers?!?!?

And thinking about it and getting a little fed up with all the wyvern-dragons in pop culture lately, anatomically believable flying tetrapods that are magical and breathe fire, I drew Leggy here.



And here's Curly.



And Puffy.



And Giant. I like to think she's bright bright orange and periodically has to let the forest grow over her to blend in.

Then a lot of things happened over the past weekend and I did a catch-up day of drawing Dragon Pokemon from memory:



Dragonite



Salamence



Flygon



Hydreigon



And a bonus Goomy!



The theme for Folklore Thursday this week was creatures of the forest.  A quick bit of research led me to the sad tale of the Dragon of Mordiford, pictured here before things rapidly go south.  (Note that in some versions of the tale, the dragon is described as a Wyvern [quad-launcher or not is never specified], so I gave this guy a few Wyverny features like fangs and a tail-blade while keeping him a proper dragon.  6+ limbs, damn it.  Heck, in other versions of the story, the dragon has multiple pairs of wings!)



And finally, some fanart of a special boy from "Shin Godzilla", which I watched with my dad.  One or both of us might have sworn out loud when this thing first appeared. 

See you next week!

The JuneFae Art!

I did it.  I painted a Fairy for every single day in the month of June.  I'm really proud of myself if I may say.  The entire Flickr album is embedded below:



So what's the next art challenge? I've heard KaijuLy suggested and my current Sketchbook is more than qualified for that:



But there's also a part of me that wants to save my energy for SmaugUst...

The Pink Dinosaur Project and a Self-Imposed Challenge

By now you know about the Pink Dinosaur Project, Art Evolved's massive cancer research charity fundraiser. All you have to do to support the project is draw a pink dinosaur and send it in to artevolved(at)gmail(dot)com. And if you are under the delusion that you can't draw, you may donate directly here.

I've had this project on my mind for several days now.



I've also had this little Artist and Craftsman Supply watercolor sketchpad for a long time. I decided it was time to do something special with it. It's not very big, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do my first themed Sketchbook.



Here's the book in the middle of modification...



And here she is after modification. Dealing with the spiral binding itself wasn't as hard as I expected -- except for those tiny holes.



So what's my goal here? I want to draw one pink dinosaur per day. I'm not stopping until the book is full. Full of pastel-colored archosaurian goodness.

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Sketch Pink Dinosaur of the Day!

Style Memes, and the Important Stuff they can teach you about Character Development

So over at Deviant Art, some artists like making these little charts for others to fill out. The intent is usually to draw your characters in the style of another artist/character from a movie/book/whatever. They are called Style Memes and I think I'm in love.
Seriously, this is a great exercise for character design. I've noticed that younger artists tend to experiment more, drawing their characters (in this case) over and over again in different styles, different colors, different media and so on. Somewhere along the line we loose that enthusiasm. But it's great drawing practice and it's just plain fun!
I found the Avian Style Meme at Lizkay's gallery and decided to put our dear friend Squee through the wringer:


Avian Style Meme by ~babbletrish on deviantART

Huh... first time embedding something from DA. Interesting.
Here are my notes, pretty much somewhat longer versions of what I've posted below the upload, now that I have had more time to think:

Personal Style - Default Squee.
Now, I've been trying to move away from drawing these characters digitally, as it really doesn't suit them (it looks too "neat" after a while). Also, when I do draw in Photoshop, it's usually at a much higher resolution, so this was a bit of a challenge. (Watch somebody tell me that there's a way to download a 300 dpi version of these memes, whereupon I shall say, "d'oh.")

Marahute!!! - Hell and yes. Glen Keane is the man and Marahute is his Crowning Moment of Awesome if I have to pick just one. I also thought the idea of drawing a chickadee in Marahute's "I'm Being AWESOME" pose was comedy gold.

Pokemon - Weird how so much of this meme includes big influences on me. Also, drawing a Chickadee as a Pokemon is sublime. (My crazy Anime-only theory: The Pokemon aren't walking around "saying their names". The Pokemon, like the Chickadee, are *named after* the calls they make.)

Jeremy - "Secret of N.I.M.H." is my favorite movie of all time. Don Bluth may be the one artist here who influenced me the most. Thing is, I never noticed until just now, doing the research for this meme, how *long* Jeremy's legs are!

Kehaar - Almost-photorealistic Squee, which was great fun to draw. Also, who couldn't leave out Kehaar's signature line?

"Quest for Camelot" - Squee's reaction here is pretty much my own. Seriously, what a random movie to go for. Not knowing what else to do, I drew her in the style as that fluffy little falcon.*
* - No offense if you like "Quest for Camelot", but I... don't... The film is also part of a particularly strange family movie-watching experience. My grandmother loves Andrea Bocelli and "The Prayer" is one of her favorites of his songs. She also likes "Camelot". Grandma was delighted to learn that "The Prayer" was written for a movie that happened to be about Camelot (I think you can tell where this is going) and so we rented "Quest for Camelot" to watch together.
I will let you imagine Grandma's reaction when she got to the particular scene in which her beloved song appears...

"Asterix" - This is where it occurred to me that there aren't a whole lot of cartoons/comics with birds as main characters. It's our What Measure Is A Non-Mammal problem again. *sigh*

"Family Guy" - Uh... eh. Not a terribly big fan of this series. (This has been my Gross Understatement of the Day.)

"For the Birds" - Ha-ha, she looks kinda cute like this! It'd be a hell of a challenge to draw after a while, though.

Iago - Birds with human-like teeth freak me out. There, I said it.

"Animals of Farthing Wood" - Now, now, let's be honest here. I only know "Farthing Wood" exists because the European contingent over at TV Tropes keeps raving about it. It sounds fascinating. (The heroes include a fox, a falcon, and a *snake*?!? Awesome!!!) And it could be the greatest animated series ever made for all I know, but sadly, I don't know if there's any way I can watch it in America (Youtube only appears to have the opening sequence). Wah.

Griff - Is... is this meant to be a Meme for Gryphon characters? (Long awkward pause...) Oh..... :p

Now I just found out that there's also a Dinosaur Style Meme floating around. Hrm...

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Addendum: Sketch of the Day, hot off the scanner!

Augh! Augh!!! AUGH!!!