Scales?

Covered in armour

Impenetrable scales

Against all drama

Arrows and staves

Flying above

Crawling below

Graceful as a dove

With a loud bellow!

Only a myth

An imaginary creature

Family kin and kith

In which lizards feature

Wings full of woe

Mouth full of fire

Where he does go

Things will be dire!

What is this thing

We wish will be gone?

Of it we will sing!

The inimitable Dragon!

Dragon skull

I found a little skull on a walk a few years ago. Maybe a rabbit skull? Something with a printed snout. No teeth and no bottom jaw. I kept it as something to practice drawing on. Trying to get accurate details and shading. It struck me that I could use it as an idea for a dragon. I had an idea where the jaw would articulate, it would be a carnivore so teeth would be all along the jaw, (herbivores only have incisors and big molar teeth at the back). Now I have to think where the skin would sit and the size of its eyes….

Red and black with white.

Some sketches from last year. Using various amounts of white along with red and black. I think I added white to make the images easier to see and read. The red is quite a dark tone and it’s hard to see against the black areas. I also think someone who is colour blind might be able to see the images with more white.

Fern leaves

I can’t remember how I got this image, I know it’s based on a photo of fern leaves and I must have used layout to mirror the patterns. But how I added the various colours and added the tiles? I can’t remember. And just how did I get the embossed effect…. It must have been an app I no longer have on my phone. A puzzle, which is what the image looks like.

Another 🐲

Dragon with teardrop shaped scales. For swimming underwater, nostrils that close up with spring valves, a small mouth that can close tightly. Pressure resistant eyes and ears that can hear infrasound under the ocean. Another design idea. I duplicated and mirrored the dragon head as I had only drawn one half of it.

Autumn acers

I usually look out from underneath trees, but here I looked up and took a photo of twisting branches and limbs. Then I tried to paint the leaves. Dark towards the trunks, lighter where they reach out into airy space. Leaves are amazing. Because they can move towards the light (phototropic) they can move into the gaps where the light gets through. Like a jigsaw puzzle, filling in the spaces. Then suddenly in autumn deciduous trees drop their leaves as the cold and wind catches them out. Great blankets of leaves are now lying below the local trees. Crunching through their crispness is one of my favourite things before they turn soggy in the cold rain. Glorious!