Diversion: Dragons

Dragons have appeared in my work before – there have been stylized dragons in paint and print, and suggested dragons in tree drawings – but this side-project is a little bit different.

It started with an art club challenge: a 6×6″ picture of a pet. Now, I don’t have any pets and I don’t really do pet portraits, so I decided to invent a pet. Make one up. If you’re going to have an imaginary pet, why not have a dragon?

I made several sketchy studies of real life lizards (including the rather large and intimidating Komodo Dragon) using photographs found on the Internet to figure out how they are put together – a quick and dirty Introduction to Lizard Anatomy. This allowed me to make a fairly realistic-looking dragon, complete with tiny, impractical wings. I’d decided to stick with four limbs, and that the forelimbs would be multifunctional: both wing and leg/arm, but I wasn’t entirely sure how the wing was attached or how it folded. This was something I tried to work out as the series progressed.

My pet dragon was small and friendly (kind of a lap dragon), very colourful, and, it turned out, in possession of a very grand name: Alexander Firedrake Skittingsly-Torstern III.

For that first drawing (above left), I used a 30x30cm sheet of Khadi 320gsm cotton paper, indian ink and Japanese watercolour paint. I ruled a 15cm square in the centre (roughly 6″) and only the smoke rising from Alexander’s nostrils escaped that square. The second drawing above was done on A3 watercolour paper; that format being more conducive to a profile view. Alexander’s wings are starting to grow. By the time that I returned to him as a subject (after exploring several dragon variants), they were big enough for him to fly (above right).

I liked the format that I’d used for that first picture, so I kept it, with minor modifications, for subsequent dragon portraits: dragons began emerging out of the square and I started to splatter paint in the border area. I also started to write a short “story” for each dragon when I posted it on social media, prompted by questions from friends about the earlier ones.

Here are a few of my favourites. For those interested in owning one, they are £65 each (unframed) and greetings cards of some are also available at £3 each / 4 for £10. Please contact me regarding sales.