Sketchbook: Night Dragons

Here’s another dip into my sketchbook (actually, this was drawn on the back of a school handout, if I recall correctly). Two dragons, lit from the side, perhaps by a sunset; shading is an aspect of drawing that has always given me trouble, but I think these two turned out all right. Incidentally, these are the same type or species of dragon that appears in this piece — they come from a creative writing project I’ve worked on here and there for years, and they often turned up as a motif in my artwork. Sometimes people have mistaken them for horses; I’m not sure why, unless it’s the proportions.

Bird/Dragon

Assignment: produce 2 contrasting images on 2 plates using various etching techniques.

This was one of the projects for my university etching class. The plate on the left depicts a house finch; the plate on the right, a dragon. Apparently I was stuck for inspiration, since that’s when I tend to bring the dragons out. These two plates incorporate drypoint, hard ground and soft ground etching, as well as aquatint and sugar lift. (The paper is actually off-white; the grey tint is a result of the scanning method.)

Stone Dragon

This is an animation study I did using Photoshop and the animated GIF format. The dragon is a stylized stick figure, since I wanted to focus on overall movement; after drawing the frames in black and white, I applied the stone texture and emboss effect to each one. Although this is my first attempt at any kind of animation, I was able to use my background knowledge of animation techniques, such as drawing the key frames first and then filling in the frames in between.