Time Drawn: November 2006

I have a fondness for drawing dragons. I’m really not sure where it came from.

You see, I don’t care that much for dragons. They’re not that compelling of a mystical beast, and there’s many others I like far better that aren’t so solidly overused.

Like griffins. I was very fond of griffins for many years and still rather like them conceptually.

And yet, I have never drawn a single griffin. But there’s dragons all over my sketchbooks.

Some of it’s the scales. I like the process of imagining how the scale pattern would be angled for each part of the many curves that make up the dragon. When I drew this particular piece, I was quite solidly in love with detail and patterns, and it shows.

There’s one really compelling reason for drawing an imaginary creature: you can’t get it wrong. Well, there’s some perspective errors and the like you could do, and if you deviate too far people will think it’s something else. But otherwise, whatever tweaks to the standard design you do, well, someone’s probably already done it. Long thin body, thick round body, bat wings, bird wings, no wings… There’s so many possibilities. You can even swap the scales for fur if you want. Falkor the Luck Dragon from the classic The Neverending Story movie had that particular trait.

When you’re still trying to figure out the basics of art, being able to fudge design and proportions to that level is a god-send. If you get the arms a bit too long on a drawing of a human, it stands out at once, but a dragon with long arms? Not any more unusual than a dragon with no arms. It’s far easier to create something you’re happy with going the fantastical route.

Though it does tend to lead to confusing sketchbooks full of peculiar things.

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