atcharachara

[atcharachara]

Just a sketch again to try out some new (inbuilt) brushes. Pencil brushes have lovely textures. I was dreading coloring a Kazilik because I didn’t think the colors would look good together, but it seems like my fears were unfounded! The spines however…

I went by with what I remembered, so it might not be accurate. Did it have nose horns? I don’t know, actually. I didn’t even check my notes or the book. The next dragon page will be Turkish dragons because of this. Of which, like, only two is described. The Kazilik (lots of material for these guys) and those cow guard dragons near the capital (one scene and as usual, just barely). We do have egg descriptions for the Akhal-Teke and Alaman, and eggs at least seem to correspond to dragon colorations… usually. So… Fun.

[atcharachara]

Just a colored sketch page for now, no rendering. Russian dragons. Not up to scale (don’t trust that visual on the right)

Of these, only the Russian Gray and Ironwing are named in the book (The Gray only in LoD). Both the Ironwing and Cossack dragon didn’t come with descriptions of any sort so I just winged it. Thoughts under the cut.

Russian Heavyweight - Big, green, and mean. Well, Vosyem was green, so this guy is green. Overlapping plates made me lean more on pangolin scales than thyreophoran but doing all the scales is killing me. I gave it a large nasal boss(I think thats the term?) to resemble the tapir-faced depictions of Zmei that had enraptured me since I was young.

The tortoise resemblance was not realized until after I colored everything, but theres only so many ways for long neck and humped back and thick rolls over shoulders read to me. Well, there’s the sauropod type but I prefer a more sprawling pose. I do want it a bit longer but I just like long dragons in general. Need to hold back on it. If everything is long then nothing is Long.

Russian Gray - Mostly gray and white with a narrow arrow-shaped head. They were described as stippled with spots of gray and black. I had on my notes that it was six to seven, but I lacked context on whether it was the number of individuals in the scene or its weight.

Heads being described as arrow shaped confuse me a little. Maybe my English is not good because I keep thinking it’s like… diplocaulus, which is NOT narrow. Yu-Lung, described with the same head shape, was also described to be vulpine, so that’s what I did here.

Russian Black - One of the other lightweights held in the Russian grounds along with the Russian Gray. Described as black dragons smaller than the Grays. Resembles the Russian couriers. Nothing much to say. Slavic dragons seem to be depicted with a crown every so often, so I gave it a crown of small horns.

Every time there’s a black dragon breed from Europe I keep remembering Laurence saying something about how there’s no black dragons known in Europe back when he was still a Naval captain.

Courier - Two red courier dragons were snoozing next to a flag. I’m inclined to think it’s a Russian breed, but it described the flag they were sleeping beside as white and red. Granted, I’m not really familiar with European history or flags. Maybe it’s a company flag?

Cossack - No description other than being courier weight or fly weight, the size of winchesters. Did you know that the Russian Don, cavalry horses of the Cossack, originated from Russian Steppe horses and Oriental breeds obtained from raids? I gave it a more camelid head, but didn’t want the horse inspiration to be too obvious. Not happy with the coloration just yet.

I kinda wanted it to be slightly bigger for some size variety, but it’s unlikely to be that much bigger than the other Russian lightweights. In the British (European?) weight system a flyweight is barely combat weight, isn’t it? So larger than courier weight but not that much…

Ironwing - Venomous. Thats it for textual description. Not much to go off of, so I put a lesser version of the heavyweight armor on it to help bridge the heavyweight to the others and slapped rusty iron colors. I wanted to give it some more resemblance(Is that the word?)for being an ancestor of the Longwing, so I gave it some familiar wing markings. Might add bone spurs but maybe I should keep that a sharpspitter thing.

[atcharachara]

The Chinese form of military logistics favored Middleweights, but a few of their local breeds easily reach Heavyweight category.

The Zhao-Lung, or Emerald Glass, are green with red markings and a bristling spine of tendrils that can grow out into a mane. They come from the North and have a small rivalry with the Southern Shao-Lungs in the military.

The Shao-Lung, or Scarlet Flower, are orange or red with multiple horns and yellow crests, which can grow out into mane. It has two rows of small teeth and two pairs of curving fangs.

The Tien-Lung, or Celestial, is smooth glossy black with opalescent blue dapples on the bottom edge of its wing. It is distinguished from its more common relative the Qin-Lung, or Imperial, by having webbing between the flexible horns on its head like a frill and thin tendrils around its mouth. The former enjoys a status similar to aristocracy, while the latter is held to high expectations as part of the literati.

The Emerald Glass' head shape I based on the extant Chinese Alligator, while the Scarlet Flower borrowed from the extinct Chinese Gharial (Hanyusuchus), which also (roughly) matches where both breeds originated from. Hanyusuchus is found in South China, while the Alligator is technically in the vague north from there, in East China.

The choice of coloring the back and snout tendrils of Emerald Glass white lies in giving them some to the dragon present in the Qing flag (its horns are also modeled from that). The Scarlet Flower gets to have the nose (like Gharials, a gender feature) and the little crest it has on the cheek. Cutting up the Qin dragon into little parts...

I tossed around how to do a Celestial's ruff because reading "webbing between flexible horns"- FLEXIBLE HORNS?- threw me off. Qian supposedly had ribbed horns. Is that technically jewelry? Is it not? Might revise. Maybe not.

The Celestial's frill is unlike the other Chinese breeds, resembling the fish-like frills of certain Japanese dragons...

[atcharachara]

Sketch where I made the wrong decision to color so I have to commit with my mistakes. Featuring the... (checking an adjective dictionary) effervescent Shao-lung

Trying out a dragon page layout featuring the common but reliable Yellow Reaper. Most likely will stick to something simpler

A sketch page that stayed a sketch page thank god. Trying out how I wanted to draw HMD's dragon wings. Featuring the... uhh... gassy Zhao-lung

Rambling under the cut

It was while making the first when I decided to go back and actually decide how I'll do the wings. In the books, the fingers of the wing had never been described as fingers as far as I remembered. Spines that separate it in sections, mentions of wing joints (Unsure if this refers to spines or joints proper; Temeraire has more than others, French dragons having a distinctive shape of their second joint), Fidelitas being described to be the Yellow Reaper with extra "ribs" in his wings. I guess it can all be flowery figure of speech, but it reminded me a lot of how in medieval European dragon art a winged dragon has a fancy splayed out fin for a wing if it's not feathered.

So anyway, that's my reason for choosing to go a bit outside of keeping it like a bat's. The supporting spines being separate from the bones proper. I'm a fan of the pterosaur shape with at most three fingers: one or two as a digits that count separately, and the other as the leading edge and counts among the "spine".

I'll do a mix of the folded styles depending on breed. Most European breeds I'd probably draw with bird wing style folding because it's cool. Celestials (and perhaps Asian breeds in general), fold their wings tightly, all to heavily lean into the fan iconography when they flare it out.

The sketch wing is boringly practical that vaguely resembled a Chinese Junk's sail. My favorite was the butterfly-moth wing shape. That one just kicks ass.

[atcharachara]

Smaugust 2024

I only made 4 things that I can say passed the literally just a sketch phase, but that's better than the previous years slump at least!

I used two prompt lists, A being the from SmaugustCircle in Twitter, and B from PencilCat's.

Details on each under the cut

1B - From Book - A certain hatchling Akhadian Desert Drake from "In the Labyrinth of Drakes" by Marie Brennan. It's days were numbered from the start, but the care it received afforded it more time to live.

10A - Vintage - "Saint George delivering Saint Margaret" has one of my favorite depiction of European dragons. It's so cute.

24A - Venomous - It's been a while since I read the Temeraire books. A "Bengal" pair appeared in a small scene in Book 9. Is Bengal just a demonym? A breed? Whichever the case, they hate the British all the same. Of particular note is their "many-taloned' claws, green venom, and frilled serpentine head which stuck out to me. I reread my old notes on it after and lmao I missed some details

30B - Your Choice - Lady Kiyomizu, how endearing! Originally this was for the "Tempest" prompt on A, but my mind skipped a few (Tempest -> Storm... or like Shakespeare's play -> Oh hey didn't Laurence act out some of his plays for Kiyomizu -> This has nothing obvious to do with Tempest)

[atcharachara]

that’s a hard yes

[atcharachara]

Dinovember 8: Deinocheirus (Fire/Steel/Poison)

KAINGIMON (Champion)

A Dinosaur Digimon created from the slightly corrupted data of a “Deinocheirus”. It decimates swathes of forests for its own groves and pollutes the area with smoke and ash, putting it at odds with other Digimon. Extremely territorial, it strikes down any challengers with powerful swipes. Despite this, it remains vital to the ecology of the ancient rainforest zone; the ashes revitalizes the soil.

[atcharachara]

Patting myself on the back for doing at grand total of one (1; isa) finished work for Honkaitober! Yahoo!

(One not quite there yet piece under the cut)

Alright now for the few I’m not that embarrassed to share:

Day 7: Fire (Commentary: Just missing a simple background and some details. This was actually done within the day I was just bemoaning the lack of gradient tool in procreate [a staple of mine in medibang for doing this style])

Day 6: Lightning (Commentary: A victim of “oh I’ll rip out the model for proper reference first” I played Lobcorp instead)

I’ll probably come back to them eventually

[atcharachara]

Honkaitober Prompt #2 - Memorial Arena

I’ve never actually gotten to fight SSS Benares, on the account of my subpar skills and allergy to rolling on the weapon and stigmata banners. Its so hard to find references of her. What, do I have to rip her model myself? (Please don’t sue me Mihoyo)

For my sanity I’m going to take it slow and consider the days as suggestions.

[atcharachara]

chordate pride flag because why tf not

yes it's just a notochord going across the flag

[atcharachara]

Also consider

Disclaimer: dubiously accurate because I just woke up went woah and then sketched and colored without thinking much

anyways I bring up Barney bc I think having a purple accurate (and feathered, though that's still a hypothesis) Tyrannosaurus as a symbol of universal love and human connection would actually be a pretty punk way of reclaiming the character, if someone wanted to do that