Week 50 of 365 Days of Art Challenge

I missed the last couple of weeks of the 365 Days of Art Weekly Sketch Challenge by Blue Twig Studio.  My husband and I went to Ohio for the past couple weeks, where we both grew up. We were surprising my mother for her 80th birthday. Our daughter who is 7 months pregnant with her first child also went with us and a surprise baby shower was given for her just prior to Mom's surprise birthday party. Both were very surprised and Dad was so pleased with himself for keeping Mom in the dark.  It was a real whirlwind and I never got any time for sketching. By the time the days were over, I just wanted to go to bed. I thought I'd sketch on the plane, but that didn't work out either.

The trip also made me late with this week's sketch. After returning home, I needed a day to recoup and then we've been babysitting our grandchildren the last 2 days. Our 7 month old grandson has gone from learning to crawl to zooming everywhere and getting into everything!! Lol! He's adorable to watch, but how does he find the dog's water bowl and the doggy door first thing?! Then the almost 3-yr old was having meltdowns both days. Finally got him to take a nap today! Whew!! Thank goodness the older 2 children are old enough to entertain themselves and are a piece of cake to watch!  That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

So even though I got this week's sketch done, it's taken me until today to photograph it and get it posted!!  If you've been following my blog this year, you know I'm trying to finish all the exercises in J. "Neon Dragon" Peffer's book: DragonArt Evolution: How to Draw Everything Dragon by the end of the year. I've been working out of it most of the year and learning much about drawing dragons. I'm excited to finish the last couple dragon studies.

This week I worked on a sea dragon, which can take many forms. They can be huge leviathans that are too large to fly or crawl onto land. They can be sinuous serpents, like the giant sea serpents that crush unfortunate ships that skim the surfaces of the oceans, or they can be more fish than reptile. "Underwater" is a broad term. It could refer to a dragon that lives in the depths of the ocean, or one that dwells in tropical reefs, or even in the icy waters of the Arctic. These will all effect what adaptations the sea dragons have and how they appear.

My sea dragon lives on a tropical reef, and has similarities to some reef fish, with a fancy tail, and sheer wings that he uses to propel himself through the water.

Sea Dragon, 7" x 10", pencil, Prismacolor 0.005 green and blue pens, Sakura 0.005 black micron pen on mixed-media paper.

I like the spines on the back of the head and top of the spine that are similar to a lionfish, but yet he has crests on either side of his head and under his arms. The wings and fancy tail have markings like a butterfly. He has a bright, colorfully striped body like many reef fish. I added a few seaweeds and bubbles to help the illusion that he is hovering in the water.

I'm pleased with my drawing this week. I wasn't sure I could get all the shading correct with pencils and the black pen, but I think it turned out well. It was difficult to make the wings look transparent. This might have been easier to show if I had used colored-pencils. I hope you enjoy my sea dragon.


Keep creating!
Lynnita.