Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Sketching Dragons

Dragons are somewhat of an anomaly to me. I love the Myth and the Art, and the Artists that develop them to their most beautiful and ferocious. So much so, that I can critique them quite harshly at times. When the true believability comes out in a piece, my highest praise is just to study the work incoherently, perhaps catching flies with my mouth. It's just like seeing one for the first time, beginner's dragon mind. There's just so many intricacies in their Mythos; Literary reference, Cultural differences, Habitats, behavioral and structural differences.. Dragons give us about as wide a range of play that any of us could ask for. On occasion, I get the opportunity to "talk Dragon" with fellow light pushers, and when I got my copy of Sketch Dragons in the mail today, it felt like one of those conversations!!

In 2007, I was lucky enough to hitch my wagon to the likes of Jim Pavelec, Chris Seaman, and Thomas Manning to create a tutorial called Wreaking Havoc. Recently, some of the step-by-steps I did for Havoc appear in a new tutorial from Impact, entitled Sketch Dragons! Low and behold it's filled with a ton of artists that take Dragons as seriously as I do; Maestro Tom Kidd (aka Gnemo), Dracopedia's Bill O'Connor, Dreamscapes, Myth, & Magic's' Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, and MechaForce's E J Su !!

Can't explain how cool it is to be amongst these illustrators, and let me be the first to say, this book is filled with great Dragon tutorials! Now that were done with lighting fireworks, (some of us) let's draw a Dragon lighting the night on fire !! Pick up a copy of Sketch Dragons !!