Dragon-A-Day is in the process of moving to its own space. Sorry to be annoying, but set your phasers to http://www.dragon-a-day.com, and please pardon the dust as I finish getting that set up.

This corner of the web will probably go back to musings about work and such; probably (but not definitely, at least not yet) something more directly related to my portfolio site’s purpose.

So after much thought, I am getting ready to move the Dragon-A-Day posts to their own space. I had initially wanted to do this when I first started doing them, but held off for no really good reason. But, being part of the majority of Americans, I finally realized that the only thing keeping me from making more out of this and the several-dozen other projects rattling around in my brain is me.

Annoyed Dragon is Annoyed.

“I rather like this dragon. It could almost be a cartoon version of my personal dragon, with the simplified spots and similar head fins.”

I do like this dragon. He’s got a not-quite-Muppety feel to him. I could see him smoking a cigar. I think he is adorable, and want to Do Something with him, though I am not sure what.

Um, eyebrows.

I feel like I am stuck in a rut, so I tried coming up with different head shapes than those i usually use, while still maintaining a dragony feel.

I’m not entirely sure that I succeeded.

The one on the top right seems more birdlike than anything else. Proceeding down from there, the one on the topmost left looks more like an alien than anything else.

The spiky one beneath that is reptillian enough, but doesn’t quite scream “dragon” at me, the long-snouted creature under that one seems more like a gharial than a dragon. The large-horned head was me kind of grasping at straws and doesn’t really count. The toothy face is interesting, but again, isn’t dragony enough for me. The drooling head is too similar to my Mold Dragon to be considered new, though the one at the bottom (which was actually the one I did first) seems to sit well with me.

I felt like I could have done better than I did yesterday.

I think that this is better, but if I had been thinking in the first place yesterday, I would have done the joints differently so that they could be concievably moved by the wind-up key in its side. Maybe that’s for firebreath.

Just playing with composition, mostly.

One of the vaguely frustrating things about this as a design exercise is the fact that it requires me to replicate “happy accidents,” things that I didn’t mean to do or just happened over the course of working that turned out way better than expected (the shading in the eyes in yesterday’s rendition of the Temporal Wurm were a result of construction lines for the eyeball that I kept because they looked like a highlight, for example).

Ah well. At least the runes are looking a little better… I think.

I started this a little earlier than usual (though other things kept me from posting this as soon as it was done), and as a result of my timely start on things, I was thinking about time, and the vague idea of a dragon somehow associated with time came to mind:

While I was drawing it, I realized that I am not very good at coming up with Strange Runes; many of the shapes and curlicues I used to make the markings between the nodules on the dragon’s flanks look too similar, which I suppose could be the point if it’s all the same language. I do like the concept of the dragon’s offensive bits, the claws and tail spikes, only existing when the dragon desires them to exist; I may revisit this again, but it seems to be pretty much done.

So I sat down with my sketchbook tonight, and a voice in my head said “two-headed rock dragon.”

This was fine, but I’d already drawn a rock dragon (or at least a significant portion of one) two weeks or so before, and it only had one head:

I tried to tell the voice that, but, in the way of head-voices, it would not listen. So I complied, and did this:

The right head reminds me very strongly of the art style lurking around at The Oatmeal, but this wasn’t intentional. That notwithstanding, I’m not sure if I like this; It seems to lose a lot of the sinuous grace that the previous iteration had. I guess that’s what I get for listening to that little voice. Live and learn.