Last night I watched "Princess Mononoke" for the first time.  I know, I know, I'm WAY behind the times.  Anyways, I was getting really sick of everybody saying that my character SoftWing looks "OMG, just like that deer God from Princess Mononoke?!?!"  So after seeing the movie, I'm really not seeing the great resemblance other than both characters have deer components to their design.  It's just like every time I draw a dragon, lots of stupid people clamor that it looks just like the dragon from Eragon, which I'm sorry they don't.  But whatever.  Commenting on the Princess Mononoke movie itself, it was okay, I guess.  Definitely weird.  The one thing that consistently annoyed me was the use of common modern English slang and vernacular when it's supposed to be set in medieval Japan.  That sort of thing always annoys me in anime movies.  Or just movies in general.  Kind of ruins it, if you ask me.

Yesterday I worked on a dragon sketch for a while, taking a break between commissions.  I've been reading the "Temeraire" series my Naomi Novik.  I've just finished the second book, now starting the third.  They are so, so good!  I was a huge fan of "The Dragon Riders of Pern" novels back when I was in high school.  Those books just totally took me away and I loved how they focused on the bond between rider and dragon and how they worked together as a team.  The Temeraire books explore this same theme but in a very different way, instead of an alien planet in the future, these are set in an alternate reality during the Napoleonic Wars, where dragons are used in battle.  Instead of a mysterious mental link where dragon and rider communicate telepathically, they communicate with good old fashioned spoken language.  I love how realistically and believably this world where dragons and humans live together is created.  Excellent world building.

Anyways, I was inspired to draw dragons.  As usual it seems, I fall back onto a lot of dinosaur anatomy when drawing my dragons.

[link] This was the initial sketch done in my Moleskine.  The pose is completely awkward and the wing looks bizarre but I really liked how the head turned out.  So I scanned the image and started a new body for the head.

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Kept the head from the original sketch and drew a better body around it and what I think is some better wing anatomy.

Something else I wanted to share was this absolutely fascinating webpage about Fore-edge painting on books.  A fore-edge painting is where the page block is fanned and an image applied to the stepped surface. If the page edges are themselves gilded or marbled, this results in the image disappearing when the book is relaxed. When refanned, the painting magically re-appears.  What a delightful art form!

The site is here:
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Also, I updated the character pages for Inga and Farfalla with all the pretty Gift art and Commissions I've received for these characters.
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If you've given me art and it's not on there, by all means, let me know about it and I'll put it up!  I love, love, LOVE when people give me fanart of my characters and I want to show my gratitude by putting it on my page. ^_^

Okay, now back to working on commissions.

Oh, and feed my creature?

Feed Me!
Adopted from Valenth