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Description
Like many traditional art geeks of eld, I have a large pile of semi-finished or partly painted scraps of paper and board. Every so often, I paw through the pile to see if something suggests a project. This time, I got a PING! from a 4x20-inch board painted with acrylics in blues.

These particular blues happen to be very close to the color of the sky when the sun is fully eclipsed. I SAW THIS COLOR IN PERSON a few years ago, when the totality happened over the Kansas City area. It's a very distinctive indigo blue. And I happened to capture this blue hue on this little scrap of board about twenty years ago. How 'bout that? The color inspired the idea for the piece, and I thought I'd stick with an almost monochromatic palette for the dragons in order to keep the focus on that lovely, unique blue.

I worked up the dragons with ink, watercolor, and Prismacolor pencils. All you can actually see is the colored pencil, as the underpainting is consumed by the coloring process. The brighter dragon holds a rainbow moonstone cabochon.

In the background is acrylic paint of several types (including an interference color that glimmers with iridescence at the right angles), gel medium, and a round shattuckite stone. The stone is an oddity I picked up at a rock show - it's a "bad specimen" in that it's so dark - normally, shattuckite has visible chrysocolla and quartz, with a bit of hematite. This one is more hematite than anything else, but it worked perfectly for the composition and concept. The background also has a gob of shiny bits and some gel pen.

Detail of the left dragon:

Detail of the right dragon:

Original art: sold.

Matted prints: See the Print Prices and Information journal entry.

Description
Like many traditional art geeks of eld, I have a large pile of semi-finished or partly painted scraps of paper and board. Every so often, I paw through the pile to see if something suggests a project. This time, I got a PING! from a 4x20-inch board painted with acrylics in blues.

These particular blues happen to be very close to the color of the sky when the sun is fully eclipsed. I SAW THIS COLOR IN PERSON a few years ago, when the totality happened over the Kansas City area. It's a very distinctive indigo blue. And I happened to capture this blue hue on this little scrap of board about twenty years ago. How 'bout that? The color inspired the idea for the piece, and I thought I'd stick with an almost monochromatic palette for the dragons in order to keep the focus on that lovely, unique blue.

I worked up the dragons with ink, watercolor, and Prismacolor pencils. All you can actually see is the colored pencil, as the underpainting is consumed by the coloring process. The brighter dragon holds a rainbow moonstone cabochon.

In the background is acrylic paint of several types (including an interference color that glimmers with iridescence at the right angles), gel medium, and a round shattuckite stone. The stone is an oddity I picked up at a rock show - it's a "bad specimen" in that it's so dark - normally, shattuckite has visible chrysocolla and quartz, with a bit of hematite. This one is more hematite than anything else, but it worked perfectly for the composition and concept. The background also has a gob of shiny bits and some gel pen.

Detail of the left dragon:

Detail of the right dragon:

Original art: sold.

Matted prints: See the Print Prices and Information journal entry.