My painting this week is loosely inspired by the series Merlin, which I’ve recently been rewatching. The plot of the show revolves around Arthurian legends in the Middle Ages, which is why I chose to paint a dragon. Mythical creatures are so fun to paint because there’s no realistic example to base your sketch on, which leaves the painting quite open for interpretation. In my elementary school art classes, students are often asked to create their own mythological creature or monster for that exact reason; the whole point is to use purely your imagination as a reference and spark creativity. Kids have a habit of copying adults or their peers because they assume that’s the right the to do. In my experience, however, they often get frustrated when their art does not resemble reality enough or the example provided. Incorporating imaginary creatures helps to solve this issue!
For my painting, I decided to use cool tones, such as blues and greens, for my dragon’s outer scales and yellow as a warm tone for my dragon’s underbelly and wings. Although the dragon featured in the show Merlin is a mix of reds and oranges, I always associate dragons with reptiles so I opted for cooler tones.
While researching how to sketch and paint scales using watercolour, I found Karinka Oli’s Youtube video on Fantasy Illustrations to be very helpful. She did a great job of explain the careful steps you must complete when making a relatively detailed painting. Overall, I’m quite pleased with how my piece turned out. I think I could have potentially added more to the background to make it feel less empty.
