Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Little Green Fire Lizard



As I transcribe the hundreds of slides from my archives to digital, I find that I did attempt to depict dragons before my current project to learn them systematically. This is one example, and it's fairly recent compared to what I have been unearthing before. It's not really a dragon, since it has a short neck and long spidery digits. It's a fire lizard, a creature that is tiny compared to a full-scale dragon. They are common characters in Anne McCaffrey's "Dragons of Pern" books. A fire lizard would be no bigger than a bird, and not even a big bird like a hawk or a goose. It would be more the size of a blue jay or a dove, though with a long whiplike tail. Nevertheless, it would have fiery breath and batlike dragon wings.

I used to do batches of quick fantasy illustrations on colored paper, especially to sell at small prices at conventions. This is from one of those sets. I haven't done anything like that recently, but if I had the time and an appropriate convention show, I might do it again. I learned to do illustrations on colored paper, long ago, from my bloggin' buddy Tristan, as well as other artists such as David Cherry, who is still active as an artist somewhere in Texas.

"Little Green Fire Lizard" is mixed media (ink, gouache, pencil, etc.) on grey paper, 10" x 7", fall 1996.

2 comments:

Tristan Alexander said...

You know, doing some like this (or small fantasy pictures) would sell at Balticon. And no link to my site from my name?

Pyracantha said...

Tristan: if I have time, I might just do that old-fashioned thing at the Balticon Art Show. An edition of mini-pictures for mini-prices. This one sold for a magnanimous $14.
I linked your name in the text to your site. I didn't before because your name and blog are already in my list of "Art Blogs and Sites I Like."