Dragon Month: Three
Painting dragons every day in August
If you’d like to catch up with the prompts, you’ll find them in this post:
and if you missed last weeks post full of dragons, it’s here:
This week I hit some speed bumps. I’ve done monthly prompt challenges like this one for years, and I’ve learned some things about my media, and myself. In this case the media is watercolors, of which I have a wide selection of quality and colors, inks, same, and the problems I had were mostly with the paper. Watercolor paper, for those who aren’t artists, isn’t just paper. I don’t want to wade too far into the weeds (thar be chiggers in thar) but suffice it to say I bought two blocks1 of watercolor paper in preparation for August, in two sizes and brands for variety. One of those is really good paper. The other is not, and I only learned that when painting my dragon weathervane.
The other speed bump was feeling significantly unwell for a good portion of the week. I’m feeling better now, but for a few days I was kinda miserable and not doing my best work. But one thing I’ve learned over the years? That’s ok. You’re going to have days like that. Instead of tossing those bumpy (literally in one case) pieces, I’m including them, and I did learn while I was working on them. Also, I feel good about having the discipline to make my art when really all I wanted to do was sleep.

If you’d like to learn how to make your own origami dragon, this one is really cool. I didn’t follow the instructions all the way, I wound up doing my own thing as my paper was too small to do his version.





Stay tuned! I generally share my daily work on various social medias, but I’ll be doing these posts all month to talk about what I’m doing, why, and what I’m learning along the way.
Ok, small way into the weeds: a watercolor block is sheets of thick paper glued together at the edges with only a small space to insert a blade and cut the top sheet off when you’re done painting it. This keeps the paper, in theory, flat while you are putting a lot of water and washes on it. If you don’t have a block, you can tape the paper to a hard, water-resistant surface while you are working. Use artist’s or painter’s tape for this, so it will come off easily when you’re done and the painting is completely dry.



that dragon with the candle is really cute