February Art Date
Painting dragons and the taste of Valentine's Day
I love Valentine’s Day.
I’ll roll my eyes when it comes to the romance part, but I’m all in for the colours, candy, crafts and the way everything looks like it would taste like cherries and chocolate and pink icing. There’s just so much potential for sweet treats and making cute notes to send to your friends.
Naturally, when I saw this Jelly Cat Heart Dragon at the local museum gift shop, I became obsessed with her. She’s everything I love about Valentine’s Day in dragon form. Unfortunately, there was no way I could justify such an indulgent purchase so I left her for someone else to find.
BUT WAIT.
That same week, I found myself at Walmart where I saw this dragon for the extremely affordable price of $6.99…
Obviously I brought him home. And now I have something to paint.
I immediately fell in love with this little guy. I imagine he lives in isolation but longs for a companion to share his treasure hoard with.
I finally set up our printer so I can print my digital sketches and do a graphite transfer onto illustration board. It’s been ages since I needed to transfer an image by hand and it felt so comforting to revisit a simple process that used to be common practice.
I’m trying to be braver at painting gradients or leaving the gouache more watered down in some areas, but gouache loves to surprise you when it dries. Luckily I was able to bring some of it back with pencil crayon.
I actually attempted painting this twice, but the first version fell a bit flat. I don’t normally like outlines on my exterior edges but it definitely looks a lot more polished and textured when I leaned more on the pencil crayon.
So here he is, poor Maraschino, looking for love, unaware that her name is Jelly Cat Heart Dragon and they will never be together because I’m too cheap.
I’m still working out a good system for this whole newsletter thing, and you might see me update the logo and design in the coming months, but I’m not letting it get in the way of setting aside some time to play. There’s lots more fun to be had with gouache, but I’ve also got my eyes on Pan Pastels and pen and ink…
Eat something pink today and send someone a love note! See you next month!