if dragons had dogs
In January of 2019, I was sitting in a class at ImagingUSA next to my friend Susan when she semi-jokingly suggested that we create some sort of alien dog as an art project. When looking for ideas for a painting several months later, I remembered our conversation and did a bit of brainstorming. After playing around with ideas of merging lizards and dogs, I hit upon the idea of creating a “dragon dog”. For inspiration, I would use my own dog, Finch.
I tossed together some reference images in photoshop, trying to come up with a composition and story that I liked. My working title was “DragonDog Steals the Moon”. I started manipulating the reference image in photoshop to get the shape that I wanted and started a bit of free-hand painting. I created a background but after a few weeks of playing around with the details, I got frustrated as I didn’t have a very clear goal of what I wanted. I set the image aside.
Fast forward to 2021 where I hadn’t been shooting in a while and needed some images for the Artist category in print competition. I thought I’d revisit my DragonDog. Something clicked. I wanted to do something with a more illustrative/slightly cartoonish feel and started incorporating a few new things I’d learned in the previous years. Finally, the image was moving in a direction that I was happy with!
It took two years to move this image from concept to completion and I am exceptionally proud of it. My little Dragon Finch rising through the clouds. I cannot wait to get this one printed and hung on the wall!
