The Trouble with Dragons

So, I am back after another sojourn away from home.  I feel as if I have barely been home other than to 

wash clothes then head back out of town.  When I have a few minutes to step into the studio I have this
disconnected feeling from my current project.  It has been hard to get back into the walking stick
project.  Although I have not been blogging as much recently due to vacations, ill family members, and computer problems, I have been attempting to work on the project.  I have photos for you today.

My latest project has been a walking stick.  Until I had a better idea on how I wanted to proceed with the project I called it Walking Stick Z.  At some point I decided that I wanted to wood burn dragons onto the walking stick.  Actually, I wanted to put flowers on the stick, but it is a big hefty walking stick that could be used as a Quarterstaff and
flowers just seemed a bit too girly for it.  So I started looking at clip art of dragons.  There was good news and bad news there.  The good news is that there is plenty of it.  The bad news is that it is on websites that want money.  At this point I would not mind paying for it, if it was a one time fee, but that is not the case.  You pay for the image, but if you have a plan to sell your project now or in the future, you are required to keep an for active membership in order to sell the piece.  Being that walking sticks do not sell much, it was
hardly cost effective.  So I ordered a book from the Dover series on dragons. The dragons in the book were pretty much what I expected, Asian dragons, some dragons from the Middle Ages.  There is still a fee to purchase the book, but permission is granted to use images so long as no more than four images are used.  That would leave a whole lot of area on the walking stick to fill with images of something. 

At this point I decided that maybe I should try to draw my own dragons.  The dragons from the Dover Dragons book were my inspiration, but none of the dragons is a copy of any of their dragons. 
After all, my imaginary creature should be just as valid as someone else' imaginary creature.  However, I don't feel that I have enough drawing skills to pull it off.  I drew a few dragons.  The trouble is that the dragons I am drawing do not look fierce.  They look friendly or cute; sort of as if My Pretty Pony turned into a dinosaur.  I just have not been able to get the look of something fierce, strong, and deadly in my drawings.  I intend to keep practicing my drawing, but it does not look like it is going to be anytime soon.  I think I will have to go (pardon the pun) back to the drawing board on this project.  I have to do something else because I am just spinning my wheels and getting nowhere.  I have other things that I want to do, and I don't want to put this project aside to get to them.  It would be better to keep practicing drawing dragons in the hope that they will eventually be good enough to wood burn onto a different stick and use this stick for some other images.  In the mean time, I will use other images on this stick.  Check back to the blog to see what ideas I will come up with for this walking stick.

Anyway, I am putting my dragon drawings on the blog.  Maybe one day I will be able to look back at them and laugh at my early drawing attempts.   Who knows, maybe they will look better on the blog.  Sometimes art does not look right when you are too close to it. 

Hopefully, I will have more time to get back into the studio for the rest of the summer.