The Drakes of Four Seasons

I’ve been working on a series of illustrations which may or not be gathered under a similar heading to this entry when finished. My intention is to frame the finished series together for my mother as a little Christmas extra but by then I might have dreamed up something better.

I often take progress snaps quickly and roughly with my iPhone and have uploaded the recent work on the Drake of Summer to scatter through my mumbling on the project. I should do this more often, really… rather than just uploading the odd progress shot to twitpic.

For now I am still considering the final whole and have given focus only to the draconic bust of each seasonal Drake. Some ideas are to show a human avatar of each Drake alongside the draconic form.

I had a fairly good idea of my intent for Autumn and Summer, but in Spring and Winter the real challenge lies. I want to build up a small story link between them all and the relationship between their domains and power.

As has become my habit and pleasure this past year, I work almost solely in colour using a mixture of the wonderful Inktense and Graphitint pencils from Derwent. I used to rarely work colour outside of the digital. It’s been a weird time for me, going from working in HB/2B to taking such joy in the special properties of these relatively new pencils, they sometimes feel like they were specially crafted for my needs and comfort… I’ve recently picked up the blocks for Inktense, from a beautiful art shop in Edinburgh and am looking for excuses to use them, though probably not on this project… Not likely to be any large washes needed.

I’ll try to make either entries or gallery sections for the other Drakes as I go and welcome any feedback or advice. If you like a particular Drake enough I can look into providing prints or making new versions by hand, but if I’ve uploaded a decent quality final just print away and stick it on your wall.

Paper wise, I have fallen in love with the watercolour Moleskine pads. The quality of the paper on both sides is exceptional and the work in this entry was produced on the A4 version.

…and that’s it, though I’m far from finished on this one. Hoping to pick it back up on Tuesday.

-Tom