I was going to make this a tutorial post, but since I decided to change up how I was structuring this dragon, and I wasn’t actually going to be making a peony (the petals are very similar to the wings I made for my spring dragon in this tutorial, this post is going to be a behind-the-scenes look at my process for making this peony dragon.
While I like to think I’ve had a pretty good success rate at translating fruit into dragons (you can see my current series here, flowers have been much harder for me to comprehend and translate. I really want to be able to carry over the characteristics of a flower type to a dragon, but I just don’t think it lends itself to my current skill set or dragon style.
I’d been putting off my flower dragons for this reason. I was having a hard time comprehending how to get across the flower in just the right way, striking a balance between having it represented enough and not being too overwhelming. Can you believe it’s been about 2 years since I created a flower dragon??
I picked the peony because I love it’s full fluffy flower and frilly petals, and I really, really wanted to keep that in my dragon, but I knew it would feel forced, so after much internal wrestling, I moved on to plan B.
My mom put peonies in one of her flower beds when I was young, so I would watch every season as they bloomed; I always liked the light pink ones the most, and to me, that is the “ideal” or “classic” peony, and that is what I wanted to represent with my dragon.
I usually use a minimum of 3 colors for a dragon, particularly so the eyes can stand out against the dragon body and eye accents. My original plan was to include some color representing the peony’s foliage, but I was worried it would be too harsh against the sweet, fluffy feeling I was going for with these shades of pink. With a sleeping dragon, since the eyes are closed, I was able to get away with 2 colors.
And because this is fantasy, I mixed pearl clay into both colors to create a fun shimmery mix. It feels perfect for a peony.
I tried a new pose to make this sleepy baby a little more cutesy, and it also kept reminding me of a cat snoozing and stretched out in the sun.
The head and body are aligned in a straight line with the front paws resting under her head, and the tail curls around her back leg.
I kept the details on the body pretty simple because I wanted the wings to be the focal point of the piece. I decided to have them drape down her back for this resting pose but kept them frilly. When you look at the light pink peonies, you’ll see a gradient in the petal, so I added one to the wings using some powders.
I frilled up the face scales to echo the petal texture as well.
While I ended up condensing the characteristics I wanted to bring into my peony dragon, I think the execution went fairly well. I’ll be revisiting the flower series in the coming weeks with my next flower, the hibiscus.
