Since I am often too skilled in creating confusion, I will try to abate it early on- this blog entry is written by Windstone artist Jennifer Miller.
I, like nearly every other artist upon this earth, am inspired heavily by the natural world. There are more crazy things in nature than our imaginations can come up with, and that’s all good with me. Nature’s craziness plus artistic imagination combined and things can get really interesting.
I draw most of the inspiration for the color schemes on the special Windstones I paint from nature. Take the Flamepoint Tabby male dragon above; his pose always reminded me of a cat with the very feline expression: “Behold my beauty, but don’t touch, I just bathed.” I have always loved the way flame-point cats look and so tried to work that onto the dragon.
Then we have the Labradorite dragons (above is the Labradorite Lap). I have long loved the semi-precious stone, Labradorite. As someone who loves gems with color play in them, I have always been drawn to opal but have been deterred by the cost of said lovely gemstone. Then, many many moons ago, I discovered Labradorite. And let me tell you, fine quality labradorite can give opal a run for it’s money, at a fraction of the price per carat! Type Labradorite into a Google search and see what comes up, though it’s a stone best appreciated in person. I also create jewelry with this stone, so it felt natural to try and apply the look of Labradorite to a Windstone. I can never compete with nature, but I love the idea of something only having a flash of brilliant color when viewed from certain angles.
Let me tell you though… creating this look, with nice creams, whites, greys and blues on a smooth-scaled Windstone dragon– what a chore! The lap dragon above took me longer than any other piece to date.
MHM! I so know what you mean. I have a collection of books that color prehistoric beasts, to most of todays critters…even your basic pet breed encyclopedia’s.
When Dawn was sculpting her octopus she mentioned wanting to put wings on it and then said,” but that would be pretty stupid, wouldn’t it.” so I told her to look up the Dumbo Octopus. She could not belive there was actualy an octopus that had wing like flaps. Her face was priceless.
Nature is very influencial. While I like the bright contrasting colors of natures Tropics and Reafs, I love seeing how nature affects your art. You pull of the nice blending colors or rocks and conifer forests of the north.
While we can only try to mimik nature, I really enjoy seeing how you depict what you see in nature through your color schemes. 🙂
I, too, am a fan of Labradorite. I have told people in the past that, if I was a gem stone, I would probably be Labradorite; at first glance it can seem like a dull, even ugly, muddy stone. Then the light hits it and suddenly… brilliance! I am so glad you have created a dragon that has that look of a storm cloud full of rainbows.
The effort you took to paint the Labradorite Lap Dragon is effort well spent! The more I look at the picture, the more I love it. I could almost expect to see it take a breath, or blink an eyelid. It reminds me of the subtle, but somehow dramatic, coloration of some snakes. Like cobras, whip snakes and racers.