This was off another page from Your Personal Wish Book by Asian geomancer Lillian Too, with illustrations by Jennifer Too.
Lillian's "commandment" on the page facing this drawing was to color the dragon, a Chinese symbol of strength and vitality, "in a color that resonates with you", and to render its "magical" scales with a glitter pen.
My tin of Derwent pencils, a set of 72, were out, so I used those instead of Prismacolors.
I went with purple, my favourite color, for the dragon, and layered it with green nearer the areas where the scales catch the light. Instead of glitter, I used my white gel pen to bring out the high whites in the bright areas.
For the head, I opted for strong reds, oranges and yellows. I picked a strong pea green for the spines through the creature's length.
As for the pearl: That caused some difficulty, and I'm not pleased with the result. I looked up some tutorials online, and they seemed to advise using contrasting shades of white and deep grey, and to layer the white in pink and mint green to bring out the luminescence. As you can see, it didn't quite work. I think the white I used wasn't white enough.
A rethink on the clouds: I should have done them in white, with some bluish shading, instead of using two pale shades of blue.
As for the rim of Chinoiserie patterns around the dragon, I did it quickly. The fine lines were quite a pain and a test of my patience. I only reminded myself to keep the colors muted so that the dragon, the main event, would pop.
The option for the rim pattern would have been to keep it monotone, probably in blue, in a nod to Ming blue-and-white pottery.
I put this on Instagram, and R says she thought it was a photograph of a porcelain plate. I guess this piece turned out ok overall.
But the pearl, the pearl, aaarrrggghhh!
