Artists Create Original Art
Instead of drawing a normal dragon, I tried to do a sand dragon. Or just a dragon more suited to living in the desert. The sail-like wings on its back are more suited to helping it zoom over the dunes than to fly. The smooth scales all over its body help it slip through the sand. Other pictures of dragons was my inspiration, though it was kind of hard to find a good sand dragon one without it being of Dungeons and Dragons or something. This is my own stylized desert creature, though the design could be better.
Artists Develop Art Making Skills
This is the first time I've ever used a scratchboard. When I was first doing the wings, I messed them up and made them too scratchy. Oops. It looks pretty good for a first time. I didn't gain any skill with familiar materials; I learned how to use a new material.
Artists Take Risks
First of all, I don't think any of us were sure about using the scratchboard. Maybe a few were, but most of us had never done one before. I'm one of the ones who hadn't scratched a scratchboard yet. It was a bit like those lottery tickets where you scratch the material off. The new material this time was the scraping tool. It's pretty much a knife but in a better form for this sort of thing.
Artists Solve Problems
One of the big problems was the wings. I had been too eager to give them a "leathery" look, and went overboard with the scratches. There's no lighting or shading as a result, and it looks really messy. I started doing the wings a different way about halfway through, and it looked super cool, so I tried to merge them together and make a smooth recovery.
