Copper Dragon

Here's the story around this piece (currently you're seeing a tiny crop from the full thing):

I started this as a large oil painting on a 24x24 stretched sheet of canvas about 3 years ago in a studio space I was renting downtown. I spent a large amount of time on it, kinda thought I finished it, and maybe liked it. Six months later, I couldn't even look at it. It was TERRIBLE. And yet, it's this huge thing, my wife likes it and it does get compliments. But trust me, this thing was a turd no matter how many hours and how much paint I threw at it. So I put it on a nice easel and stowed it away in our livingroom (where we rarely go anyway), so it kinda looks like a nice piece of art, but I just cringe every time we have guests over and we have to stare at this piece of crap while having conversation.

Anyway, about a year later while learning the ropes in digital painting, I decided to take a photo of it and start working on it in Corel Painter, my painting program of choice. It was a quasi-new beginning, and some nice things started happening. I kept it at size so it's a 300dpi 24x24 file. I figured maybe some day I'll finish it digitally, we can get it printed on stretched canvas, and I can actually be proud to display it. The original can go in the garage somewhere.

Well I've been chipping away at it now, here and there, ever since then. Every time I return to it, a little bit of magic happens. It's been a while and I've been extremely busy this year, but I'm itching to dive back into this puppy and get'er done. I don't know why I think a dragon comprised of copper scales is so cool, but apparently I think it's really cool. Cool enough to obsess over it for the last few years.

When this thing is done, I'm throwing a party, and then I'm putting her up on here as the main page image. I can't wait. Then maybe I'll put the original oil painting up somewhere... you know as a "compare contrast", and we can all have a good laugh.