Author Archives: littledragonblue

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About littledragonblue

Dreamer, Writer, Artist, Lover

Dragon Comics 25

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Rage comics: Dragon style

Rage comics: Dragon style

Originally, I sketched this one out with Dragon talking to Dragon’s reflection in the mirror, but ultimately, the backgrounds seem to make this one for me.

The last couple weeks have been leading up to this moment, and there will be more fallout down the line. At heart what this is really about (and many readers probably understand this in their hearts) is the tendency of some people to devalue their own outrage. The belief that we do not have the right to be angry is a pervasive one, particular among women, and often this legitimate anger is funneled through some other channel. You may have heard the expression, “Depression is anger turned inward.”

Dragon is embracing the anger and saying that it’s OK to be angry.

Besides that, I’m rather pleased with the typewriter in panel 4. This follows the discussion of funny weapons. The Man still thinks typewriters are inherently humorous. Plus, using the typewriter offered the opportunity for a punny punchline. The snake doesn’t need to get the last word in, and the sentiment, “words hurt!” is a lot more powerful when accompanied by a projectile weapon that is used, generally, for the purpose of forming words. Anyway, Dragon throws a typewriter would be a good name for a punk band.

Bonus news: RedBubble is offering a site-wide 15% off coupon code for T-shirts. There’s never been a better time to purchase a Dragon shirt, or other fine QWERTYvsDvorak designs. Just check out our web shop and use coupon code RBTEES15 any time before midnight Tuesday for great savings.

Dragon Comics 24

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The Man is the one with the real vendetta against the Kindles, they're a convenient focus for Dragon's rage.

The Man is the one with the real vendetta against the Kindles; they’re a convenient focus for Dragon’s rage.

This was a fun one to draw. I’m particularly enamored of the Godzilla stuff going on in panel 3, and I was pleased to figure out how to draw the second panel without using a source image or looking at myself in the mirror. My only sorrow is the SFX words in panel 4, which are OK, but didn’t seem quite right.

In case anyone gets the wrong idea, I never take my aggression out on the children. That stuff is reserved for The Man. Don’t worry; he can take it. But the thing is, when dragons get angry, you don’t want to get in their way. Fortunately for the world, Dragons are slow to true anger.

 

My Sister and Brother-in-Law Look to the Future

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My future brother-in-law is the only man my sister has ever brought to a family gathering. It was my wedding, and I’m glad they got engaged, because he’s in the family photos, and it would have been awkward otherwise.

Those hats!

Those hats!

I took the source photo a few days after the wedding. In fact, this is another section of the image used for the “My Nephew Goes Wading” drawing. A rather rich image!

A few weeks ago we went back to that place and The Man took some magical photos of the girl sliding down the dam. Might be another cool design.

I printed 50 of these and sent them to sissy for an engagement present. I’m uncertain as to whether she’s received them or not, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t read QWERTYvsDvorak or check Facebook on a regular basis, so it can probably remain a surprise. I hope she likes them!

I think I’m coming to the end of my infatuation with this style. Although it was obviously insane, I started a huge painting based on a really complex image; after a week, it’s maybe 15% finished, and my thumb is all messed up and who knows if I’ll ever be able to wield a stylus again.

I hope yes.

For now I’m wearing the brace and typing slowly, with 9 fingers.

Dragon Comics 23

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Surprisingly enough, the hardest thing I've had to draw in these comics was that freaking easel. It's still wrong, but it's the best I could do without a reference image.

Surprisingly enough, the hardest thing I’ve had to draw in these comics was that freaking easel. It’s still wrong, but it’s the best I could do without a reference image.

Painting. I wish I had the money to take some classes; it doesn’t seem like something I’m likely to puzzle out on my own, at least not without spending even more money on materials. An expensive hobby. Even using the computer, it’s tolerably difficult and takes some getting used to.

The song whistled in panel 3 should be “Chinese Work Songs” by Little Feat. Somehow, I couldn’t find a YouTube track for this one, only a remix or the whole album. Little Feat is an eclectic jam band that formed in 1969, but, unlike most rock bands of that era, they managed to not destroy themselves, although the lineup has changed over the years. The album Chinese Work Songs  was released in 2000. Their most recent album came out in 2012.

I guess what this comic is really about is the way a good mood can be so easily destroyed, like cotton candy when you dump water on it, while a bad mood is far more tenacious, like bubble gum stuck in your hair.

 

 

One Hundred!

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Happy 100 blog posts to me!

Ooohh...cake...

Ooohh…cake…

I’m curious about how the above image came to be, since it’s not at all what I intended to draw. In hindsight, the thing I was going to draw would work better as a Valentine, so I’ll just save it. Plus, I can reuse the cake image if/when I get to 100 Dragon Comics! Anyway, 100 blog posts. A couple hundred pieces of art. It’s something! Yes! It’s not nothing.

To celebrate this milestone accomplishment, here’s some more of what I do. We’ve got mandalas!

 

An early plant-based design.

An early plant-based design.

The first couple dozen mandalas I did in this series were drawn on the flip side of the crossword pages hubby used to print out every day, but we’re rapidly reaching the end of these. When I started to take the project a bit more seriously, I used fresh paper without an image bleeding through the other side.

Beautifully blue

Beautifully blue

As I’ve mentioned before, my “blue period” was about 30 years long. Usually, I make a conscious decision to not draw everything in blue. But sometimes it’s nice to get back to your roots.

And speaking of roots, here’s a lovely dragon for your pleasure.

Crustofer, a Microscopic Aquatic Dragon

Crustofer, a Microscopic Aquatic Dragon

I think I’m more pleased with Crustofer’s appellation than his image, although he’s a cute little dragon. I guess a microscopic aquatic dragon would be considered a cryptozooplankton?

There you have it. Dragons and mandalas. As always, if you think my work doesn’t completely suck, please consider shopping my store. Stickers and notecards are only a couple dollars, and while the clothes may run a couple bucks more than in other T-shirt shops, the money does go to support an artist. If you’d like a T-shirt featuring any work on this site that isn’t in the store, drop me a line and, if I can, I’ll get it onto a shirt for you. If you’d rather buy a book off Amazon, you could also support me by clicking any book link on my Amazon Affiliate book review site. You don’t have to buy that particular book; any book you buy after clicking one of my links will refer a small percentage back to me and I will be one step closer to my goal of making money more or less on my own terms. Otherwise, I will have to go back to copywriting, and believe me, no one wants that.

 

Dragon Comics 22

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Remember when you were a kid and your could ignore anything?

Remember when you were a kid and your could ignore anything?

Vampire Bat fits into the scope of this comic, I think, and creates a nice contrast to some of the other characters. I could probably draw a better bat, but I’ve been sick and frankly I don’t even really remember drawing most of this comic, which I apparently did in the middle of the night with a mild fever while watching 3 episodes of The X-Files on Netflix, which I also don’t remember. Thank you subconscious mind. Way to be way more functional than my conscious mind, even if you do keep it all to yourself.

In panel 4, the girl is, of course, rocking out to Taylor Swift. They really do like those big headphones, which are a lot more comfortable than earbuds. As adults, it’s sometimes hard to know how to handle kids and technology. We don’t want them on their devices all the time, but we also don’t want them constantly complaining that they’re bored. We don’t like hearing the random sounds their devices make, but we also don’t like them being completely checked out and unable to hear anything you say to them because they’ve got the headphones on.

 

 

 

 

Dragon Comics 21

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What can I say? The Man is very fond of his vacuum cleaners.

What can I say? The Man is very fond of his vacuum cleaners.

Like most normal human beings, I really do not appreciate strangers attempting to corral me into a discussion of their philosophical beliefs. I assure you, it’s 2014 and if I have any questions about a particular book or its interpretation, I will most certainly Google it to learn more. I am not waiting around for random people to offer their opinions. Whether or not I’m in my house, I don’t want to be approached by strangers trying to sell me things, even intangible things.

I did have a friend who welcomed a certain type of witness into his home. A certain denomination sent a few young and attractive girls out to knock on doors and ask random people if they wanted to talk about their very particular spiritual beliefs. My friend was sufficiently interested in religion to keep the conversation going, but I gather he was far more interested in the fact of these girls being young and attractive. They asked if they could return to continue the discussion, to which he gladly agreed. They showed up a few more times before their supervisors correctly gleaned that my friend had no interest in converting, at which point, they assigned him some male visitors, after which he was no longer interested in discussing their religion.

Anyway, in reality The Man does seem to have a powerful attachment to that Dyson. Those things are powerful. I have no doubt a Dyson could contain an incorporeal spirit, although I find the idea of a haunted vacuum cleaner pretty frightening. Can you imagine if it just turned itself on and started roaring around your house at night? That’s a heart attack right there.

Have a great weekend!

Quoth the Raven, “Shop My Store”

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I overheard Fox telling Otter, “Dragon draws these T-shirt designs but they’re all for girls so we can’t get any.” Gah! Gendered much? OK, fine. I drew this freaking raven, based on a photograph I took at the Grand Canyon. There is nothing girly about this raven with his weird punk rock mohawk head feathers, all right?

This raven is not interested in your problems.

This raven is not interested in your problems.

He’s all dark and brooding and mysterious and whatnot, sitting high above you, looking imperiously down like a king on his throne or something equally majestic.  Ravens are bigger than crows, and somehow more dignified, and they’re so dark that they seem to almost swallow the light into them.

Of all the designs I’ve done so far, this is the first one that really seems to look good on a cell phone case.

Mythologically speaking, Raven is the bringer of knowledge (in the form of light) to mankind; he literally steals what belongs to the gods in order to make it public domain. Raven is a friend to people, and a force to be reckoned with. If you’ve never gotten close up to one of these birds, you’ll be surprised at how large and sturdy they are, almost like raptors in their muscularity. They’re also, when they feel like it, extremely vocal. I believe they can be taught to mimic human speech, but even in their own tongue, you can get a conversation going. I’ve had long back and forth exchanges with chatty ravens, some of them rather far away. If you hear a raven, call back and pretty often it will answer you, even if you can’t see it.

Dragon Comics 20

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You've got to faith f-faith f-faith, I guess.

You’ve got to have faith f-faith f-faith, I guess.

Here I’m just saying 2 things, the first of which is that, no matter how much you’re willing to believe in an abstract concept because someone told you there was something special about believing without evidence, you can’t expect everyone in the world to throw their grounding in reality out the window because your belief is important to you. It’s nice if you have a belief that sustains you through difficult times. It is not nice to discriminate against people who are not sustained by that belief.

The second thing I’m saying here is that it is RUDE to knock on stranger’s doors when you don’t have business with them, and no, your belief that you should share your belief is not business. I don’t come to your house to discuss change in allele frequency or the melting of the polar ice caps. I personally think that overpopulation is the single biggest problem facing the human race, but I don’t bang on your door to make sure you’re using birth control, even though I feel very strongly that 90% of all people with children have no business procreating.

Otherwise, all I have to say about this comic is that, in panel 3, when Dragon is whistling, the tune is supposed to be the chorus for Mary Lambert’s “I Don’t Care if the World Knows What My Secrets Are,” but the only sheet music I could find online for that song cost $5, and I didn’t feel like taking the time and energy I would need to get up and pick the tune out on my stepdaughter’s keyboard, because I had a cold, and I’m not that much of a musician. Those two bars of music would have probably taken me 45 minutes. Just click the link and then you can whistle along with Dragon.

The Desert in Bloom!

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I was raised surrounded by cacti; although we lived in the midwest, my father always had a soft spot for the prickly plants. Their periodic flowering in such an unlikely climate was always a cause for celebration. Conditions being, as they were, so wildly inappropriate, we rarely saw more than 1 or 2 cactus flowers a year.

Now, as an adult, living in the desert, I’m surrounded by cactus blossoms from early spring to late autumn. The end of summer/beginning of fall is the time of the barrel cactus, both the native fishhook barrel and the ornamental (transplanted from central Mexico) golden barrel, both of which produce astonishing blossoms (red and yellow, respectively). I’d like to think I’ve done justice to the golden barrel. I wanted to do the fishhook, too, but I like to work from my own photos, and none of the ones I took on my last Botanic Garden trip felt quite right.

Without any further ado: The Golden Barrel Cactus Flower! This one is featured on a lovely throw pillow, but of course you can get it on any of my products.

If you think this is beautiful, you should see these flowers in situ.

If you think this is beautiful, you should see these flowers in situ.

If you do buy a throw pillow, be aware that RedBubble sells pillowcases with or without actual pillows inside them; you have to select the option of receiving a pillow, or you will just  purchase the case, as was the unfortunate discovery of one customer. Click to buy!

Too highbrow for you? How about a “Glitter” T-shirt from the Dragon Comics Collection?

You know what makes me feel like my house will never be clean?

You know what makes me feel like my house will never be clean again?

The T-shirt reads, in full, “You know what helps me feel more magical? GLITTER!” and features a cat throwing glitter in the air, while a dragon marvels at the magicosity. Perfect for magic-loving cats of all ages.