A few days ago I painted my first dragon. I haven't yet seen a purple dragon in popular culture, so that's the colour I chose for this gal. I added gold highlights to certain scales to give her some extra definition and majesty. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how she turned out.
Wow! Fantastic dragon, Earl!
ReplyDeleteI know that in Christian iconography, a serpent or dragon is often green or sometimes red. St George's dragon was added several decades after the martyrdom of George himself by a French bishop named Jacques de Voragine, who wrote fanciful stories about saints. This particular tale was enshrined in a book called The Golden Legend.
de Voragine's dragon is definitely green, possibly because he was influenced by seeing a crocodile at one time. The real George was executed by the Roman Emperor Diocletian for refusing to pay tribute to pagan gods. The legendary George used his horse and lance to slay a green dragon in a battle to save a princess that has come to represent good versus evil - much like Superman or Batman fighting their foes (or each other).
In fact, I have an icon I wrote a couple years ago where I intentionally gave George Superman's colours. It's a stirring piece. My dragon is both red and green, it's kind of garish, but unfortunately it also gets lost a bit in considerable ground clutter. It turns out Palestine has a lot of rocks.
Ugh, clumsy exposition there in the first paragraph. Diocletian executed George in the name of the Roman Empire, making George a Palestinian martyr, while many years later Bishop de Voraigne wrote about George as a fantasy character and added dragon lore.
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