Thursday, January 26, 2012

The Affairs of Dragons

I'd rather be eaten by a dragon.
~ Famous Last Words


I normally notice the coming of the Chinese New Year, but we were traveling on Monday and would have missed it, had not a sweet neighbor brought us a jar of dried lavender as a new year's gift. Thank you! For Art Thursday, we're celebrating the Year of the Dragon:

Water Dragon: "Art is the Handmaid of Human Good"
a group project made largely of CDs, Lowell Folk Festival
photo by Liz West

Soda Can Dragon
Jardin de Plantes, Paris Zoological Park
photo by Evan Bench

Dragon (Svipdag Transformed)
by John Bauer
St. George and the Dragon
from Red Magic
by Kay Nielsen

Once upon a time there was a book and in the book was a nest and in the nest was an egg and in the egg was a dragon and in the dragon was a story…
by the anonymous book sculptor

Dragon, "Community of St. Eugenia" postcard, 1912
by Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin

Dragon rising to the heavens, also known as Gekko's Sketch, 1897

Links:

* Origami dragons
* How to draw dragons
* Dragon history
* How to make a Chinese Dragon puppet
* Dragonhide Armor Gauntlets
* Dragon eye in clay
* Turtle dragon
* Large origami dragon dog, made of newspapers
* Dragons across cultures from Draconika.com

The post title comes from "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup," which was inspired by Tolkien's "Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."

2 comments:

Harry said...

Excellent display of art featuring dragons.

They certainly have captured our imaginations, haven't they?

Some say that because the Chinese zodiac only features "real" animals, then the dragon had to be around at some time. I'll go along with that. :-)

Tabatha said...

Re: dragons being around...When I was looking at ancient art featuring dragons, I saw that a number of them looked like huge snakes or alligators, so that doesn't seem too farfetched. Pteranodons had a dragon-y quality to them, too.