This post was supposed to go up last week, but I got a little busy, sorry!  But after the horrific events in Las Vegas last weekend, I think some cute art is just what we need right now.  This one is called Believe in Yourself – Strength by American professional artist Eric Proctor, posting as TsaoShin.

It’s part of a series he has started featuring regular animals aspiring to be just like their mythic counterparts, and this little snake has made itself up to be the cutest little dragon, don’t you think?  Eric’s caption reads, “Don’t let what you are stop you from being who you are.”  Great advice.

Eric also did this adorable rhinoceros imitating a beautiful alicorn (what a unicorn-horned pegasus is sometimes called), and this one is called Believe in Yourself – Spirit, captioned “Don’t be afraid to be the you that others can’t see.”

This next one shows a fierce mama dragon protecting her kids, both draconic and feline, called Mother.  It’s adorable on its own, but another artist called KingofSummer wrote an entire backstory to the painting that you can read at Eric’s original post, and I highly recommend!

Not all of Eric’s dragons are super cutesy, though.  This next one is called Night Dragon, which he captions, “On star filled wings at sunset will this ethereal dragon take his flight, delivering dreams to both peasant and king all through out the night.”

And here’s a very dangerous-looking one called Magma Dragon, accompanied by the ominous rhyme, “In a shallow caldera he broods and he waits, planning his strike upon that which he hates.”  Yikes!

But now back to the cute stuff.  This next painting was created as the official contest art for the Twist Fate competition hosted by DeviantArt and WattPad back in March 2016.  Open to authors and illustrators aged 13-17, the instructions were to “Pick a story and character, and create an alternate scenario where a famous hero is the villain, or an infamous villain, the hero.”  The winning submissions were published in a book, even, and you can check out more details at that link above.  Eric named this piece Twist Fate as well.

Here is another dragon trying to look fierce, and those teeth could probably do a lot of damage!  But I don’t know why, I keep picturing this guy about the size of a small dog, so I still think this London Dragon is cute.

And finally, probably the cutest of them all, here is Maneki-Toothless, drawn in the style of the Japanese maneki-neko, which translates to “beckoning cat.”  You might have seen these traditionally calico cats with their battery-operated paws waving at you from a shop window, and it’s sometimes called a Chinese lucky cat.  I’d love a real-life maneki-Toothless!  Kawaii!!

Many of Eric’s deviantart posts include a link where you can watch him create the art itself on his Twitch series called Backseat Drawing, including the top image Believe in Yourself – Strength, and it’s very neat!  You can also follow him on Facebook and Twitter, purchase some of his artwork at his Society6 shop, and check out more art on Tumblr and in his deviantart gallery as well.

All right, that’s it for today, but I will definitely try to get another post out by Saturday to keep up with my post-per-week goal (since this one counts for last week).  Thanks for being patient with me and continuing to check in, it means a lot!

Thank you as always for reading, take care, and stay creative!

Image credits:
All artwork in this post is by Eric Proctor, posting as TsaoShin.
Believe in Yourself – Strength, Believe in Yourself – Spirit, Mother, Night Dragon, Magma Dragon, Twist Fate, London Dragon, and Maneki-Toothless