We had a giant snowstorm hit us on Monday, so this week I thought I’d share some wintry-white dragons and other creatures painted by one of the most well known fantasy artists on the internet, Singaporean professional artist sandara.  Let’s start with nettle, which shows a scene inspired by Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series (which I featured in last year’s AtoZ challenge).

Next up, here is a wintry scene called the tracker.  In that kind of snow, out in the wilderness, I’d definitely prefer to travel by gryphon!  I love the way the magic mist is the same color as the gryphon’s wingtips.  The medium-sized dragons (now called drakes for clarity) are a little smaller than that in my book Finding Dragons.

Then I loved this cute dragon (spirit?) called First frost, who seems to be bringing the winter with him.  In fact I really love the design of this dragon overall, from the tail to the wings to the head and horns… I wonder how it would look grypon-sized like above? 😉

Then we head to a place that doesn’t look cold, but this giant White Dragon is so epic that it had to be shared.  If the cutie above is the spirit of the first delicate frost, maybe this huge beast is the spirit of the snowstorm that dumped a foot of snow on us on Monday — my office even closed and gave everyone a grownup snow day, it was crazy!

Bringing the scale back down again, this one is called precious, and isn’t he just.  He’s also cradled in mama’s huge arms, so no one would ever think of messing with him, and I think you can tell by his eyes that he knows it!  I love the shimmery scales and feathery wings.

And speaking of feathery wings, this next one is just called Lion — but it’s way more than just a lion!  I’ve always described the drakes in my book as being the size of lions with wings, though I don’t think they’re as bulky… anyway, this is just the lion by itself, but it originally came from another piece by Sandara called Heika – Revo, which depicts an awesome Japanese man sitting with the lion.  It turns out, that’s “Majesty” Revo, of the Japanese “fantasy band” Sound Horizon — something that I will certainly be checking out now that I’ve discovered it exists!

And finally, oddly not ending on a dragon this time (unusual, but not unheard of), this is the uber-appropriate winter, and I imagine that this is the actual spirit of the storm that hit us.  There’s so much movement in the fur and blowing snow, and check out those piercing eyes!  And the colors are wonderful too.  Brr!  Did you feel that chill just now…?  😉

Make sure you follow Sandara on Facebook, and check out Society6 shop to support her artwork.  She is a pillar of the deviantart community, and I was excited to see that she was recognized last year with a Deviousness Award from the site itself:

sandara has been a huge part of the DeviantArt community for 13 years. An immensely talented fantasy artist, sandara’s digital paintings have made a huge impression on artists all across DeviantArt. Diving through her gallery, you can see over a decade of artistic progression in the hundreds of deviations she’s shared with her watchers. In addition to digital paintings, sandara has made a commitment to helping artists across DeviantArt grow and thrive — from her helpful tutorials to the supportive and instructive comments she leaves for deviants. It is for all of these reasons that we are proud to award sandara with the Deviousness Award for June 2017.

(After posting that, it’s suddenly bothering me how I never capitalize deviantart correctly.  It was just a style choice I made two years ago… but it would take too long to go back and change everything now!  I have also made the stylistic choice to capitalize Sandara’s name, just because I often start sentences with it, and not doing it would bother me more… #innereditorissues)  -_-;

Okay, back to novel writing exercises now that I’m all caught up on posts.  I can’t wait to tell you all about the neat things I’ve been writing, but for now, you’ll have to wait!  Thank you for reading, take care, and stay creative!

Image credits:
All artwork in this post is by sandara.
nettle, the tracker, First frost, White Dragon, precious, Lion, and winter