Wow, AtoZ 2018 is over?!  I can’t believe how fast that month went by!  Since this is a dragon artwork blog, I always have so many options to choose from for the letter D, so I’m happy to share this one today — this is Dragon Soul by Czech professional artist Benjamin, posting as ryky.  He’s got an amazing art style, so of course I had to include two more dragons later!

How did my third year doing AtoZ go?  Well, I completed the challenge and wasn’t late even once, which is certainly a milestone for me!  (And I only had one snafu when I forgot to set the featured image for K, but I fixed it as soon as I noticed, oops!)

As I’ve said before, having a list of artists I’ve been wanting to use up, choosing all my artwork before I started writing, and pre-writing almost two-thirds of my posts before April 1st helped a lot.  Keeping my posts short and sweet was another big factor — I really enjoyed my long-form essays from last year, but I’m also not burnt out this year and still had fun!

Then I completed the survey for AtoZ, which made me examine some of my personal stats for the month, which are both better and worse than I’d hoped for.  Check them out below, after you check out Benjamin’s next lovely piece called Day and Night.

Over April, I made 27 posts (A-Z, plus the April birthstones) and got 500+ visitors, 1,200+ views, 200+ likes, and 150 comments, and I replied to each comment individually!  Those are great numbers, and I’m so humbled that so many people wanted to stop by to see the artwork of all these talented artists!

But on the flipside, I tried to keep up with at least ten other blogs myself, and made over 80 comments on their posts, but I still haven’t finished a single blogger’s entire AtoZ set, sad to say.  But I did get every artist notification done (a comment on their deviantart telling them I featured them here with a link), something I’ve been getting much better at doing in a timely fashion this year, so I’m happy about that part!

I also tried something interesting this year — I kept track of the dragon colors I shared!  Green (7) dragons won the day, closely followed by purple (5), red and gold (4 each), then orange (3), black and white (2 each), and blue (1) was last.*

Here is one more piece from Benjamin called Saga.  You can find even more amazing dragons and other fantasy artwork in his gallery, follow him at “the most colorful profile on Instagram” where you can ask about commissioning your own art, and support him on Patreon.

Come back next week for my May birthstones post — it’s my own birthstone, emerald, so expect even more green dragons!

Then since I’m back on my new schedule, week three will be a short post featuring dragons from one artist, and that’s also the week I’m getting started on my new writing idea for moving Finding Dragons forward…

… which I’ll talk more about in week four, with my writing thoughts post including a quote, a writing update, and of course another dragon.

* I’m counting Toothless as black and Cloudjumper as gold even though they’re in the same picture, and I’m counting the white diamond dragon from the birthstones post as well, which is how the colors add up to 28.

Then on a sad personal note, my oldest furdaughter Rei-chan lost her battle with lymphoma last Monday night, April 30.  I’m heartbroken, but some long bike rides, reading more AtoZs, and writing are some of the things helping to keep me busy. 

I hope everyone takes some time to cuddle their own furbabies close today, as we’ve been doing with the rest of our clowder — you can see their pics from a few years ago at that link.  Rei is now up in Starclan with her own daughter Amara, who we lost three years ago to cancer, and I wrote about here.

Thanks as always for reading and for following me on this year’s great AtoZ adventure.  Take care, and stay creative!

Image credits:
All dragon images in this post are by ryky — Dragon Soul, Day and Night, and Saga.
AtoZ Reflections badge from AtoZ Blogging Challenge
Rei-chan photo by me