Happy Birthday to my July-born readers!  It’s really summertime now (it’s 100 degrees right now in Minneapolis!), so the firey red gem for this month’s birthstone is quite appropriate!  Up first is this beautifully colored piece called Ruby by Canadian deviantartist koyamori.  She has an amazing deviantart gallery, but she doesn’t post there anymore — now you can find her on Instgram and Tumblr, where she’s just announced the release of her first art book, “grow: The Art of Koyamori”!  Go check it out!

According to the wiki:

A ruby is a pink to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum (aluminium oxide). (Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapphires.) … The word ruby comes from ruber, Latin for red.  The color of a ruby is due to the element chromium. …

The brightest and most valuable shade of red, called blood-red or pigeon blood, commands a large premium over other rubies of similar quality. …

Ruby … is usually more pink than [the other red gemstone] garnet … The world’s most valuable ruby is the Sunrise Ruby. … Rubies have a hardness of 9.0 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness … only moissanite and diamond are harder.

Now on to more dragons!  This next is called Like a Ruby by Polish deviantartist Mistyrdis, a neat masked dragon (scalesona?) with a pretty red mane.  Check out her gallery for more.

Next up is Ruby Dragon by Canadian professional artist Jen Elliott, posting as jocarra, another dragon from her work with Endless Realms, a “cutting edge pen-and-paper RPG” that lets you “tell your tale with story-driven gameplay mechanics.”  If you like RPGs, I think you’ll love her gallery!  About this design, she writes,

[The developers at Endless Realms] asked me to come up with a ruby-themed dragon, so I decided to take inspiration from historical and pagan lore regarding rubies as relating to wealth, power and kingliness as well as health, blood and immortality.  

And then, because I loved discovering them in last month’s post so much, here is a New Collection of Dragon-Style Chokers featuring garnet and ruby by the talented jewelry making duo of Katarzyna Mielnik-Grzybowska and Mariusz Frodyma of Lunarieen Ltd.  You can find more awesome pieces in their gallery and purchase your own unique jewelry in their online and Etsy shops.

From elegant to dangerous, up next is Ruby Dragon by Turkish professional artist Kerem Beyit.  He writes that this is “Another card art for Draco Magi [Card] Game,” a two-player game I should pick up soon!  (Also, I realized as I looked at the game that I’d featured one of Kerem’s Draco Magi dragons before, his Steampunk Dragon back in 2016 when I decided to start writing my Neeka Story!)  Check out his gallery, Instagram, and Tumblr for more awesome work.

And then we’re back to another of my perennial favorites — this is Ruby Dragon of the Night Forest by Russian professional artist and crafter Alvia Alcedo.  She has a wonderful gallery full of traditional artwork and crafted pieces like this, and you can follow her on Facebook or Instagram, and support her talent through her Society6 Shop.

Then finally, last but certainly not least is this Ruby, a design (purchased by deviantart user Wereprincex) from the Advent II: Hidden Treasures series by deviantartist Ariel Blyth, posting as Arukanoda.  Check out her awesome gallery to find an adoptable creature of your own, and check out her Picarto.tv channel to watch her create.  I love the background frame, which is a signature of a lot of her designs.  About this dragon, Arii writes:

A hybrid who’s internal body energy is barely contained within a physical form. Its mane blazes with inextinguishable heat, constantly firing off sparks in every direction. … Body Type: Brute Eastern.

All right, that’s it for July, another birthstone in the books, and now I can get back to packing for (and stressing out about!) our vacation that starts this weekend!  Pokemon Go Fest in Chicago first, and then off to the United Kingdom, I can’t even believe it!

But never fear, I’ll still have a “short” (hahaha) post next week, and I’m really excited to feature a series of new work from one of my all time favorite artists, so be sure to come back for that!

The week after ought to be Writing Thoughts, but I’ll still be on vacation, so it’ll depend on how much writing time I get in the next two weeks.  I intend to stay on schedule, but there’s going to be so much to see and do!

I hope you’re having a brilliant summer, or winter if you’re on the other side of the world, of course!  Thank you as always for reading, take care, and stay creative!

Image credits:

+  Ruby by koyamori
+  Like a Ruby by Mistyrdis
+  Ruby Dragon by Jen Elliott, posting as jocarra
+  New Collection – Chokers!! (dragon’s style) by Katarzyna Mielnik-Grzybowska and Mariusz Frodyma of Lunarieen Ltd.
+  Ruby Dragon by Kerem Beyit
+  Ruby Dragon of the Night Forest by Alvia Alcedo.
+  AIIHT 24 Ruby by Ariel Blyth, posting as Arukanoda