#ahnurth

I was still riding high from my last painting when I decided to tackle this. Lots of dinosaur and pangolin inspiration reminded me that I had designed a tiny, sweet Ahnurthian dragon species a long time ago that matched those vibes! The Boughban is a tree-dwelling dragon about the size of a large dog that uses its leaf-shaped scales to camouflage among the tree branches where they live! There's something really fun about the idea of a version of Boughbans that have very fine hair-like scales that cluster together like pine needles, letting them hide in coniferous trees like their leafier relatives might. They're really sweet and shy, and some of them can learn to speak Common if they're around humans or human-dwelling dragons long enough, but it takes a while for these skittish little ones to get comfortable with others much taller than them.  I was imagining a specific Boughban pair while painting these two, named Nuus and Nays, who do know how to speak Common enough to hold conversations and ask for favors, even though they mostly refer to themselves and others in the third person and struggle with more complicated vocab. 

One more offering for the month of mermaids before May's done: one of my very old Ahnurthian dragon OCs, Kendru. While technically a dragon and not a mermaid, he looks the part while in his humanoid form! He gave me the perfect opportunity to start playing with a digital watercolor style for my scanned pencil sketches~

Immediately after finishing my last piece of vent art, I started painting this piece with the same brush and method since I liked it so much. One of my dragon species from Ahnurth, known as a "Drifter", for how they build their nests in the drifting ice floes present in northern waters. 

For every $20 goal I reach, I can spend one hour drawing cool stuff to share. Sometimes it might be my original characters and creatures, and sometimes it might be fanart!

Drifters are efficient and vicious hunters of the north when fully grown, but when they're this small? All they know how to do at this age is look round and cute! And float in the water if they accidentally fall in, until their parents can nudge them back into their nest. 

During my last Sunday Share, while I was discussing my process for developing creatures, I spent the last hour of the stream doodling a concept sheet for one of my species of Ahnurthian dragons, the boughban!  These meek and relatively harmless omnivores are the smallest species of dragon that exists in Ahnurth, but don't be fooled by their size. When threatened, these tiny tree-climbers are capable of unleashing a concentrated blast of sound that functions as the dragon's distinctive "breath weapon". Their manipulation of gaiamenta also allows them to accelerate the growth of plants at the expense of the plant's overall lifespan, giving them early access to fruit, young leaves, and seeds when competition for food is high. Boughbans are known to be empathetic and intelligent, and even capable of learning common human languages, but most are wary of human interaction. 

I loosely based her pose and sash here on the famous National Geographic picture of the Afghan woman with the stunning eyes. It just felt right!

(Attempting to draw Ounten now after months has me really contemplating how to improve their anatomy...)