Dragon-A-Day

Phillippe St. Gerard in Brooklyn, NY has created a Dragon-A-Day since 2009!

 

Why did you decide to do this project? Dragons have always been a passion of mine, artistically as well as in general, and I've been drawing since I could hold a pencil. When I went to art school, drawing became synonymous with 'work" instead of "that thing I do for the sheer pleasure of it." Basically, my focus shifted so that I was only making art in order to get work (updating my portfolio, making new marketing material, stuff like that) or to complete the projects that I had gotten. When I fell into a dry spell, my work suffered but I didn't realize it. A friend of mine suggested a cool idea that I should draw, so I (gasp!) actually tried to do it in my spare time. I then realized how rusty my skills had gotten and decided that I should draw every day, regardless of what else I was doing. I knew I needed a theme that I wouldn't get bored with, so I chose to do dragons. 

 

 

 

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? It's robbed me of a lot of sleep.

 

But seriously, people are often impressed by the fact that I'm still doing it, or they're really impressed when they hear that I've been doing this for more than 5 years when they hear about it for the first time. This isn't to say that I haven't learned a few things, though.

 

One of the first things I learned was that I do best with some kind of feedback, but I don't really need it. Once upon a time when Facebook integration with RSS feeds worked better, people I knew paid more attention to Dragon-A-Day, and I took their suggestions and jokes and ran with them. As it slowly became phased out I found myself talking with myself more and more, and Dragon-A-Day sort of became this one-sided dialogue with myself, with a small recurring cast to help illustrate these conversations.

 

Also, since it went from open forum to one-sided self-critique, I've come to look hard at the artistic crutches and conventions that I find myself relying on, and have been trying to wean myself off of them. It's not like I've been doing any sort of "year in review" or anything; I just realize things like "hey, I've been drawing scales this way on a lot of dragons," every so often, so I start trying to draw them differently.

Stuff like that.

It's also made me a bit philosophical, sometimes having (shorter now) discussions with myself about what a dragon even is, because of the various interpretations across cultures and media- I'll freely admit that my perceptions were colored a bit heavily by Western pop culture and the obvious Asian influences with little room inbetween. I've been trying to dig up less-widely known legends in my spare time looking for draconic creatures, and have not been disappointed.

Reading your site made me realize that I've been using the same media (mainly pencils with the occasional array into the digital realm), so I've been trying my hand at pens. I've kind of fallen in love with ballpoint pen drawing. Thanks for that.

Finally, the last and probably most important thing is that inspiration can be found any old place, as long as you're willing to let it. Dragons based on all kinds of things from my daily life have come to fill my little sketchbooks, and subsequently the internal/external dialogue I've been having with my readers and followers.

See all of Phillippe's dragons HERE.