Quarator's Art Walk | Mythical Creatures | Art Competition : Legend of Nogard the Dragon

Hello and welcome back to my participation in Quarator's Art Walk. The Theme for this week's art is: Mythical Creatures. I'm happy to be able to enter my digital art drawing designed with the open sourced, free fractal rendering program, Apophysis 2.09.

When we speak of mythical creatures, the images conjure up mythology or myths that were legendary during a certain period of time. These legends or folklore were handed down through the generations. Many of the myths involved not only deities or gods and magical beings, they also encompassed creatures.

Among those creatures that were both feared and worshiped were dragons. In fact dragons were important and played significant roles in the mythology of certain cultures around the world during ancient times. The creatures might have differing roles in those cultures.

The mythology I'm most familiar with comes from the Ancient Greeks. I remember reading about the Greek Mythology early on in school. I loved reading about the gods, goddesses, flying as well as sea creatures, and the witches and sirens that sought to control the mind and body.

But the creature I loved the most was the dragon. In Greek Mythology, dragon was derived from the terms drakon and draco. The image of a dragon was actually a large, rather long snake-like creature. It's ability to breath fire and do substantial harm if provoked became legendary. Numerous dragon creatures existed that were actually offspring of various gods who themselves were serpent-like in nature.

My dragon that I designed in the fractal rendering program is named Nogard. Utilizing Apophysis 2.09 to attempt to create full and recognizable designs as a complete fractal on its own for objects is not an easy task.

That's why I was thoroughly surprised when I created the outline of an image that resembled a dragon. The transform coordinates and values for the variations took several turns in different combinations.

I hope I achieved my desire in capturing the essence of a dragon creature and that you find it appropriate for the theme.

NOGARD, VERSION #1

My first version of Nogard I created with the image below. The image produced was grayish and brown in color. I could faintly see the outline. Once I saw the mouth and wings I knew the image could possibly be a bird. Then I noticed the feet and tail. The spread of the wings with the spread of the mouth suggested a dragon creature. I immediately imagined how the image would look breathing fire. The fractals for the fire and wings I had already created. My next step was to combine the three fractal designs into one image to complete the dragon scene.

NOGARD VERSION #2

My second version of Nogard I created by utilizing my first version in gray. The only difference is I decided to add more color so that the outline of the dragon could be more distinguishable. I believe I accomplished this by changing the color of the dragon. Next, I decided to design a different set of fractal wings. This particular design looked more like scales. A colorful set would bring out the colors of the creature. The fractals for the fire I utilized from the first design. Again, my next step was to combine the three fractal designs into one image to complete the dragon scene.