Artist Ty Meier likes to say “When I was younger I drew dragons and now I draw birds, and that’s what happens when you get older”. Once in a while he likes to check in on his dragon-drawing skills, and this post dragon is his most recent.
Dragons are challenging because you can find photos of birds to work from, but images of dragons are from other artists. How much of a dragon you are drawing is another artist's inspiration? Dragons exists only in myth and fantasy, so you are, by necessity, building upon a long history of artistic interpretations.
But that's not really Ty's problem with drawing dragons; the real problem is that Ty was once a dragon, and now isn't. Somewhere in Ty is the young man who ran off to drive tanks for the US Army in Germany and who was an infantryman in the National Guard, and who spent years overseas in Eastern Europe, lived in lots of places and had many jobs and relationships. That young man full of fire and adventure is gone and a quieter more reflective middle age artist has taken his place; The dragon is replaced with something humbler and such is life. But once in a while Ty wistfully, nostalgically draws a dragon, just to remember.
This post-dragon print is glued and pressed to a hand-painted board, then augmented with glossy acrylic medium to give it some depth and texture. Lastly it’s heavily lacquered to make it glow
