Over The Edge

Finally doin some personal art. Of me.
Yesss, this is my dragonself. I think I am finally closer to settling on her design than ever before. While I do love scale plating, it actually discouraged me from drawing my own dragonself, and that sort of thing is supposed to be easy, isn't it? Relaxing. Your fursona, scalesona, etc--it should be something you can draw when nothing else will come out. And Thadd has never really been that way. So I've nixed most of her scales, her exceedingly long toes, her mantle, and edited her wings a lot.
And now she just about is. Thadd is a good example of how I draw dragons, too--she represents all my favourite things about them. Big claws, big "paws" headcrests, scales, long, narrow faces, the nosespike--pretty much everything.
Ever since my brief obsession with pterodactyl wing anatomy(I haven't posted anything here; Mek was the only direct victim, poor boy) I now draw my dragons' wings to resemble pterosaurs'. It just makes sense to me, I spose.
I've never been able to nail down actual horns on my dragons. Never in a way that I liked. And one day, I drew, on another dragon, the headcrests you see here on Thadd--and they clicked. Since then, while I actually prefer horns, I am exploring this new avenue. These remain my favourite scalecrests, hence why they are present on Thadd.
Thadd, however, is not one hundred percent dragon. She is also part "drakkel" which is a cousin link between drakes and dragons--in my universes, "drakes" are dragons without wings, and are incapable of breathing fire. Drakkels possess devolved wings on which the thumbclaw has become massive. They use it to spear their prey when hunting.
Thadd's wings are a mix of drakkel lanceclaws and dragon wings. They alone are incapable of any lift, so Thadd has to utilize magic in order to fly. Even then, Thadd prefers to use her long legs for running--another thing she inherits from drakkel heritage, along with her shortened tail. Thadd's a bit of an awkward flyer anyway, with her long, gangly legs, and her body isn't the most flexible thing ever. However, Thadd is also underweight, which gives her some small extra lift. Being underweight isn't something Thadd can help. Like a Russian Wolfhound, Thadd actually eats a little less than what her size and metabolism demand. Russian wolfhounds--big dogs that don't eat like big dogs.
Instead of spiney membrane-fin-things like you see on dragons now and then, Thadd's extra lift comes from large, thin, sturdy plate scales that function almost like feathers.
Hmm, studying this closer, I see I actually messed up that bit of membrane on her wrist closest to the viewer. Ah well, I'll do better next time.

Thadd is flying just off the coast of Zhatica. Zhatica is a flat world. Instead of a sea of water, it is surrounded by a massive skirt of clouds, from which superstorms are generated and move across Zhatica biannually on migratory patterns. Thadd's pretty far out, to the point where the edge of the cloudsea is actually visible, way out where the sun sinks into the clouds at nightfall.
That is another planet hovering a few billion miles away, and no, the sun is not painted wonkily. Zhatica actually only has half of a sun. The seasons come and go with its waxing and waning--when the sun's face is turned away, winter falls, as it turns back, spring ensues, and then summer. And so on.
Done yammering now.
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