"Draconigena Noctiluca" by Rachael Mayo

This is the front cover art for the Lunacon program book. I changed my mind on the cover content almost every week, and finally realized that I did not have enough time left to do the Epic Thingy I had originally planned.

I came up with this instead - it's actually very simple with four elements: Dragon head/wing/hand, dragon tail, moon, and starfield background.

I made each piece separately, scanned each one into Photoshop, then assembled it digitally. Like the rest of my assemblage pieces, there is an analog version that I will mat and frame for the art show.

The analog version looks almost identical to this digital version, so I don't need to upload the analog for comparison this time.

The dragon bits were made with Prismacolor pencils over a watercolor base, with gold paint pen highlights. I cut it out with an X-acto knife when I finished the coloring.

The moon is made of repousse metal (a thin sheet of aluminum) that was originally gold-tinted. I cut out the crescent moon shape, then tooled in the spiral shapes with a dull pencil. I used a thin layer of blue and purple acrylic to enhance the tooled effects.

The background is a whole lot of layers of acrylic paint and gloss medium. What can't really be captured with a scanner or a photograph is the way that it shimmers in the light. There is a subtle layer or two of gold paint, with blues and purples and reds mixed in. I also added little gold, silver, and white acrylic shiny bits.

The original art is about 11x14 inches.