Title: Dragons A to Z

Topic: Dragons of course!

Giga Dragon Sketch on textures by *mattwatier on deviantART

The Leviathan or Whale Dragon by *mattwatier on deviantART

So while I was still at Medomak High School I seemed to have a lot of time on my hands.  I have books filled with pencil drawings some good, some bad, some never finished, and some have hung in my sub conscious and have now become the seeds of books I have done and books I dream of doing.  But I can tell you one thing for certain. I loved to make art that was surreal and about alien like things. I was never for the grotesque I will leave that for my friend Eve. But did have a good run back in in my senior year of make some strange creatures. So for all your viewing pleasure I have brushed off the dust cracked the spine of the book that is held together by only tape and scanned some of it in.  with out further ado.

In this post I want to take a second on what I have produced before computers.  In truth I was trained in college as an oil painter.  I don’t have many of my paintings left either they have been damaged or sold before I converted them into a digital record.

Angel on the Roof Top

An oil painting from my collage years
Smashing Mask

Explorations of one self image, Self Portrait in Oil Paint

Alphabet Soup

Alphabet Soup, and Fishing for a Vowel, A spoof on a Master Painting

It is not surprising that I love using my friends in my  paintings. I have lucked out and have shared time with some of the most beautiful of souls.  Steph is no exception to the rule.  I painted this as a gift for all the kindness that she has shared over the years. Steph is a fantastic actress who helped me get through college years with good spirits and has been one of my closest friends ever since.  Considering her good nature temperament and beauty it seemed fitting to make her into an angel.

He love of purple, Art Nouveau, and butterflies inspired much of this painting and in the end this painting morphed into an angel fairy cross.  Steph became the back cover art to the my upcoming book “The Secret Magics of Maine” as the angel of butterflies.

What is funny is when I sent her a print of this piece (she didn’t know I was making her a painting of her) She was very excited to have a piece of art of mine.  It was only after a co-worker who saw it said “Who made a painting of you. It is beautiful.” did she recognize that I used her for the painting.  I then got a second call with a lot of I love you’s.  It is odd that sometimes it is ourselves that we recognize the least.

Enjoy the painting

The Knitters – hard working beautiful and magical – the three major elements of my illustrations of the Magic Wee Folk

The mostly love creating creatures that shape our world in an invisible way.  The knitters are one of my favorite paintings because it is illustrates one the strongest concepts that surrounds my illustrations of the Magical worlds.  I would love to believe of a world where these small creatures travel in a world besieged by humans and work to build magic and wonder unseen to all of us.

Magic fea are always a wonderment for me.  I have always imagined the world made up with small creatures that create and shape the world around us.   The Knitters is a great example of my general thoughts about the small creatures of the magical worlds.   This painting of a fairy that creatures and shapes the world by knitting the flowers and blossoms of the world with magical thread.  These shy creatures hide from strong sourses of light and do most of their work at night or in the shades of leaves.

The knitter are the creators of flowers and blossoms

Sapphire – A lovely day in a field of goldenrod

A story of the origin of fairies appears in the 1906 Sir J. M. Barrie novel Peter and Wendy. Barrie wrote, “…when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.” I think this is as good a story for the creation of fairies as any.

I believe fairy tales and fairies are one of the greatest wonders we can share with children.  I grew up in the woods of Maine and in my young childhood I often have tried to find these elusive creatures.  When I reached college I was wrapped up in the stories of Avalon and the fairy court described by Shakespeare in A Midsummer’s Night Dream,  I love making art based on these types of creatures. I love to make paintings of the things that you have seen as a child out of the  corner of your eye but have never seen. Fairies can be beautiful, and magical to wicked and ugly they are a great inspiration for art and use them often in the illustrations that I make.

These are the creatures that fuel my imagination and I hope my art based around these creatures inspires you to imagine a little bit more and see the world once again like a child.

The first of many of my paintings is Sapphire the human child turned into a fairy by the Fairy Queen.