Another in the kite family of draconiformes, this one’s a large and particularly aggressive species. If the cerulean kite is equivalent to a caiman or other small crocodilian reptile, the emperor kite is the saltwater croc of its kind.
In other news…
If you don’t think Twitter has a practical use, you’re not using it right. My personal approach is to find people who spend more time than I do combing the internet for cool stuff, then following them and scanning their feeds for links and whatnot. It’s surprisingly useful and efficient as time-wasting methods go. Every so often there’s a real gem, though.
Julie Dillon is one of the premier young illustrators to come out of the same generation of artists as myself. I’ve been aware of – and impressed by – her work for some time now, and she’s one of the artists I follow on Twitter. An hour or two ago Julie retweeted a link to a theme project by another young artist: Char Reed. I’d not seen her work before but she shows a lot of potential and I’m looking forward to seeing where she goes.
For now, though, Char has recently kicked off a series of griffin paintings that you need to go look at right now. She’s doing something I’ve done from time to time and seen done well before only on rare occasions. To wit, Char is creating nicely detailed mashups of different animals than just the typical lion-and-eagle griffin. My favorite such pieces are both by friends, actually…David Deen’s Griffin of Paradise (sorry it’s not in his gallery or there’d be a link!) and Ruth Thompson’s Eye of the Storm.
I’m glad to see another artist getting into series work. It’s something that I think makes for an excellent kind of creative exercise, and there’s nothing like a theme to help produce a coherent body of work.
Char’s series is already inspiring me to pick something up that I’ve been letting languish. A couple months ago I found myself reworking an older concept: a griffin based on the bateleur eagle, one of the most striking birds of prey. I did several speedpaint studies of the creature, including this one:
Detail:
There. I’ve said something in public about it. Now I’ll have to finish it.
Thanks for the mention and I’m so glad my project has helped spur your own creations! That’s definitely a goal behind what I’m doing with the project. I have a section on my #AllGryphons group on Deviantart dedicated to collecting great examples of gryphon art. I’d love to add this guy too if you have a gallery there! Feel free to email me or link me via Twitter!
Take care and keep creating, your gryphon looks awesome!