Smaugust 2025 art challenge (there are dragons)

I'm told there is a picture here of last years Smaugust art challenge here, but IG is blocked on my network.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C-EIhsRJHGi/

Smaugust sounds fantastic where we make dragon inspired art every day for a month. I think the kind of art is open, so it could be drawing, food, photography,  painting,  or whatever.  External prompts are fun.  It's exactly what I am looking for.  But if I'm going to paint it, I'll need time to gather stuff together before it begins.

So...yeh, kind of wondering if anyone would like to help?   Maybe someone smart with IG might be able to find the picture?  Or maybe the IG user posted this years prompts already?

And maybe, just maybe,  some here might have fun joining in the fun?

I was thinking about choosing 20 prompts to do in the month as August tends to be a touch busy.

I don't have IG, but I was able to see the post and I took a screenshot of the first 6 pictures and the post at the top. Is this what you wanted?

Beautiful!   Thank you.

It looks like a good list.  I think I'll start the prep work soon.

Anyone else interested in joining the challenge? I could see a lot of ideas that work with that list like cooking or photos.

r ranson wrote:Anyone else interested in joining the challenge? I could see a lot of ideas that work with that list like cooking or photos.

I'm no artist, but my plushy dragons might want to join in the fun if I dig the camera out. It will give them some good excuses to get up to even more mischief!

I would love to see that.  

Thinking about dragons....

Ever since someone told me dinosaurs evolved into chickens, I can't shake the idea that dragons evolved into geese.  Mighty strong wings, fearsome bite, hiss like fire, unwaveringly loyal.

I wonder if it might be something to explore.

People generally put together their own prompt lists whenever drawing challenges roll around. Since it’s still the start of July, it’s a bit early to be looking for lists that will be relevant this year, but definitely feel free to use lists from previous years! It’s all about having fun!

I think I'm spoiled as whenever I've tried an art challenge like inktober, I've managed to find the list at least 6 weeks before it starts.  

Art challenges are difficult to see through to the end without a lot of planning, so most seem to release their lists early.  Just planning two so far has taken about an hour each with thumbnail experiments wit composition, finding props or source photos, etc.  I'm still not happy with the results.

When I read blogs or watch videos on "how to complete a 30 day art challenge " the number one thing suggested is to plan ahead and have the sources and composition finished before the month starts.

Mashing up two of your threads, you wrote about people collecting hobby supplies yesterday in another thread, and the first thing I thought of was a dragon on a giant stash of yarn, or with a tail wrapped around a Michael's crafts store.

I wish I got a dragon when I had a chance.  2025, canada, and life are in the way.  

There is a strong temptation to use the prompts and my wizzard

Or maybe the challenge is to suggest dragon without showing it.

Still undecided.

I found this.

Not sure if it helps...

Neat.
Thanks for finding that.

I don't Facebook, so I won't be joining the main challenge.  I also don't know if I want to do all 30 as I've only got about an hour a day to dedicate to this.

My thumbnail sketches are going slow.  Thumbnails are supposed to be low stress fun, but I find them horribly scary.

But I wondered if i could use this constable picture which he named "after the storm" now called something like hedleigh.

I might try posing one of my needle felted dragons for the challenge! I probably won't get many pictures done, but joining in the fun sounds, well, fun!

One of these days, I need to make myself a dragon. Nearly every dragon I have made has flown from my house. But, I'm making one for my niece's birthday, so I might just borrow it and post it around before I give it to her at the end of the month :D.

So are we posting here? And following the 2024 prompt? Or just winging it, as dragons are so wont to do themselves...

Oh, and it seems my plushies are getting into the idea.

Serra, who is an earth-dragon and as old as the hills, has always claimed that Smaug is one of her multitudinous offspring. And she is greatly looking forward to seeing everyone's images of him...



Oh, and that is not my original copy of The Hobbit. Mine was a white softback one that I was given when I was seven years old and fell apart page by page as I read it because the binding was so bad. I inherited this and a set of LOTR dvds from my brother in law a few years ago and consider it to be a worthy replacement.

Burra Maluca wrote:So are we posting here? And following the 2024 prompt? Or just winging it, as dragons are so wont to do themselves...

I'm good either way.  What works for you?
(Mostly I'm just practicing with the old list because I can't find the new one yet)

If I go with photography, I could see posting most days.

If I go the art path, I might just choose one or two per week and paint those as still life.  Either way, posting them here works.

I think i found my inspiration for ash

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqx2zzn53pqo

The new pterosaur has been named Eotephradactylus mcintireae, meaning 'ash-winged dawn goddess'

It might also do for fossil with a bit of jiggerypokery

r ranson wrote:I think i found my inspiration for ash

Mine have been threatening to explore the inner regions of the rocket mass heater for all the bits I failed to clean out.

They're gonna need a good bath after that!

And they have something up their sleeves for 'fossil' too...

Shall we go with last year's prompt list so we can begin to get our heads around it?

Yes.  Let's go with last year's prompts.

If you need help knowing how to draw a dragon, here's one of my favoritie tutorials. It's 16 years old, and I think it's truly stood the test of time:

For more dragon themed-fun, you can play the Trogdor video game for free. Apparently, there's also now a board game...but that costs money.

Look at those tiny little thatched roof cottages!

As the first prompt is fruit, I found a dragon fruit in the grocery store.  It's perfect...now.

Does anyone know if this is best in the fridge or counter?

So my plan...

A drawing or at least photo shoot with each days prompt.  Although some of these prompts, I have no idea what to do with them.

If anything inspires, I will try a quick painting (maybe 2 to 4 hours) to play with the idea further.

r ranson wrote:As the first prompt is fruit, I found a dragon fruit in the grocery store.  It's perfect...now.

Does anyone know if this is best in the fridge or counter?

Ooh you lucky thing!

We're still waiting for our first. We got as far as a flower once, but never managed fruit. The girls were *very* excited! But ultimately disappointed..

Can't help you on the question of where to store them though, sorry...

Wow!  I never imagined growing one.  If it tastes good, I'll have to try it.

"MUM!!! YOU PICKED THE LEMONS???!!!"

"Yes Rosa. There were only three left and they looked like they were going to fall off and I wanted to put some in with the bones to make bone broth so I picked all three. I thought we could use half of one in the broth and freeze the others for future batches."

"But mum..." Rosa sniffed, "I wanted us to go and take photos of them on the tree for the first day of the Smaugust challenge..."

"Oh Rosa I'm so sorry. What is the theme exactly?"

"Fruit."

"OK, maybe we can go out together and see what other fruit we can find."

"Well it won't be the same. But maybe we could make it work. Can Spot come too? Only she's better at climbing trees than I am."



And just like that I managed to volunteer myself for a whole month of taking photos and writing stories...

"So Rosa, have you been given a definition of what fruit is? It can mean different things to different people..."

Rosa thought for a moment and declared that fruit was something that grew on a tree for us to eat. Which seems a good sort of definition for us to start off with. So I grabbed my camera and off we went to see what fruit we could find.

First of all we went to investigate what was happening in the fig tree.



It had already given us one crop and is  busy producing the second, which will be ready in a few more weeks.

"So are these fruits, Rosa? According to your definition..."

"Oh yes!" agreed Rosa. "They grow on a tree and the tree wants us to take them and eat them. So there are definitely fruit!"

Spot, the chameleon, didn't seem quite so convinced. But she did agree that they did meet Rosa's definition.

"Fig trees are strange," pondered Spot. "I don't think I've ever seen a flower on them..."

I took the photo and then we went off to see what else we could find.

"The nashi pear tree has fruit!" squealed Rosa gleefully. "It's only a baby but it's doing its best. Such a good little tree..."



It is indeed a good little tree. It was even smaller last year when it fruited for the very first time and I ended up with garden chairs holding the young branches up as the fruit was bending them right down but I didn't want to remove the fruit as we wanted to know what they were like to eat.

Everyone agreed that pears were fruit, and that the little tree was happy for us to take them and eat them when they were ripe.

And then we had a look in the persimmon tree.



"They are still very small," noted Spot "and a lot of the baby ones fell off when mum was a bit lax with the watering, but Austin got the grey water set up a couple of weeks ago so that it's easier to keep the thirstier trees topped up when mum's a bit overwhelmed and doesn't keep up with the watering well enough."

"They are one of the last fruits to ripen in the autumn so it's fine if they're small now. Just don't eat them before they are ripe -the ones on that tree are crazy astringent until they're ripe!"

And then we had a look at the Sichuan pepper tree.



"Be careful Spot, it has some nasty thorns!" I advised.

I needn't have worried though. Spot knows more than I do about climbing trees.

"It has a good crop this year." Spot noted. "And they are just starting to develop a hint of pink."

Rosa frowned a little and thought hard as she stared at the little berries.

"Are they fruit though?" she pondered.

"Well the definition we're using at the moment means that if they grow on trees and the tree wants us to eat them then they are fruit. So what do you think?"

Rosa thought for a moment. "I guess they are. We pick them for the spicy, citrusy, mouth numbing husk around the seed. Not for the seed itself. And we usually at least attempt to get rid of the seeds because they taste all gritty in your mouth."

"I think birds eat them and swallow them whole and then poop the seeds out intact," noted Spot, "which means that yes, the plant would want you to eat them."

"I guess they count then." But you could see that Rosa was beginning to wonder about her definition.

"Let's go look at one of the olive trees next!"



Rosa thought for just a moment and declared that yes, olives met her definition of fruit.

Meanwhile, Spot had somehow managed to climb up onto one of the young prickly pear plants.



"I'm absolutely certain these are fruit!" Spot declared. "The flower comes first, then a sweet, delicious thing that's full of seeds. It's obviously a fruit!"

I was very excited about these fruits. I'd grown three of these prickly pears from seed, which was supposed to be from a red-fruiting variety and two of them are fruiting for the first time this year, so with a bit of luck I'll be able to test them later in the year to see what colour they are and what they taste like.

Rosa however, was beginning to have doubts about her definition.



"But if it's a fruit, and fruits grow on trees, then is a prickly pear plant a tree?" she pondered as she peered at the stem. Or was it a trunk? Did it count as a tree?

After a bit of thought she decided that yes, a prickly pear has a woody stem and lives for a long time so it probably counts as a tree. So her definition still held good.

Spot had moved onto the second potentially red-fruiting prickly pear plant that I'd grown from seed and was looking a little concerned...

To be continued...

"Some of the fruits on this prickly pear plant are shrivelling up and turning yellow. Any idea why, mum?" asked Spot.



She was right. I'd noticed it about a week ago. It seems that one by one each of the fruits are giving up and falling off. I've never seen this happen on any of my prickly pears before and couldn't figure out why. I'd even watered it, which is something I almost never do for prickly pears, but the fruits had continued to give up, one by one.

The only other thing I could think of was that maybe they never got pollinated, but everything I could find out about them suggested that they don't need another plant to pollinate them as they are self-fertile. And my experience has until now confirmed this. But this is a seed-grown plant, so maybe, just maybe, it's different? And maybe there was no other prickly pear flowering at the same time as this one? It was the last of them to flower this year, so it's possible.

Rosa, in the meantime, was checking out the orange tree.



This one seemed pretty straightforward to her and she declared oranges to be fruit then went to find Spot's new hiding place in the greengage tree.



It's another young tree which gives the sweetest, most delicious little plums imaginable and Rosa declared "Fruit!" almost straight away.

Spot, however, got distracted by the blackberries, which are just beginning to ripen.

"Hey Rosa," she called. "Do you want a blackberry?"

Rosa loves blackberries. They are part of the rose family, and she loves roses. She is named for them after all. She accepted the first ripe blackberry of the season and thought carefully as she ate it, even more carefully so as not to stain herself. She is very particular about maintaining her pinkness.

Were they fruit? She was pretty sure they were. And yet they don't grow on trees...

"Mum, do you think my definition should be 'grow on plants' rather than 'grow on trees'?" she asked.

"Possibly. Shall we pick some tomatoes to have with lunch while you think about it?"

"Oooh yes please!" and she ran to the GAMCOD bed to hunt for tomatoes.



She stared at them for a moment. Then said "They are fruit, aren't they? But they don't grow on trees. I'm going to change my definition!"

We picked enough to have with lunch and I went to pop them into the house.

"Mum can we go and see what's growing next door? They have lots of fruit trees and they said we could go on there any time we want."

"Yes I think that would be ok. But no pinching any of their fruit!"

"Of course not mum. They give us plenty anyway and we would never take from them without permission. They put a lot of work into their fruit trees and keep them beautifully."

So we went to have a look to see if they had anything interesting.

"Look mum - they still have a couple of lemons on their lemon tree!"



Rosa gazed wistfully at a very pretty lemon and I felt a pang of guilt for picking the last three off our tree without consulting her beforehand.

"They have some ripe oranges still, too!"



"Why so they have! That's much later than any of ours. Though he's a bit of a collector when it comes to citrus - he has at least one of every type he can find. He gives us orange lemons and yellow limes sometimes. It's confusing..."

Then they found a chestnut tree.



I've had no luck growing chestnut trees as there is chestnut blight in the area, but this one is grafted onto resistant rootstock. I keep hoping that it will put up some shoots from below the graft that I can scrounge to grow my own resistant rootstock but no luck yet. I've tried with seed from trees that seemed to have escaped, or survived, the blight but no luck with those yet either.

Rosa stared thoughtfully at the chestnuts growing on the tree.

"Well Rosa, what do you think? Are they fruit."

"I don't think the tree wants us to eat them." she decided eventually. "There's no tasty or sweet or juicy bit surrounding them. Just a big seed. And if you eat that, you're going to crunch it up and then it won't grow. So I don't think it's a fruit because fruit is meant to be eaten."

"That's what I think too." I agreed.

"Can we look up behind the house? I think the quince tree that survived the fire is fruiting and we should get a photo."

"Come on then. Let's go and see."

On the way we passed a rose bush so naturally Rosa stopped to have a look.



"I think rose hips are fruit too. They don't grow on a tree but they do want birds to eat them. Maybe not us, but birds."

"Well you're a dragon. And I tend to think that birds are just feathery dragons. Hard to know where to draw the line sometimes..." I agreed.

"I think birds are dragons too." Rosa decided. "And chameleons!"

"Speaking of which, where is she?"

"Probably half way up the quince tree by now. She likes climbing trees!"

And so she was.



I took the photo, and Rosa declared quince to be a fruit.

"While we're up here, can we go and find the apple tree we scrump from on the abandoned bit of land between the two properties?"

"Well I'm sure we can, but it was never completely abandoned. And our neighbours have bought it now. They told us years ago that no-one ever came to harvest it and that we could take the fruit if we wanted rather than let it go to waste."

"Well it does seem a shame to let it all waste. So why did nobody harvest it?"

"Oh it was tied up with an usufruct when the original owner died probably and the person who inherited it didn't really want it but couldn't sell it for years."

"Tied up with a what?"

"An usufruct."

"That's a really ugly word. What does it mean?"

"Well I guess it sounds pretty ugly in English. In Portuguese it's an usufruto."

"Ooooh - now that's a really pretty word! And it's perfectly obvious what it means now - use of the fruit!"

"When a land-owner dies in Portugal, the land is divided up between the children. But the spouse retains usufruto on it for their lifetime. So there are loads of tiny bits of land all over the place because after a few generations the land has been divided again and again and the current owners often have no interest in it but can't sell it because their surviving parent still has usufruto.  When we had the fire here two years ago, there was a bit of land near the neighbours' house which hadn't been cleaned and they were out with the firemen nearly all night battling with the fire there so it didn't reach their house. And since then every time a bit of land adjoining theirs has come up for sale, they've bought it so they can keep it cleaned. There is a law in Portugal that any rustic land has to be offered to owners of neighbouring land, so when an usufruto expires it's becoming quite normal for it to be snapped up by anyone living nearby. And I think it's a good thing!"

"So does usufruto mean that all they can do with it is harvest the fruit?"

"No. If you have usufruto you can do pretty much anything with the land, just as if you owned it outright. Except you can't do anything to devalue it."

"Anything?" asked Rosa thoughtfully. "So usufruto means more than just my definition of fruit?"

"They can live on it, rent it out, whatever. Fruit in this case would mean something more like 'fruits of the land' or 'fruits of your labour'. Pretty much any benefit that the land could provide. Not just stuff that grows on trees.

We reached the apple tree and I dutifully took the photo.



And then we headed back to the house.

Rosa was rather quiet and thoughtful on the way home, and later I overheard her talking with Spot about language and words and how a word tends to stand for a concept, but that the boundaries of a concept tend to change over time and between languages. Spot is a bit of a linguist and speaks all sorts of different languages, including ones that depend on colour changes rather than words.

And then Rosa disappeared into the kitchen and I heard sounds of cutting and chopping and the clinking of bowls. And she appeared triumphantly a few minutes late.

"Look mum - I made you a fruit salad!"

I looked into the bowl.

There was indeed a fruit salad in it.

Cucumber. Tomatoes. Sweet pepper. Olives. And a dressing of olive oil and vinegar with some ground pepper off our pepper tree.

"Why thankyou Rosa!"

And I noticed the way her eyes sparkled mischievously. And I suspected she'd drawn her own boundaries around her own use of the word fruit.

It was delicious, too.

Only I forgot to take a photo, so I'm going to post one of some blackberries instead...

I forgot it was August.

Harvest day for plums and, oh look!

My son's Day 1 entry for Smaugust

I love that he drew a fruit inspired dragon. So cool!

My entry is not nearly as fun. But, here's a dragon named Ivy visiting the peaches, trying to encourage them to ripen faster.

Smaugust Day two, by Oliver

Ivy has gone on a journey, looking for ash.

Rosa wanted to have go at the ash prompt, and thought that she'd ask Iggy to help.

She figured that ash was part fire and part earth, and Iggy, whose full name is Igneus, is a hybrid fire-earth dragon so he'd probably have some idea where to start. He also reads a lot and likes to regurgitate what he's been reading.

"Ash is very rich in potassium." Iggy explained. "In fact the word potassium comes from pot-ash, ie the ash left after burning wood. The chemical symbol for potassium is K, from the Latin word 'kalium', which itself is derived from the Arabic word 'al-qali' meaning 'ash'. Wood ash is caustic, with a high pH. And this is also why things with a pH greater than 7, which is neutral, are described as al-kaline."

"Iggy," declared Rosa, "you've been reading too much. You sound like you swallowed an encyclopaedia..."

"Sorry." Iggy apologised. "Shall we go and see if there is some ash left in the rocket mass heater that mom forgot to clean out for the summer?"

"Oooh that's a good idea."

So off they went to see what they could find.



"There's some in there!" squealed Rosa in delight. "What should we do with it?"

"You can use it to make soap," Iggy suggested, "and the potassium in it means it's excellent for putting in the garden, especially to help plants produce fruit."

"Ooooh that's a good idea. There are lots of plants in the garden that might want it then. Shall we take it out to them?"

Iggy peered into the darkness of the firebox.

"I think there's someone in there."

Rosa peered in too.

"I think you might be right. Mum! Mum! There's someone in the firebox! All covered in ash. Can you rescue them? Pleeeeeeze!!!"

So I went over to have a look and reached in, carefully, to see if I could rescue whoever was in there.



The dragons stared at the ash-coated figure for a minute, speechless.

Iggy thought he recognised him from somewhere.

Rosa peered intently. Then listened carefully. "He's crying! Oh you poor thing. What happened? Why are you crying?"

The figure sobbed a little, then through his tears he managed a few words.

"I was dancing with my partner, Kali. And then she burst into flames and turned into ash!"

Rosa was speechless. What on earth do you say to someone when they tell you something as terrible as that?

I thought I should intervene before it all got too much for the young dragons and scooped them all up, including the strange, ashen, dancing figure, and took them back upstairs.

Rosa dusted her new friend off and they all sat on the foot of my bed while we tried to figure out what to do next.

Iggy dug out some books he thought might help, and Rosa tried to distract her new friend and get him to stop shedding tears everywhere, but there was no stopping him



I shed a few tears myself, as I know the pain of losing a partner. But I also know that those tears have to be allowed out. There's no use bottling them all up. So I tried to explain to Rosa that she shouldn't try to distract her new friend, or keep drying his eyes. She would probably do more good by supporting her friend and encouraging him to let those tears fall freely and express his feelings. Rosa tried hard to do as I suggested, but it was very hard for her as all her instincts kept making her want to dry his eyes and just hug him till he felt better.

"There he is! I KNEW I'd seen him before! Look!" exclaimed Iggy excitedly. "It's Shiva!"

"So do you know anything about him?"

"Hang on. I'll look him up..." Iggy tapped a few buttons on my laptop then read what came up on screen. "Two of the most important figures in Hindu mythology are Goddess Kali and Lord Shiva.. Each represents a different dimension, but their story and symbols are intertwined. The bond between Kali and Shiva is unique and complex, and it represents the ceaseless cycle of birth and death."

"How is death a cycle? Isn't it an end?" asked Rosa, rather astonished at the concept. "And if it's a cycle, why is Shiva crying? Mum, do you know?"

Oh now they were big questions. How do I explain them to a young, overly sensitive dragon like Rosa. Just do my best, I guess...

"Well Rosa, it's hard to explain. When you lose a partner, it's like having your soul ripped in half and it feels like you'll never recover. But if you allow yourself to feel all those emotions and work through them, allow yourself to cry out all the tears, magic can begin to happen."

Rosa listened, but looked utterly unconvinced.

This wasn't going to be easy. But then I thought of an analogy. The fire! Rosa was young, but she was old enough to remember the fire here two years ago. I'll try to explain using that.

"Rosa, do you remember the fire here two years ago?"

"How could I forget?"

"Do you remember how black and dead everything looked afterwards? I have some photos somewhere. Here, look at this one..."



Rosa's eyes began to well up with tears again.

"And do you remember how eventually the rains came, as though the sky was crying onto the scorched earth, and it made floods which caused almost as much damage as the fire?"



"Yes I do mum. It's almost too terrible to remember.

"Well tears are like the rain. They are a signal that it's time for life to start up again. Do you remember how the first green shoots started to grow up through the ashes?"



And then more...



"And then we began to get our breath back and had shed our tears, we gathered seeds and went up into the forest to plant them. Serra came to help me!"



"And some of the burned trees began to grow back from the roots."



Rosa's eyes began to look more hopeful.

"You see Rosa, Shiva and Kali are like dragons and phoenixes, or like Vermelha and Índigo - they are two sides of the same coin, one can't exist for long without the other."



"So the tears will bring new life, the same way rain does?"

"I think so, yes."

"And the ash will help the plants grow, giving substance to the life force?"

"Yes."

Then Rosa knew what she had to do.

She took Shiva by the hand and told him not to worry, Kali would be back as soon as possible. She just needed to take the ashes and pour them onto the ground and let time and nature and tears work their magic. And off she went to gather all the ashes and take them to where they needed to be - at the base of a fruit tree so they could bloom and make the world fruitful again.



Shiva was still losing a few tears, but he at least felt loved again now. Rosa put him gently on the shelf while he waited for his Kali to take on her new form and dance with him once more. And he dreamed of that day, and of her, and of the dances they would share for all eternity.

Sorry if all that was a bit heavy.

This should lighten the mood a bit - enjoy!

I love everyone's dragons so much,  thanks for this!

I spent so much time today thinking about ash.  Ash trees.  Ash mounts in that Brandon Sanderson book.  Ash from wildfires caused by irritable dragons.  

Then suddenly, I remembered the ash dinosaur from the news link upthread.  



Dragons always remind me of geese and geese of dragons.  If dinosaurs are chickens, then surely there is a goose connection with dragons.  I know a few geese that would gladly spit fire if they don't get their morning fresh water on schedule.

So I tried to leen into the goose angle and made the eye bigger because big eye is scary.  But now I think it might be cute.  

Smaugust Day 3 by Oliver

I've really enjoyed seeing all the entries so far.

I'm having a break today, but looking forward to attempting something for tomorrow!

Storm reminded me of constable so I did a quick study of his painting Spring, dated 1832.



I turned his birds into dragons.

I used a mixture of pan pastel and charcoal.  I only used pan pastel once in class.  I'm not really sure how or when to use it so I put it in my drawing kit in hopes I can play with it more.  It shaved a lot of time off this drawing.   Given the chance, it would be nice to get a white and middle grey or sanguine colour too.