I'm Fired🔥 and Cozy Dragon Companion to Keep You Warm This Season!

Opps, I didn't change the title of the latest newsletter. Ryan told me I was fired. 🤣 Here is a cozy newsletter! -Arielle

Hello everyone!

A little bit ago, one of my favorite brands, Olo, kicked off a sticker contest! They’ve been cooking up a special project and the top three designs would become a part of it.

I jumped at the chance to join in! Not only was it a chance to inspire others, but it’s a great way to connect with the community of Olo artists. And it was a good excuse to work on a cozy dragon design. 🙂

With autumn here, I wanted to channel cozy, chill vibes into this piece. My thoughts wandered over to a cute grumpy little coffee goblin sticker from way back. After all, warm drinks are cozy.

So I wanted to make something like this, but with autumn dragon vibes.

The dragon design wasn’t working out like I wanted. Ryan suggested I look at Tarsiers. These little guys have big expressive eyes and tiny, delicate hands.

Just look how cute they are! Perfect form for a small dragon cuddling up with their hot cup of cocoa!

With the sketch done, I printed it out and used a lightbox to transfer my sketch to marker paper with ink.

The fun part is always…you guessed it, MARKERS! But I can’t make it easy. I wanted to do something a bit more challenging for the mug. For this piece I want to blend a darker top of the mug with a light bottom to give it a nice hand-thrown mug look. Blending this way is hard in marker. You need a lot of in between colors for the blending. Here I used 5 to make this fade.

Check out the final piece!

This piece makes me want to get all cozy and curl up with a warm cocoa on a crisp autumn evening myself. Thanks for joining me on this cozy little journey!

Until next time,

Arielle + Ryan

Need a little extra cozy? Take a look at this snuggled-up Alicorn!