Here's the chapter 8 picture. I managed to kick it out today. I struggled with different ideas for this chapter. There was a lot of action but this image of Ian using his magic to make the mother raptor dragon sleep seemed to be the most important in the chapter. I didn't want to copy the painting of the egg run, a chase that occurs soon after this image, as I really wanted to emphasize the importance of Ian and his powers. Felix and Pip are seated behind Ian on the raptor dragon. The head of another raptor to the left would be that of the other three children. Triton and Dagmar seated on Dagger, Triton's thresher dragon, would be further out of frame still.

I thought I'd toss this wallpaper on my blog as well. It's the first wallpaper I threw together on photoshop. I still think it looks kind of cool. The silhouette of Triton and his dragon Dagger on the mountain spire is the image I put in the book with some slight modifications.

I just discovered this wallpaper stuffed away in a file on my office computer. I thought I had lost it when I had deleted some things a while back. I'm glad to see it again. It was the first painting I had made for my story. Just right click and select make as background from the menu if you want to use it as a wallpaper for your computer.

This is the picture for chapter 7. I could have gone several different directions with this picture but I didn't want to give too much away. Modren makes an appearance in this chapter, a character that would have been exciting to show with flames wrapping around him as he aims his bow and arrow. I'm anticipated that I will struggle with choices for pictures to depict future chapters as well but I know some images will be obvious. And, yes, the size of the picture frame for each picture is no coincidence, I visualized this book as a movie from the start so it is written to compliment the pacing that a movie might have. The pictures just, for me, help to push that idea further.

Now that The Wizards of Pangea is a book, with the help of the Lulu print on demand site, I've decided to begin creating pictures for each of the chapters again. The book that can be purchased now will not include these pictures but maybe some future publication of the book will. This picture is for chapter 6. There are 50 chapters in all so I have my work cut out for me. The boy in the foreground is Ian and the two people in the background are Winston and Dagmar.

A third wallpaper. The bottom band is designed to carry on screen icons.

Here's another wallpaper from an earlier painting I made.

This is a wallpaper I made. I thought it would make a good cover for the book.

I've been a little busy so it took me a few months to finish this acrylic painting. After evading three thorgon warriors on a bridge spanning the Deadmirth canyon and causing one of the warriors to snap an important supporting cable on the bridge, Triton swings from one of the cables to find himself face to face with a demon warrior and his gorgonon dragon on the opposite cliff side. Unarmed, Triton swings back off the canyon wall as the Gorgonon dragon breathes fire at him. His swing brings him around the support posts made from the ribs of a large beast, where he successfully uses his wizard powers to defend himself for the first time.

This was me just playing with drawing people in action poses for the graphic novel. In the end I dropped the idea, but nothing is ever out of the question. The man is an Antheon guardian. The woman is an Ambergale soldier.

This is a drawing of the gossamer dragon. I wanted to get an idea of the size and how it might fold up its massive wings. Since this dragon came from a desert I gave it large hooves instead of claws. And to diminish its aggressive status further, I made it the only dragon in my story that can not breath fire.

This was a study of a gorgonon dragon for the graphic novel. Obviously I'm using the term dragon here loosely. This creature looks nothing like a typical dragon. It's more of a black lion with leathery wings. I decided to keep the term dragon because it could fly and breath fire like any other dragon. My original drawing of the gorgonon was more of a typical dragon but I thought it lacked the fright factor I was looking for. This incarnation was different enough and scary enough that I decided to keep it as the main way for the demons to travel.

This is a study drawing I did of the thresher dragon. This was done as I was concidering creating the story as a graphic novel.

This is an early drawing of Triton on his thresher dragon Dagger flying in the clouds. Triton is wearing his guardian armor. I had done some color book pictures of dinosaurs for my children which inspired the way I happened to finish many of my pen and ink drawings.

This is a picture I drew of Ian. I wanted to show him with the young raptors as he might be seen doing as he helps Dagmar at the dragon hatchery. He has no fear of being in the middle of a group of young raptors as he has the wizarding ability to sense what the dragons are feeling and even control them by imparting his own feelings on them. The bandana tied around his head is to hide the brand of an eye he received as a baby as he was born into the Ambergale kingdom. Ambergale had become a population of females as their kingdom had long ago been cursed by Dragmore. To prevent the curse from killing all who lived in the kingdom every male baby had to be sacrificed to the black fang-claws. The brand of the eye was to designate that he was born into Ambergale and was to be given over to the fang-claws. His mother, secretly a powerful witch, made sure to save her child from such a demise and escaped Ambergale with Ian. She made it as far as Zendaria only to die at its outer wall. Ian survived and was given to an old couple until they too passed away. He was then taken to the orphanage in Dimsbrough where he began his life helping to rear the dragons at Dagmar's hatchery.

This is one of my early drawings of an Antheon soldier with a raptor dragon. I was trying to gauge the size of a raptor dragon compared to a human. I was also testing the look of having a dragon that looked more like a dinosaur with wings than the typical long neck with a narrow snout. Since my story was to take place on ancient Earth, I thought it would be fitting to make the dragons, at least some of them, look like dinosaurs with wings.

These are a few of the people of The Wizards of Pangea. Again, I drew them as a reference as I was writing.

These are some drawings I made for myself to visualize the creatures of The Wizards of Pangea while I was writing. The black fang-claw creature in the middle happens to have been a drawing I made back in 1995, hence the different look compared to the other two.

This would have been the picture that accompanied chapter five. It depicts Triton heading down for a landing at Dagmar's dragon hatchery. Two separate buildings crown a hill surrounded by an apron of trees in the shape of a crescent moon. The building on the left is the orphanage built by Antheon during its early rule of Dimsbrough. The building on the right is the hatchery built by Zendaria after it had battled to take control of Dimsbrough. The current state of Dimsbrough, with the guidance of the wizards, has placed it in a neutral zone free from any kingdom's control opening it up for trade and commerce.

This is a picture that would have been at the head of chapter three. It depicts a scene of Triton, standing in shackles, pleading with Rittan, his closest friend and fellow dragon riding guardian, to defend him against the accusations that he was the one who killed the newly appointed Lord Matriarch of Ambergale.

This is one of several ink and watercolor paintings I created with the idea that I could embellish each chapter with a picture. This would have accompanied the first chapter depicting Triton's flight through the Condorian passages as he attempts to escort Aurora, the newly appointed matriarch, to the Kingdom of Antheon. Many demons riding gorgonon dragons ambush Triton and two other Antheon soldiers then attack Aurora's entourage. When I scanned this picture into photoshop I decided to blur the background the way I had imagined it to be. It actually turned out to give it an almost 3D effect of them zooming along the cliff walls.

Yesterday I made this map of the important areas of the Pangea story on Photoshop. I had drawn the map for myself, or most of it during the earliest phase of writing the story with some small changes along the way, but I really wanted to see it look like an old map drawn on a piece of hide. The three main mountain kingdoms are shown in the largest font. Most of the locations on the map are places that are traveled to by the characters in the Wizards of Pangea story.

This painting took me a little longer. I only have my weekends and vacation time to work on it so it took me a few weeks to finish. After flying all night to the ancient city of Orthinon the children of the orphanage covered themselves in mud to hide their scent and crawled through the tall reeds to grab as many raptor eggs as they could. Dagmar - seen in the comfortable basket seat on Dagger's back with Triton riding at the front - oversaw the expedition with a greedy expectation. The children did not let Dagmar down. Their haul was good but the mother raptors were awakened and quickly gave chase. Ian, the child guiding the raptor dragon at the head of the pack, led them down to a river below the tree tops to escape the angry fire-breathing mother raptors. But the angry mother raptors - not willing to give up their eggs so easily - continued the chase beneath the canopy of trees along a winding river.

This is another acrylic painting that depicts the beginning of the wizards of Pangea. I painted it on a 14"x30" illustration board to emphasize the massive height of the mountain cliffs that surround the kingdom of Antheon. Triton, the king of Antheon's personal guardian, stands on the mountain spire in the foreground with his thresher dragon Dagger. The three gossamer dragons soaring around the Condorian canyon walls bathed in the morning sun carry three riders each. The lead gossamer with the flag carries the newly appointed matriarch of the Ambergale kingdom. She is arriving to form a union between the two great kingdoms. Triton is waiting to escort her through the mountain passages that surround Antheon's western border. But her arrival quickly brings with it many unexpected events. I'm working on another painting depicting a scene that takes place about a quarter of the way into the story. I've gotten the first phase of the painting done; the separate drawings of the dragons being chased on foot up a river in a thick forest. It will include two raptor dragons, like my first painting, carrying three children each and Dagger the thresher dragon, seen in this picture, carrying Triton and another character that appears later in the story, Dagmar - the owner of a dragon hatchery. They will be shown racing away from two large angry raptor mother dragons after having stolen many of their eggs.

This is a picture I've recently painted for my fantasy book the Wizards of Pangea. It's 16"x30" painted with acrylic on illustration board. The title in the lower left was added in photoshop.

This is my first picture for the book depicting a scene from the story. I'm hoping to do more in the coming months.

With added embellishment bordering the top and bottom through photoshop I've created a wallpaper of it for my computer.

Unfortunately I have yet to gain the interest of a publisher for the book, but I am still plugging away at it. After having spent five years writing the book, one year having it edited with money my parents donated to me (thanks a literal thousand times over mom and dad), two years receiving rejections with the help of an agent that I have parted ways with, and taking a year off to build my dream office in my new home, I'm now finally starting to send out to agents once again. It is a very time consuming thing to attempt to get a book published so I'm passing the time by embellishing the story with artwork. I enjoy drawing and painting as much as writing if not more so, so I'm going to continue to create more paintings and hopefully squeeze in a little writing in-between.