It gives me great joy to know that adults have taken up coloring. Our modern society encourages people to be who they are, and if we want to be a person who colors, then I say go for it
Creating this coloring book was a labor of love. I have been crazy about dragons my entire life. I started drawing them when I was only five years-old.
Dragons have been drawn and written about for about 1500 years in both European and Asian cultures. So this book contains illustrations of both. While I was doing research for this book I was reminded that not all dragons have wings. Both cultures drew them both with and without wings. The only thing that all dragons have in common are horns and teeth.
Most of the drawings are based on woodcuts from Medieval Europe and modern Asia. When I lived in Japan I was very excited when I discovered dozens of woodcuts of dragons at an incredibly low price. I think they were for tourists, but I didn't care. I bought a bunch of them and have now translated them into illustrations for this book.
Another thing that I think people will enjoy about this book is the variety in the types of images that I am offering you. As always, I hope that your finished picture will be worthy of hanging on your wall. With that in mind, I have created a mix of complex and less complicated illustrations. I consider a design complex when it contains images such as geometrics or very detailed items. The less complicated designs, mostly from the Japanese woodcuts, contain less detail and may be successfully colored by younger members of your family (if you want to share).
There is one page that contains four identical images that either you or your child may color. These images contain an illustration of a knight attacking a dragon and the words, "This Book Belongs To." This page may be removed from the book and copied as many times as you like for your children's books. (Or you may color it once and take it to Kinko's to be printed in color). Our culture used to have the habit, both children and adults, of pasting tags like these into the front cover of every book they owned. It would be a nice habit to revive, especially for children. My granddaughter loves them.
To your artistic success and fun