[Old description from DA]

This was a gift for one of my favourite teachers I have ever had, my English 12 teacher. He taught us countless life lessons that I continue to hold onto dearly. Only two other teachers I've had besides him could really conjure up quite the calibre of thought into one's mind to the point where you'd never want the lesson to stop. You could sit there for hours discussing and enriching your mind with literature that would otherwise just be another piece of writing and not be able to relate it to yourself. I wish I could go back to my first semester where I looked forward to attending that class each and every single day. Haha. I remember there was this one time where my entire class was hyped to attend another one of his awesome classes, and then in walks a substitute. Honestly, it looked like everyone there wanted to skip the class because any substitute next to his teachings looked bad. XD

Anyways, this piece represented one of the major lessons he taught us in the class which is that we all have our own demons to face, and that the path through life is never easy. One other thing I wanted to add was that I drew the knight super tiny to represent how insignificant we are in the face of so many obstacles we have to face in our lifetime. In a sense, sometimes our fears and our 'demons' so to speak, can seem unbearably overwhelming at times.

I spent too many hours working on this piece, but I think the overall result was absolutely satisfactory. I wanted to add individual scales onto the dragon, but unfortunately, I didn't have the time or skill to pull it off. One day I'll learn. I got another chance to play with lighting and my first time with lava, so that was pretty cool.

I was disappointed that the actual printout was darker than this, not quite as vibrant, but that's all right, I guess. It could have been worse - my lava could have turned brownish like what happened when printing my phoenix print once or or twice. I was totally thrilled watching his reaction when he received this piece. He couldn't believe that I had made the entire thing all by myself, and the message I wrote on the back of the frame... Haha, well, he'll cherish the piece forever. I love 'im to bits. I will definitely have to come back to visit.

Hope you guys like it.

Credits
Art: © Silberry
Character(s): (Original Character) © Silberry
Finished On: June 17, 2009
Tools: Scanned pencil sketch, Photoshop 7.0 with tablet for lineart, and mouse with Photoshop 7.0 for the colouring
Layers: 54
Time taken: About a month on and off.