My entry for the Catastrophic Dragon challenge over at Art Order.

My stepson (~Tsakta) was a big help with this. He's a little bit dragon mad (aren't we all at that age?) and I asked him for his thoughts on what this kind of dragon might be like. Some of his suggestions that made it into the final visual appearance for my earthquake dragon:

* the dragon's shell being made of massive stony " plates "; that grind against one another, crack and reform with movement

*vestigial wing “bones” that have been broken off and ground down since this dragon spends most of its time underground and its massive weight prohibits flight

*the teeth resembling stalactites and stalagmites making the open mouth of the sleeping dragon resemble a cave

*the club like tail

A couple of things I had in mind while working on this: I wanted it to be MASSIVE and to really give the impression of something big and heavy, despite being only a shell for the catastrophic fury inside it. I also wanted it to live deep within the earth, and it's movements are what cause so much damage on the surface above it. I liked the phrase "Bones of the Earth" which came into play with the decision to expose the rib cage. I went with a greenish-orangish-yellow for the force inside of it to invoke the heat of the magma that the plates float on within the earth, and to differentiate it from the volcanic dragon.

Wish me luck!