The original dragon character was not even one of my own creation, at least not its basis. Simply put, it's Vegeta, but a '00s-style noodle dragon - nothing more, nothing less. 2004 was a year heavily steeped in fandom and the birth of exposure to online communities and the concepts therein. It was also the year of introduction to digital art beyond MSPaint, as I had obtained Paint Shop Pro 8 and began using it to color scanned drawings for the first time.

In addition to Pokémon fanart and random animals/creatures, a defining subject of this period was Vegeta and things relating to my fixation on him. However, I was a bit different of an obsessed, artistically-inclined fangirl in that I often let my self-awareness of my unrefined skill hold me back from outright drawing the characters I liked because I knew I wouldn't "do them justice" so to speak. Sometimes I drew them anyway, but when I couldn't bring myself to, a workaround I used at the time was to draw the character as some other creature I DID feel I could draw at a passable level. This was first done in 2003 with Kenshin (as a Pikachu), and again in 2004 with Vegeta as a dragon.

GALLERY

A wallpaper made from that first drawing. I was really into making wallpapers back then - something I haven't done in ages!



Here are a few other things from 2004. One is also on the miscellaneous dragon page, but the others are related to an OC I was using to represent myself at the time.



Until 2023, the Vegeta dragon was only revisited once in 2008, as a brief subject for art style/expression practice alongside other characters from 2003-04.