Three-Headed Dragon

It was a scorching hot day in Thailand and I was visiting the Wat Chedi Luang temple in Chiang Mai.

As I gingerly walked around the temple grounds, in my backpacker uniform (sandals and linen pants,) I spotted a pair of 5-headed serpent statues.

They were the welcoming committee to anyone who climbed the stairs leading to the altar at the top. I found a bench to admire their majesty and broke out my sketchbook from my backpack.

From my angle, I could only see 3 of the 5 heads and figured that would have to do for a drawing. I wanted to sit there all day, but it was an excruciatingly HOT day in the middle of November.

Then again, I was also surrounded by Southeast Asian jungle. So I took a picture and bounced around different coffee shops throughout Chiang Mai to work on it.

There was one cafe where I barely drew at all because the owner’s tiny white dog named Ponzai kept me busy bringing a ball for us to play fetch with!

By the time I finished this drawing, I realized how challenging it truly was for me. At that point in my trip, I never really pushed myself enough to keep adding details to drawings I thought were “good enough.”

In fact, there was a little voice in my head that kept telling me it would take too long to draw and to not even bother starting, but I ignored it!

As I begrudgingly kept drawing more and more dots, even when I didn’t want to continue, the beauty in this piece really came to life.

In hindsight, I am SO glad I pushed through the doubts and created this drawing to commemorate my time in Chiang Mai.

This drawing is probably my favorite one from the past few months traveling the world.