Drake thought to challenge herself this year by painting 12 dragons. Each painting takes well over 24 hours to complete; by streaming she has company to interact with while creating intricate fantasy-inspired designs.

“I chose dragons because they are my favorite animal,” the artist said. “Everyone says they’re fake, but they’re out there somewhere.

“From the metaphysical standpoint dragons represent a magnitude of things: strength, power, wisdom, sometimes beauty. They are the perfect animal. The year of the dragon is coming up in the Chinese New Year, so I challenged myself to paint 12 dragons,” she said.

Drake is a lover of all things art. Everything from drawing, painting, ceramics, leather working, and even writing. Drake is self taught in almost everything she does.

Selena Drake

“I started painting around the same time I started drawing, so around 7 or 8,” said Drake. “I don’t know what it was about painting that caught my eye. It just seemed fun to me; something I wanted to try out.”

It wasn’t just painting, or the year of the dragon that gave Drake this idea for a challenge, but a group of people online who discovered and were intrigued by her talent.

“I started livestreaming with games first,” she said. “But after a while that can get boring so I thought, why not try it while I paint?

“It feels different to livestream while I paint because people can actually ask questions and give input and I can respond and interact with them back,” she said.

Although Drake has experience creating in front of a crowd, she does acknowledge how different livestreaming is compared to in-person interaction.

“I’ve done work on cars in front of an audience a few times and it definitely is different,” Drake said. “It feels more intimate when people are walking around and really feel it, whereas with streaming you don’t really get that.

“What I love about livestreaming is that the connections you can make are boundaryless. You could be creating in front of people from all over the world,” she said.

The challenge and the livestreaming are ways Drake gets to share her work, but it is not the only way.

“I do plan on selling all of my dragon challenge pieces,” she said. “My brother is a photographer and is helping photograph all my dragon pieces so I can turn them into prints for people to buy as well.

“When I was in middle school I remember my mom and dad would make these ornaments and sell them,” Drake said. “My dad would make them out of wood and my mom would paint them, and I remember thinking, ‘I can do something like that.'”

Being able to sell her work was always her goal and by opening her own business she was able to do just that.

“I knew I wanted to find a place to sell my books, and eventually paintings,” she said. “I looked and looked and then I thought, what better way to showcase my art than to do it myself, right here in my hometown of Minot.”