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Smaugust 2026, Week One: Days 1 to 7

A vast white storm serpent made of rain and lightning loops above the sea, dwarfing a lighthouse and two fishing boats.

Smaugust is the one where you make a dragon every day in August, and this year I actually kept up with it!

The prompt list is by @myst.does.ai over on Threads and it is a good one. The reason it works is that only about a third of it is what you’d expect. Storm Dragon, sure. Volcanic Titan, sure. Then it turns around and asks you for Y2K Chrome, a dragon librarian, cottagecore, and a candycore dragon, and now you are painting a pink compact mirror and taking it seriously.

This is everything, not a curated set. Every version of every day, one hundred and thirty pictures across the month, because the rejects are half the fun and some days I could not pick. It’s in four parts so your phone survives it, and this is week one, days 1 to 7.

The whole month: Week One, days 1–7 · Week Two, days 8–14 · Week Three, days 15–21 · Week Four, days 22–31

The Prompt List

All thirty-one prompts, in order, so you can see the shape of the thing:

  1. Dragon Archaeologist
  2. Whimsigoth
  3. Storm Dragon
  4. Dragon Baker
  5. Terrarium
  6. Moon Dragon
  7. Goblincore
  8. Ancient Sleeper
  9. Dragon Gardener
  10. Y2K Chrome
  11. Tide Dragon
  12. Tiny Familiar
  13. Steampunk
  14. Floral Dragon
  15. Battle-Scarred
  16. Star Dragon
  17. Dragon Librarian
  18. Cottagecore
  19. Rune Dragon
  20. Hatchling Nest
  21. Dark Academia
  22. Caravan Dragon
  23. Volcanic Titan
  24. Candycore
  25. Forest Dragon
  26. Paper Dragon
  27. Swamp Dragon
  28. Fairycore
  29. Eclipse Dragon
  30. Royalty
  31. World Serpent

Week One

Day 1 · Dragon Archaeologist

A hatted dragon in a long coat stands in a torchlit stone ruin, tail curled behind it.
A dragon in a battered explorer's hat and travel satchel steps out of a sunlit stone doorway hung with vines.
Close-up of a golden-scaled dragon wearing a wide explorer's hat, firelight burning below its jaw.

Hat, satchel, one hand on the doorframe, walking out of the ruin into the light with the posture of somebody who already has what he came for. Archaeology!

Day 2 · Whimsigoth

A character reference sheet of a small black dragon with teal butterfly wings, shown from two angles with detail studies.
A dragon's face split down the middle, gold and horned on one side, dark and jewelled on the other, lit by a single candle.
A slender dragon with enormous teal and magenta butterfly wings perches on a gravestone in a mushroom-lit night cemetery.

Butterfly wings, a headstone, and mushrooms doing their little glow. Whimsigoth is just goth that took up gardening and I support it entirely.

Day 3 · Storm Dragon

A black antlered serpent dragon coils upward through forked lightning above a dark rocky shore.
A slate-scaled eastern dragon with pale antlers and white glowing eyes coils through rain and lightning.
A vast white storm serpent made of rain and lightning loops above the sea, dwarfing a lighthouse and two fishing boats.

Slate scales, pale antlers, white eyes, rain coming in sideways. The third one is the whole storm front shaped like a snake, with a lighthouse and two boats down there for scale, and the boats are having a worse night than the lighthouse.

Day 4 · Dragon Baker

A small green dragon perches on a shelf above the counter of a mint-tiled bakery with checkerboard floors and layer cakes.
A small winged dragon sits on top of a sliced chocolate layer cake on a white cake stand in a bakery.
A coiled dragon sculpted entirely from tempered chocolate with spun sugar wings, being finished with a piping bag.
A lit bakery display case of glazed pastries and tarts with a large scaled dragon egg on a stand in the middle.

Mint tiles, checkerboard floor, cakes under glass, and a small green dragon on the shelf running the whole operation. Then there’s the one that’s made of chocolate and getting piped, which is a different kind of dragon problem. Nobody in this bakery is worried, which is either very nice or very bad.

Day 5 · Terrarium

A warm-lit shelf of glass jar terrariums on a wooden counter, one holding a tiny dragon among moss and plants.
A corked glass bottle on a dark desk holds a tiny thunderstorm and a luminous white dragon coiled inside the clouds.
A green dragon curled asleep on moss inside a round glass terrarium with ferns and mushrooms, a hand resting on the table beside it.
A red-orange dragon curled on dark volcanic soil beneath a tall glass cloche on a black surface.
A long white eel-like dragon drifts over pale sand and driftwood inside a clean aquarium tank.

A thunderstorm in a corked bottle with something living in the weather. There’s also one asleep in a glass ball of moss with a hand next to it for scale, which is the sweetest thing here. I want one. I would knock it over within a week lol.

Day 6 · Moon Dragon

A pale blue-white dragon with antlers, long whiskers and translucent scales looks aside above a single lit candle.
A glowing cyan eastern dragon curls in front of an enormous full moon above a village strung with paper lanterns.
A luminous blue dragon rises from a golden vessel on the grey surface of the moon, Earth hanging small in the black sky.
A black serpent dragon curls in silhouette across a huge white full moon above a treeline of pines.

Pale blue, half translucent, antlers, whiskers, one candle. Isn’t he lovely! He is also exactly the width of a window. The lantern one is my other favourite here, the whole village lit up underneath and not one person looking up.

Day 7 · Goblincore

A low flat-headed dragon with a cluster of glowing mushrooms growing from its skull, a snail riding its snout.
A dark low-slung dragon lies half-submerged in a dim blue bog among reeds and dead branches.
A tusked dragon curls in a mossy earthen burrow surrounded by a hoard of mushrooms, marbles, bones and painted trinkets.
A long green dragon wades through a night marsh, glowing yellow mushrooms growing in a line down its back.

A burrow, a hoard, and the hoard is mushrooms, marbles, painted bits of pottery, and about four things that used to belong to somebody. Correct amount of treasure.

Next up is the Ancient Sleeper’s eye, a chrome dragon in an office, and nine floral dragons in one day.

Week Two
Week Three
Week Four

Smaugust 2026 is hosted on Threads by @myst.does.ai, and the tag is #mystsmaugust2026, which is where the rest of the month lives. Go look at everybody else’s, some of them are unfair.

The best of these are in the Gallery too, under AI Generation, alongside the rest of the collection.

New art most weeks. Follow along on Instagram and Threads, and if you’re new here, Start Here is the map.

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