Thursday 19 February 2015

Here Be Dragons

There are some things that I keep coming back to drawing.  I try to move on and come up with something TOTALLY DIFFERENT, but when I need to fill a page, sometimes it's the tried and true that appears again.  

With Chinese New Year upon us, I guess I hit on something timely!

I was quite pleased with this result.  The blue pencil rough was clear and provided a good sense of how the perspective and form should be - I wanted it to look like the dragon was flying up, but then turning back, perhaps getting ready to blow fire at us.  I did some contour lines on the body to suggest the form and perspective and then added lots more in the inking.  I intentionally drew the dragon in a figure eight as I wanted to keep it all on the page.

I tried to shade the inside of the mouth and nostrils such that it looked like light was glowing from inside.  I was fairly successful there, but the ink from the pen was a bit too forthcoming and it got too dark too fast.  The excited, dog-like eyes turned out well.  I like the horny knobs for eyebrows and the loose limbs are a bit reminiscent of a sea otter but perhaps a bit too languid.  Nice tail end.  Looks sharp.

2 comments:

  1. Cool dragon!

    The pose is the thing with this one -- because it's perfect. The "languid" limbs are just right. They imply a kind of weightlessness as the dragon drifts back. The big thing for me, though, is that tail. The tail flows so, so well, in that nice little arc around and behind the body. It gives us the sense of perspective and it shows us where the dragon has come from.

    VERY good!

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  2. Glad you liked it. I really didn't think about the pose much, more the form of the dragon - its roundness. Apart from the neck, body and tail, he pose just kind of happened.

    The tail and the neck were actually a bit difficult and I wasn't sure I managed it quite right, specifically, the transition from the little scales on the dragon's back to the belly plates. On both the tail and the neck, I felt that transition was a little too linear. Not sure how to improve that transition.

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Thanks for your input!