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.