Most of my favorite pieces start out as experiments or as doodles to pass the time. This one was both. It started out as a sketch to loosen up after I got bored with/stuck on a figure drawing that I'll probably never finish and to keep myself from getting bored while babysitting the telephone. I just got more and more into it, and eventually it got pretty close to being a finished piece.
Since cleaning up the linework didn't look like it was going to work, I decided to try and shade this one. It's pretty clear that I don't have much grasp of the way light and shadow actually work on a three-dimensional form, but I'm reasonably pleased with the outcome despite that. It was also fun to go against my first instinct and make the dragon's underbelly darker than the rest of his skin, rather than lighter.
The anatomy was a challenge. Aside from obvious trouble spots like the claws, I need to work on keeping the amount of anatomical detail consistent. For instance, notice the minimalist shoulder sandwiched right between the detailed arm muscles and the detailed deltoid on the wing.
Putting humans as minor elements in pieces is something that I find funny for some reason. It's something I should do more often, as it's a nice break from the boring oh-look-a-person compositions I usually draw. (Plus, when they're small parts of the composition, I don't have to sweat the anatomy so much. Yay laziness!)
I know I say this a lot, but I would love to finish this up nicely one of these days. I'd like to fix the anatomy problems, transfer it to bristol board, ink it, and then color it digitally. We'll see. In the meantime, I've included a larger version of the sketch. View full-size version. Also see this image on deviantArt.
This image is tagged with: 2012, dragon, shaded, and sketch.
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