A bunch of studies for a Dragon
Added 2021-01-25 22:12:30 +0000 UTCHere are some sketch drawings in preparation for a Fell-beast painting for CDC. The beasts are described as more bird-like in the LOTR book, so I studied a lot of bird beaks and (obviously) lizards, since their design's got a lot of pterodactyl influence. Bird mouths are pretty terrifying.
I also did some studies from Justin Gerard (https://www.artstation.com/justingerardillustration) and Alexander Ostrowski (https://www.artstation.com/alexander-ostrowski) who are both incredibly amazing at designing dragons in their own way. Justin's design sense is a lot more groundless and based around whimsical, exaggerated shapes and great character and expression. Meanwhile, Alex's designs look like literal living creatures and his anatomy and natural history knowledge is obviously awesome. They're so different from each other, but I love aspects of their work and wanted to create a kind of bland in my design - I'll be posting some sketches for it tomorrow, along with (probably) a process of a digital study.
It makes the most sense to me to first do drawing studies, and after that some painting studies, focusing more on surface qualities like material, texture, lighting and such, after you've already got the big things figured out, having done the drawings.
By the way, I'll go back to the dogs that I've been using as a placeholder animal to learn anatomy, since I still haven't gone through the legs!
