Saturday, May 18, 2013

Switching gears back to fantasy illustration.

Phosphorescent stone drake part 1
This is just my basic pencil sketch drawn on Canson illustration board.  The drake is a rare mount from the World of Warcraft and I took the original image from a stock photo from the actual game. I think that what this will end up being is practice for a larger 24"x36" masonite oil painting when the time comes. But for this one I feel like what's drawn here should give me enough to work with for laying down a acrylic underpainting and then the oils on top.

This is showing the quick underpainting that I did with an acrylic burnt sienna, I skipped over adding a lot of the details in this step because I have reference and believe that this should be enough to go by for when I paint in the oils.
Here is a quick pic I took at the start of the oil painting process. This is the first time I've ever painted with oil on an illustration board and only the second dragon I've ever made so it should be quite the learning experience. I'm finding that because I'm using Liquin as my medium (so the paint will dry quicker) it's causing the paint to be thinner thus allowing me to paint in thin layers. I'm guessing that I'll try and get most of the base colors down and then once it's dry I'll go over it again with more details.
Honestly, I would consider this to be about 65% finished, there's a lot more detail that I'd like to add in. In saying that, now that I have most of the oils down I'm going back through parts that I might want to change like making the jaw a bit bigger, adjusting some of the dark and light colors and then going over parts that I feel need more detail.  I've been thinking about if I want to put a background in. I may even import this into Photoshop for that and for some finishing touches.