Digital Art Contest Entry- Finished

Some cute dragons for the Digital Art Contest by Hive account@gmuxx. The theme is fantasy.

I decided to finish 3 of my favorite designs for the contest, so that I have more time to work on each one, instead of rushing through many.

The Before

I decided to color one of the dragons to see what direction I want to take the rest of them.

The Close-up

The "Failed" Dragon

You may know from my previous post that I had a frustrating time with another dragon.

After around 3 hours of sketching I was so frustrated with no progress, I decided to give up. Luckily I tried one more time from a fresh start. After the first quick sketch I had the motivation to make many more.

The Process

I used mostly same process for all 3 dragons. The process is relatively simple: base color, shadow, light and texture. However, I spent a lot of time on cleaning up the outlines and experimenting with textures.

When I draw organic designs I use many circles, to create a basic construction. That way I can also concentrate on the overall flow using many curving lines.

Usually after I am done with the first sketch, I lower the layer's opacity and work on cleaning up the design on a new layer.

Before cleaning up the outline, I decided where the light is coming from: often from the direction where the head is facing. This is important, because thicker line in the shadow areas makes the design more solid.