RAWR ~ Project 1 - The Healer

 

 Please click here for the image in a better resolution.

       It has been a long road to finish this piece. I've actually been working on it for almost half a year. School kept interfering so there'd be long periods between each little snippet. This painting is actually a commission that was ordered by a friend of mine for her friend who was over-seas. She told me he loved dragons and was a medic over there. So with those two pieces of information, I created this scene. Originally, bullets were going to be bouncing off the dragon's wings, but I couldn't figure out how to transfer the image in my mind onto the canvas.
         If the story isn't obvious, the dragon is a medic in the army (a secret "weapon"!) who goes around healing injured soldiers. You're probably asking, "Why is a dragon healing instead of pew pewing with fire?" well most dragons in this universe promote that war is pointless and they would rather solve differences over a good brew of whiskey than blow other species up. In this scene, the dragon is healing the soldier's severely broken leg in the midst of a battle.

           Getting the perspective correct on this piece as a pain in the ass... and I'm pretty sure there are a few places that don't seem right. Especially with the human. Bah! I hate drawing humans. I can never truly get them down. Also, I kept forgetting where the brush I used to color the scales was. I'm still not 100% sure if I used the same brush for all scales and such. I got a little lazy with the human. Again, I hate humans. One thing I've made note of is that I need to practice on machinery. My gun is lacking.

            There's so much to go over for techniques. The #1 method I use is having a base color then painting the shadows then highlights then uber highlights. You could also do greyscale painting where you paint all the shadows and highlights first then color the painting with a layer on Overlay. I switch back and forth between these two methods, they can each come out different. However, when I want something vibrant, I usually don't go greyscale.
             One thing you need to keep in mind when painting is that you need to constantly give depth to your picture or it seems very flat. A way I accomplished this in this painting is blurring the wing closest to the viewer like a camera with depth of field. One other note on blurring.. once you've blurred an area, I suggest very lightly sharpening the area that is your focus. Not too much though or you ruin the image with disgusting vibrant dots.
              With sand you need to have the entire picture with a gradient of yellows and oranges. With this image, I put a Photo Filter adjustment layer and set it to Warm so that the entire image gives this "in the sun" feeling.

 Please do not steal or use this image in any way, shape, or form.

EDIT :: I've updated the image with a cropped version. Decided that the left wing was being shown too much.