Rex'Ranaey, The First Dragon of Purgareth

LoganFeliciano

So much good art! Good stuff everyone!
Here's a recent painting I completed. Rex'Ranaey, The First Dragon of Purgareth.

LoganFeliciano

Super honored to have one of my images on the banner for Polycount. This image in particular was one of those that came together really easily without much iteration and back and forth. That being said I do have progress shots that go through the major milestones of the image as I painted it. Thanks for viewing and if you have any questions feel free to ask .

LoganFeliciano

I started out my initial  sketch on a toned canvas with simple line work trying to lay in my composition and work out all my elements as best I could before diving in with color and value. I knew I wanted to paint a dragon, and with this particular design I wanted to add an extra element that made it different from just your typical badass looking dragon. Thus the idea of having that expanding membrane on the throat to show the flame building up came to mind.


After the dirty scribbles were settled on, I went in with slightly tighter lines to set up for myself all the elements so that way I know what my anatomy looks like. I'm a culprit of the artist quick fix of when I don't know the anatomy I'll just hide it in shadow. I wanted to push myself and so I try to make the anatomy work, using different lizard anatomy as inspiration.




Clipping masksare the best, period. They are indispensable when working on complex images and you're needing to change or edit things quickly. It's how I work almost all the time. Using the linework as a guide I blocked in opaquely the shape of the dragon and then just used layer masks to paint inside the silhouette, This was where I tried to establish my local color based on the background I blocked in.
 


It was around this point when I was starting to think........ FUUUUUUUUUUCK. The wings feel wrong, the values aren't grouped, and the colors on the dragon didn't feel like they had the juicy variety I wanted based on the initial color pass. Not to mention the fact that the lower limbs made the dragon feel like it was sitting and less like it was in flight. This is stage I firmly believe every artist goes through at some point, in varying degrees respectively. The "Oh Shit" phase. The turning point where either the image will get finished or go into the graveyard of unfinished sketches. I decided to go back to my foundations. Typically, this is where I find most of my solutions when I'm caught in a rut. I looked at bat wings and discerned their shape at different stages of flapping their wings and used that reference to make the shape much more interesting. I looked at my current color scheme and discerned what colors I could use at different temperatures to give a sense of richer fuller color in the shadows. Lastly, I chopped off the lower limgs and slapped them closer to the pelvis to make them feel more nested and less like the dragon was sitting midair. 




And so here is the final with those changes implemented. Some other additions not mentioned earlier was giving the face some gator influence to give a more imposing presence. I included the good o'l, birds for scale 101 illustration trick. And also, went around the design adding little bits of detail here and there, like spikes on the throat membrane, neck, face, and chest, tattered wing edges, cloud trails to give a sense of movement, like he's breaking through the cloud line. 



Hope you enjoyed this little tour into the process for Rex'Ranaey, and thank you for dropping by!