David Petersen's Blog: Ornate Saintly Dragon

Last Friday on my Twitch Stream, we did the #DiscoveringDragons Community-Draw-Along! It's a fun event where I welcome all skill levels to push their pencils (or whatever tools they use to make art).

I worked on my piece live on my Twitch stream while viewers worked at home and then on Monday we shared our finished pieces.

Here is my finished colored Dragon. And below are my steps to create it as well as the community submissions.

For #DiscoveringDragons, I post two or three prompt words for everyone to make into a dragon. It's a nice framework for artists of any skill level to focus some time on an 'assignment' to shake the rust off or get the pencil moving again––all while also being loose enough that there's plenty of room for individual expression and interpretation.

This month the prompt was only two words: Ornate & Saintly. I opened a few tabs of google image searches of ornate patterns, saint icon art, and specifically a puppy being held up belly forward.

I started with a pencil drawing on copy paper of the form of the dragon with that puppy belly facing us and the little hind legs curled up--then I worked on a head shape. But for the most part, I only drew half of the dragon. Because I then scanned in and in Photoshop, was able to mirror the existing side to form the other. In this stage I also added in some stock ornate designs and patterns found in google search results to make a halo as well as a wing texture.

I then printed it out so I could do the tighter pencil drawing you see to the left on top of it on a light pad.

I taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. Using a lightpad, I was able to see through the surface of the bristol as I inked the dragon. I used Copic Multiliner 0.7 & 0.3 SP pens to ink the art.

I knew the entire piece could become too busy with all the ornate patterning and jewels and halos, so I tried to keep the linework and texture as simple as I could. It was close, but I was able to finish my piece while I was still streaming.

At the end of my stream I'd wished the viewers all luck with their pieces and told them we'd take a look at everyone's work on Monday. After some dinner, I came back up to the studio and started the coloring process. That first step is to flat in the colors––basically professional coloring-in-the-lines.

I played with all sorts of color combinations keeping the idea of using red and gold (especially gold with the saint icon imagery). In the end, I liked having more of the warm saturated color in the halo and jewels and made the dragon more pale (which also emphasized some saintly age). I added a few color holds (areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) to the halo design as well as to the flame and wing pattern.

For the final colors and all the highlights, shading, and texture I used the dodge and burn tools with a stock photoshop texture brush. Below you can again see the final rendered dragon.