David Petersen's Blog: Psionic Multi-Headed Giraffe

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 three words: Multi-Headed, Giraffe, & Psionic.

I opened a few tabs of google image searches of Giraffes, Hydras, and Dragons.

I started with a pencil drawing on copy paper figuring out the body and the wide, but thick, stance (somethings gotta support multiple heads)

I then loosely drew a few Giraffe heads--but on a new sheet of copy paper I drew over my sketch on a lightpad to get a cleaner & tighter drawing. This was scanned, a few proportion issues fixed in Photoshop, and a quick color blocking added.

I then printed it out so I could ink it.

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 SP pen to ink the art.

Line thickness played more of a role in this piece rather than texture (my other go-to inking strength). I just varied the line weight to differentiate the wrinkles, muscles, spots and hair.

I was pleased to finish my inks 15 min before my stream ended and 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 as I listed to the odd-facts podcast 'No Such Thing As A Fish'. The first step in coloring (after scanning and cleaning up the scan) is to flat in the colors––basically professional coloring-in-the-lines.

It was a fairly basic color palette and the real trick was establishing color holds (areas where I want the line art to be a color other than black) on the outlines of the giraffe spots as well as some glowy eyes.

Now at this point––I've done nothing to incorporate 'PSIONIC' into my Dragon. Well I had a plan that after I'd inked the drawing, I'd get a second sheet of bristol and ink an effect around the heads separately.

I started with this stock graphic when searching 'pentagon design'. In photoshop I put the design in the perspective of each giraffe head, and then printed it out so I could ink it.

I was going for a mental special effect akin to Psylocke's Butterfly around her face in the X-Men comics of my youth.

For the final colors and all the highlights, shading, and texture I used the dodge and burn tools with a stock photoshop texture brush. and I added the Psionic designs in on a new layer and added an outer glow effect. Below you can again see the final rendered dragon.