David Petersen's Blog: Singing Smolder Paper 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 three words: Smoulder, Singing, & Paper.

I opened several tabs of google image searches of origami and folded paper dragons as well as smouldering paper and musical notation.

I started my dragon with a very loose shape for a flying dragon, not as though it was made of paper or accounted for folds, just as though I was making note of where I wanted the extremities as well as the volumes those should be.

Then I started defining those volumes as folded paper. I started with the head, and worked my way back, not working about the smouldering until I was done. I found I needed to simplify the design as I kept adding more folds and planes, but they just detracted from the idea that this beast was made of paper. Lastly I scanned the drawing into Photoshop so I could make some adjustments and I digitally drew in some wings and blocked in light color for the forms of the paper and the smoke.

I printed out the above design and taped that onto 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 0.3 and 0.5 SP pen to ink the art.

The inking on this piece was about making those planes of the folded paper remain to make sense and then deteriorate them where the smouldering bits are alight. There was also a lot of texture work in the smoke trail coming out of the end of the tail that I rushed to get done before I had to end the Twitch stream.

As the stream ended I wished the viewers all luck with their pieces and told them we'd take a look at everyone's work on Monday.

On Saturday I scanned the inks to start the color flatting process––basically professional coloring-in-the-lines. First step was creating color holds (areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) for the entire dragon as well as the smoke and the flame and notes. Then I flatted in two colors: the paper dragon, and the smoke.

For the final colors I did some painting with the paintbrush tool for all the edges of the burning bits, but did most of the highlights, shading, and texture with the dodge and burn tools and a stock photoshop texture brush. Below you can again see the final rendered dragon.