Tiny Dragon
This piece is a submission for an upcoming art book. The theme was simple: paint a tiny dragon. I messed around with a bunch of different shapes until I found one that felt young, but with the potential to be fearsome when it grows up. From there, it was just painting fun to get the finished image.
The finished image!
Some preliminary sketches. It took me some time to find a head shape I was happy with.
One of the first sketches for this idea. Putting the dragon on a small branch would make it seem quite small right away.
The finished comp sketch.
Here I redrew the linework in Photoshop so I could paint color comps underneath the linework.
Here's the color comp I decided on.
Removing the lines by painting over the top. I also began refining the textures of the dragon's scales.
About halfway through, I decided that the color in the background was a bit too busy, so I painted over it, unifying it with greens and a little blue to make the dragon come forward, and simplified the number of trees down to just a couple.