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Image created in Krita

A dragon's day off

So… what do dragons do on their day off? They work tirelessly to assist and repair the energy in the ley-lines, they hunt evil where they can find it and according to some they destroy threads. They also have to constantly defend themselves to all those knights that have set their minds on killing them. They usually burn these knights to a crisp. Not because they want to, but they see it as their only option and you have to defend yourself otherwise dragons would be extinct by now.

Too many dragons made the mistake of thinking these puny knights were of no consequence. Well, they dearly payed for that mistake with their lives. And then, let’s not forget that of course the dragons have to supposedly defend their riches and treasures. I say supposedly, ‘cause I have never been able to verify this for myself.

Not many people know, but dragons are the only known species that can consistently fly between worlds and dimensions, which makes them invaluable and a store of knowledge. I’m sure that’s where their unparalleled wisdom comes from.

With all that hard work, I always imagined that they also need to take a pause now and then. I have forever wondered what they would do on their day off. Finally last year on my travels to the north I came across this one, enjoying himself. It was very obvious he had the day off and was having the time of his life, building a raft from trees out of the local forest. Something that many of us have enjoyed as a child, or at least dreamt of. He was so engrossed in his play that I don’t think he noticed me, or he just didn’t care, so I could come very close without disturbing him.

For me, this was the experience of a lifetime!

So…, now you know what dragons do on their day off!

The making of

This time I wanted to make a painting with a bit more saturation. I also wanted to test a more cartoon look. Of course, as you guessed, the inspiration came from the meeting I just told you about.

I started of creating a thumbnail. Yeah, I know, it is huge for a thumbnail :-) but it got the idea out of my head and on to the digital paper. I was happy with my first so I only did one. And I know it looks horrible! But hey, you have to start somewhere.
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OK, let's make some sort of sketch from this jumble.
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Now is the time to make a line drawing. Every step of the way, correcting things and moving them around until they are where I want them to be.
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That didn't turn out too bad. I'm actually happy with the result.
With the sketch ready, we can start to put some color on. Just blocking in the shapes and put a little bit of texture in the foreground.
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Let's do some underpainting in the background, where I think I'll put a forest later. Put in the mountains with their snowy tops, some details on the water and some texture on the dragon. Now it is time to re-color the line work to more local color variants, so it is not sooo black and in your face.
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Make the foreground darker and put in some details. middleground gets some grass and details in the tree. Paint in the continuation of the beach, under water and paint in the forest in the background.
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The dragon is too light and needs some shadow/darker tones. Same for the stones and raft. Paint a symbol on the sail and very important, we put some reflections of the mountains, dragon and raft in the water. Most of the reflections we fade out or erase again, so they are not too strong
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Since the dragon is blowing the raft, let's put in some visible breath. Also a dragon needs its' shadow. I put in a volcano in the background to help move your eye around the page, back to the dragon. The tree on the right has the same function.The breath and the tail of the dragon point to the raft. So this (hopefully) results in the dragon being the first point of interest, the raft is second and the volcano is third.
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With all this in place we are almost finished. A few final adjustments, some more light on the dragon, a paper texture and a signature.
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