W13 PROJECT #5: Changed my concept again... Whoops (3/4)

 I'm going to post the write up and symbolism later, so then I can focus on the progress aspects.

But for now, just know that I changed my concept again haha. I liked the orginal one... but digital art has a weird curse for me. I rarely finish the work. I'm not completely sure why--maybe because it's easy to avoid when it's a document in my laptop rather than an actual piece. I also think it's because I am much more of a perfectionist, since I don't have to "just roll with it" as often, since I can hit undo over and over again.

I'm using some aspects of my previous project for this one. I liked the process of designing the dragon creature, so I wanted to do more of them. 

Starting us off, this is our creature list and refrence images:

From left to right, we have a Fancy Pigeon, Arabian Sand Boa, Long eared night jar (bottom left), great grey heron (bottom right).

I picked these out because I felt it would be both fun and challenging to turn them into dragon creatures.

I sketched out vaugely what I was going for with each one. You can see I kept the original little guy from the first concept.

I started blocking out the basic colours for each one.

here is the completed "blocking" stage. I was mostly considering capturing the colours of the actual animals

For brushes, I used: Kyle's Real Oils 01 and Kyle's Real Oils Round Wet Flex, both are from basic. I also used one of the charcoal brushes for the texture on the snake.

I pull up the refernce and I start painting. There's no trick here, I just start going. I use the eyedropper for some colours, but I try not to so I can learn to 'digitally mix' paint. 

More painting progress.

Close-up progress photo.

I also went in and worked with some rake brushes! These are from Devin Elle Kurtz Fur & rake brushes pack. Completely free. I linked them in my previous post.

Sooooo satisfying to add in these lines.

And here are our finished creatures!

Now, I wanted to add the photos.

These are my source images.

I went in by hand to paint in the shadows, but also fixed the contrast curves of the work as well as going in with blending layers. I wanted to make the creature seem apart of the background, and felt like I got pretty close with this one.

Slowly, I fit them in with the background.

I put them all together!

I picked the background images based on the creature, so not much editing had to take place, but I still made sure to keep it together.

And here's the final piece:

I got it printed at Staples and it was crazy expensive. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it after this class.