Tiny Terror - Paint Pal 4

Well, things have been a bit busy for me lately.. well, I almost always seem to have something going on to prevent my being able to paint.  My office moved, my son bought a house and moved out of my house and I had to get my house ready for the big 4th of July picnic that I had previously planned. 

 

I recently joined in on Paint Pal 4 with the orange airbrush forum.  And this is what I was working on... "Tiny Terror"

 

CLICK ON PICTURES TO GET A BETTER VIEW.

 

This is a 5" x 7" painting using Wicked paints and my Iwata Micron.

This is the completed painting.



I first started out with the layout and a simple sketch of the project on my Wacom tablet using Photoshop.  Then, I transferred my sketch to the canvas using watercolor pencils.  (Which, by the way, was a mistake because the color smeared the canvas.  But, I wanted to try it, because I thought it would eliminate the risk of pencil lines in my work.  Live and learn!)  I was able to recover from that error and continued on. 

I worked on the background first.  Building the skyline and clouds, worked on the castle in the background and then the forest below.  After the castle and forest were painted in, I added some fog to add to the effect of the castle being in the distance below the baby dragon.  Then, I started in on the eggs.











 

 

After the eggs were based in, I outlined the dragon with sepia and added some of the detail as well.  I also started to build the tones and muscle shading as well.  

 

Then, this is the point where my Micron gave me nothing but trouble and I lost the crispness of the painting.  Being I didn't have time to start another painting, I had to forge ahead and continue with this one.

 

 

I brightened up the white areas with another layer of white, which is why this picture is lighter than the previous one.  Its a push and pull with the highlights, colors and shadows.'

 

On this day the brush cooperated and things went a bit better.

I continued to add more colors, shading and details.

 

The eggs seemed a bit washed out and needed some more shading and tightening up.  So, I deepened the shadows and used my tiny shields to get some tight lines to eliminate the fuzzies.  I also added some yellow transparent paint to the egg juices and highlighted them to make them look wet. 

 

I didn't like how the feathers were coming along and decided to change them up a bit.  I wanted the tiny dragon to be old enough that he was starting to lose his baby feathers. 

 

I also went back over the dragon pushing and pulling with the paints to get the right shadowing and highlights to come up with the final painting.

 

Viola!

 

This Tiny Terror was shipped off to the United Kingdom to my Paint Pal across the pond!

Hope he likes it!