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(Cross posted from my DeviantART)
This is my entry for the #eragonfanclub contest; due date tomorrow! I only just made it.
For fans of the Inheritance series (by Christopher Paolini), this is the moments after Firnen (the dragon) hatches for the elf Arya (erm... the disembodied hand is Arya!), and, when she touches him for the first time, the gedwëy ignasia ("shining palm") forms on her palm; and thus, she becomes a dragon rider! Happy days. 
I hope I win the contest, it would be satisfying after putting lots of effort into this piece! In any case, it was amazing (like a breath of fresh air) to be able to dust off my Wacom and become absorbed in a painting again. I've missed it so. 
I enjoyed painting this a lot generally (didn't keep track of how long it took to paint, but quite a few hours. I dunno, if I had to guess, maybe ten or something?) Very therapeutic to paint scales, and satisfying to paint dragons. I hope that, by providing this picture so large, that you can see the textures in it (I used a cracked mud texture by *HumbleBeez [link] ). I'm hoping I managed to get the very harsh light painted convincingly; it was hard!
Anyway, enjoy. It's been a while since I was able to post last, so my apologies! Hope to post again soon.
I'm starting to get there on this piece, yay! :-) I'm really liking the merging of scales to skin on the wings. I dunno, the contrast of it (or lack of, I suppose) is a feel I wish I could give more of my painting work. :)
Life has been consumed by essays since I last posted!! Aaaaah essays, my brain feels like sludge right now haha. But I suddenly realised I only have a couple days before the contest deadline on this!! So I will have to work hard to get this done. Here's today's contribution, fingers crossed I can get this done before Saturday! Scales, so many scales...!
Wip 3. Scales, scales... and more scales!
WIP 2! I have started the painstaking job of Firnen's scales now! This could take a while!
A painting for a contest run by an Eragon fanclub on DA. I saw the contest theme of Arya and Firnen, and this idea popped into my head! Since I love the Inheritence Cycle, and I love dragons, and I miss painting so much, I really wanted to get this idea out. This picture is the moment that Firnen hatches for Arya, and she bonds with him as his rider the first time she touches him. The hand was modelled by myself. :-) This is obviously nowhere near done! But I wanted to share it all the same. :-)
Ink for the sketch I finished yesterday :-)
Goodness, it's been a while; I'm sorry! I truly am. I really haven't been drawing; I've been focusing on writing my book, or generally just too busy. But, yesterday a wondrous thing happened... I drew three times in one day! (I'll upload the first two doodles at another time). The first was because I was a little bit bored in a lecture. The second was because I had an art class and we had to draw portraits of each other (this was for part of my degree, and thus to illustrate a point rather than practice any art skills), and the second made me really want to draw a portrait! so I started doing a very stylised portrait based on some stock I found on DA (link). Here's the sketch. Enjoy. :-)
Ok, so I reverted the size of the piece back to how it was. I think it's for the best... though I worry that without a sky-scape in the back, that I will detract from the piece. I might end up having to switch it from landscape to portrait orientation later on in the piece and paint in the surrounding mountains and sky. But I'll see how I go on! I would prefer to avoid that, because this orientation ensures that Evelyn is the prime focus of the piece. Anyway. This is the sketch, done. I'll lay down some basic colours next and see how it looks.
So I designed a basic outlook for the castle/keep for the background... It's the castle at Arlyn (fictional place from my book) where Evelyn (one of the main characters) says goodbye to her father.
I looked around at lots of different places to reference for this, but in the end the one most close to how I picture the castle turned out to be Raby Castle, which is in County Durham I believe. I drew some of it freehand, and some of using a ruler just to make straighter lines! I only drew in one window as it's a basic sketch for now, though I think I will tweak the design slightly. Think I will enlarge and move the door too. It doesnt fit as well into the design as I thought it would sat there. I took inspiration from the door from a beautiful local church.
You can see how it fits in to the drawing as well. I will re-line it in Photoshop to make the lines both neater and darker, and to cut out some of the noise from the scan I took from my sketchbook. Wish I had picked a bigger sketchbook to draw this in - I ended up running out of room! I need to extend the building to the left.
Oh goodness me. Horses.... are REALLY hard to draw! I used to draw horses (and foxes) all the time when I was a kid! I got pretty good, actually. But that was... *cringe* over a decade ago so I'm 100% rusty!
I will be glad when I can get some colour down on this piece, because that's when humans really start to look like humans, and hopefully horses will actually start to look like horses! Still got the background to lay down in sketch form though. Hmm. Just trying to decide about layout. Drawing the bakcground required designing a fort.... which I can't say I've had any experience with! I need to pin down my vague ideas. :) It's going well so far though. I am enjoying this piece. It's always lovely to draw something that I have had in my head for a while. :-)
This is a work in progress of what I plan to be my next "big" picture, a.k.a. one I'll go all the way on, painting and everything, or so I plan to at this stage. This is a scene from my book. When I was writing it, and when I read back over that particular bit I just see this particular still image really vividly. The colours, the lighting... I have, of course, no hope of capturing what my minds eye sees, but I'll give it my best shot. :) It's a chance to attempt movement, horse anatomy, buildings, perspective, composition, and atmospheric lighting all at once! Frankly, that's quite scary! Wish me luck, haha.
I recently passed the 40,000 pageview mark on DeviantART, and two people caught the kiriban. This is the first of the two kiribans I've done art for (the second is to come). It was based on the first persons sketch (that person being this person!), which I've lined and coloured in. I picked this sketch of his because the feeling behind it really came through on the sketch. I thought it was lovely. :) Ooh it was nice to do cell shading, I think it's years since I have done!
Credit for the lovely sketch must go to : Tom Kiely
Hmm, well I've finished this, so now it's just subject to client's final approvement. :)
I'm quite happy with this. I really enjoyed making the background in this painting session. :)
These are a few edits that were required by the client.
Ok, so this is practically finished apart from final touches now... :)
Worked on Lilith's hair here.
Have worked on Lilith's face this time!
Here I've spent time ageing Diana... so I hope this has worked. I've added a lot of hand drawn texture to the skin, wrinkles and folds (subtle and not so subtle).
I've worked on Diana's face & skin, which are pretty much done now apart from the lips and some final definitions. I'll work on her red robes next but first... it's lunch time! It would be great if I could get Diana finished off today, actually! :-)
