I really love working with blue pencils when I’m coming up with ideas. I don’t know what it is, but something about the softness of the texture along with maybe the fact that the pencil itself feels a bit more forgiving (it isn’t, really; they tend to stain paper pretty easily and can be hard to erase) just gets my creative motors running.
I spent this morning sketching some things for a commission piece after getting some feedback, then turned my thoughts to another contest that I really shouldn’t ignore. I had a lot of thoughts for “Tyranny of Dragons” involving Tiamat’s claws, hence the offhanded mention a few days ago, but once I started thinking in the context of a shirt as opposed to just an idea, they weren’t as good.
SO, I did a lot of blue sketching. Most of it was just getting ideas on paper, and it probably wouldn’t make sense to anyone but me, but that’s how it is sometimes- you’ve got to make a lot of bad drawings in order to make a good one.
Finally, I had the idea (which I had initially been resisting in the interests of completing it quickly) of doing something with her heads. I ended up with this:
I was afraid to put the red head in because it needed to be prominent (the red dragons are her favored children, so it could not be behind the others to much), and I was worried about ruining the work I’d already done on the others. Admittedly, I was also daunted by the face- I wanted the red head to be looking out at the viewer, and front-facing draconic visages are things that have been something I’ve been wrestling with since always.
But I sat and thought about it, and started off with a perspective drawing of a wedge, and did a little sketching. Then I found some good references in Draconomicon, and between not panicking and having a good guide, I did this, which I am quite proud of:
So I put them together and came up with this (I am in the process of bringing the other heads up to a level of polish to go with this one):
If I can manage it, I’d like to move them around so that none of the heads really overlaps the others- covering necks is fine, but the faces should all be perfectly clear and recognizable. In any event, I’m very happy with how this is coming along:
