No Garden, One Dragon

The theme for this week is Palindrome. I chose "No Garden, One Dragon" as my subject. (Cause I'm a sucker for dragons.)


I got the dragon's long winding pose finished before I started on the head. This one looked a little too much like Shen Long to my liking.


This one had some more spunk. I like being able to show that weird molar-fang toward the back of the mouth.
Arms were annoying at this stage. Asian dragons have goofy little arms that can appear at any point along the long coiled body.


Here was my first pass at a colored sketch. Didn't bother with an arm. Just wanted to try some colors.


These were the colors I went with. I got rid of that pink, since I was only using it in his mouth. Thought I could use a slightly more versatile color that I could also use elsewhere. I went with kind of a burnt orange. I was able to convey more depth in the scales and body that way, and it was a convenient mid-tone color for the tree.


I've been using Photoshop for ten years. I did not know until a few weeks ago, how to use masks. WOW, do they make things easier! Especially with t-shirt designs when you use the color of the shirt as a highlight or outline color.
The highlights helped add a lot of depth. I was loving the shirt color at this point.


For kicks, here it is on white. I like the cream much better. I find this to be a bit harsh.

Here is its entry on shirt.woot.com.