This is the fourth and final canvas of summer 2011. After having practice with oil paints on three different canvases, I was able to set out to do one of my goals in life, to draw a detailed dragon head with scales and everything. It took a lot of planning to draw it, first I drew it in pencil on another paper, and then I had to transfer that drawing to the canvas, which is rather hard as I do not usually draw the same thing twice. Then I had to paint each individual scale and that took quite a bit of concentration and experimentation. I painted new scales over the old scales quite a bit as I couldn’t quite get them right in some areas. Finally, I was satisfied with it (except for a few parts which would take a lot more effort to change so I figured I would leave them for photoshop or something). Then I started on the background. At first I just placed a few rocks here and there, but it looked a little boring so I added a few canyons and cracks. I made the volcano and the sky was originally all red. Later, I changed it to gray to bring my dragon out a little more and give a bit more contrast to the picture. It took several tries and paint-overs to get the lava spouting from the volcano just the way I wanted it.
After doing the background, I also had to go back over the edges of the dragon again so I could get them in straight lines so that the dragon popped out more. I took a long time to get the bottom red/black scales of the dragon with the right consistency.
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