From Start to Finish: Dragon and Mouse! #fromstarttofinish

Hi There!

Today I am going to share with you a super secret project I've been working on for a bit... and I hadn't been able to talk about it until now! That's because this painting was a commission, and a surprise gift, for my cousin's girlfriend!

My cousin asked me to draw a picture of him (Dragon) and his (Mouse) girlfriend, to give to her for her birthday. I didn't quite make the timing cut (it was originally going to be a Christmas gift... then a Valentine's gift... what can I say, I've been busy!!!), but the piece turned out great so that is all that matters!

Here are my original sketches. They are kind of "ehhh" and weren't really jumping out at me. I was trying too hard to include all the little details about the couple and not enough emphasis on the actual couple...

I tried fixing the dragon...

And then I realized I didn't think he looked like a dragon to me. That was my problem, right there! So I jumped onto my new favorite place in the digital cloud, Pinterest, and put together a Dragon and Mouse Pinboard to collect some nice dragonish-looking dragons. Just staring at dragons for a few hours was all I needed, and I started sketching again...

I felt MUCH better about this dragon, though it looked a tad girly. But I fixed it up...

When I was happy with my sketch, I photocopied it, rubbed the back of the page with carbon, then traced my drawing onto a watercolor paper block. I like the blocks a lot, because I don't have to bother with taping anything down or finding a drawing surface...

Then I inked in the lines with my quill pen and the special dark brown ink mix that I make...

and I used Winsor Newton's Nut Brown ink to paint in the values...

added a nice blue wash to get the mood and tone of the piece...

painted in the base colors and pushed my colors and values...

...and removed the liquid mask I used to protect the highlights. Then I added a touch more blue to the piece. You might have noticed that I chose not to draw all of the dragon's scales. I was afraid they were going to take over the whole picture. So I went back with my Nut Brown ink and pen and added some scales here and there, and also some foliage and water details.

And here it is, all scanned and pretty!

Thanks for reading! :)

~Melanie