Dragon

02 May 2021

I decided to paint a dragon, drawing inspiration from various reptiles to create a creature with a realistic, textured appearance.

The oil painting depicts a large fictional reptilian facing left, its mouth open in a challenge display, revealing sharp teeth. The dragon’s body is dark grey, almost black, with a red underthroat and belly, and an ochre eye.

The background consists of a stippling haze in brown, green, and grey, except in front of the dragon’s mouth, where the air appears warped by heat or breath.

The jawline, teeth and eye are from various crocodilians. The face scales are somewhere between a Komodo dragon and an iguana, and the spikes take inspiration from alligator neck scutes.

Nine images showing the painting process:

  1. Painting the background

  2. Outlining the head and neck

  3. Adding the eye and thickening the neck/chest

  4. Adding neck spikes and developing the 3D form

  5. Painting teeth and defining skin folds on the throat/chest

  6. Detailing scales

  7. Stippling the underside of the jaws

  8. 8-9. Adding highlights and lowlights for depth

I spent a long time working through possible variations and inspirations in advance, using photographs of reptiles as reference models.

The practice sketches were mostly done in acrylic paint.

Top: the painting shows four crocodilian eyes (or at least I think they were all crocodilians). One yellow, one hazel, one green and one red.

Bottom: the painting shows an alligator’s jawline and teeth. The alligator is painted with broad, expressive strokes, emphasising the shape rather than fine detail.

Once I settled on the key elements of my dragon, I created several quick acrylic studies to experiment with how they would fit together.

One of these studies spans two pages of a sketchbook, showing a dark grey dragon with a red underbelly and throat, painted in bold strokes that suggest rather than precisely define individual scales. As with the final image, the jaw and eye are of a crocodilian.

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