Illustrating the Art Order Dragon

Jon Schindehette asked the Art Order community to take a swing at illustrating the beloved Art Order Dragon to use on business cards and T-shirts. I saw his post about it only minutes after posting it and I was really interested in giving it a try myself. Here's a walk-through of how I created my piece...

I had just recently gotten my hands on a base to use for my Sculpey maquettes so I was raring to give it a try. I quickly sketched my idea and made a sculpt and lit it.

I then started blocking in the shadows with ease due to having my Sculpey reference.

Next I carved out the silhouette and added some fun design elements to the image.

Here I start rendering the dragon, and it looks to be coming together nicely.

More detail...

Final detailing and added a bunch more dots and inserted the Art Order text.

I did another version where I edited out the background for Jon's use, but this was the final piece I came to for myself and I'm really happy with how it turned out. The Sculpey is turning out to be very useful and just as much fun. I hope you've enjoyed this step-by-step. I want to try and post more in the future.

Sculpey, of Super Proportions

I recently bought myself a new toy! Tools can be toys so I don't want to hear it. I picked up some Super Sculpey so I can start making maquettes for me to use as a source of reference for future illustrations. Sometimes it's difficult to figure out how light would fall against an object you made up out of your head, so it can help out a lot to sculpt some simple shapes just to figure out how the light reacts and where the shadows fall. Ideally, in the end you get a more realistic and believable final image from it.

Here are a couple of first attempts with the Super Sculpey. Not trying to get too extravagant, just trying to get a feel for the stuff since I've never touched it before.

And here's my study based on the bottom-left photo. It definitely helps me move along more quickly because I don't have to try and figure out how it would work, I just follow the information I can gather from the photo.

This is all a part of me trying to get more serious about using reference. I'm really looking to beef up my portfolio in preparation for something very important and exciting. Some of you may already know, but if not you'll find out about it on Friday so make sure to stop back!