Color

This is likely the second biggest collection of art I have, with the first being my pencil sketches. Despite having digital media available to me, I still prefer the use of physical art forms. As I have become more confortable with creating pallets, shading, and color theory, I have seen it make a positive impact on both the finished products as well as the process. I am learning to trust my own hands even when the current status looks subpar to my expectations, and by pushing through some ugly stages, I have made some of my favorite projects.

What I enjoy most about adding colors is that the process of playing with the different shapes in order to create the image carries over from sketching. With colors, I now get to go back over the shapes I've become familiar with, only now with new purpose. Creature creation is my strong suit, and in recent years I have become more comfortable with human anatomy. This was largely due to wanting to bring both my characters and other characters from shows and comics to life in my own style.

Dragons are by far what I am most comfortable with, as I am a big fan of franchises like The Inheritance Cycle, How to Train Your Dragon, and more. At first I focused on the heads, getting a feel for how they could be shaped, what was skin and what was scales, and how they might move their jaws and eyelids. Later I became braver and started drawing the bodies, closely following reference images I collected of other peoples art, before finally being able to make them simply from my own imagination. I still use references whenever I find a new or particularly difficult pose, and I'll take inspiration from lizards, birds, and other animals to try new shapes and features.

With these drawings, I learned a new way to texture and build up shapes and values, allowing me to create a variety of dragons, each different from the others. Things like extra spines, longer bodies, different kinds of scales and armored plates, as well as skin. Even teeth and tusks. I also developed my skills to show weight, what parts of the dragon would sit lower in flight, or how they might bend and twist in the air, water, or as they moved across the land.

Dragons aren't all I've done, especially moving forward. I experiment with a lot of things, pushing my skills to cover anything I feel might be important in designing creatures, weapons, people, and more for both written and visual projects. While I used to be a bit afraid of drawing people, I find it a lot easier now. I've found that personally, its a lot easier for me to look at the outline of the shapes and how they fit together, than the traditional method of drawing proportions and bodies. While I still refer back to that method on occasion, my own method works a bit better with my brain, and it allows me to work a bit faster and to push around posing and shapes more.