Guardian of the Dawn

Whew, I wasn't sure if I'd finish this one tonight! This is a redraw of an earlier thumbnail that I did. I tried to fix some things that were bugging me on the first version, but it wasn't working how I wanted it to. So to save time (and sanity) I drew a second version, and I have to say I like this one quite a bit. This is my first stab at an illustration kind of look. I'm not sure if the character is coming out of his boundaries enough to stand out or not, if that makes sense. Blah :\

The character in this picture is a deity from my Legends of Destiny, or at least his "mortal" form. He is associated with the god of fire, hence his relation to the dawn. I actually picture him with more dark rainbow colors to his wings, but I took the suggestion of a friend to use rainbow macaw wings as a reference. I think they look nice this way (though in my head they will always have notes of purple and darker blues and reds)

His wings are supposed to be much larger, too, but I can only make them so big. Phooh.

ANYway, I dropped a solid black layer on this one and then adjusted its properties in order to get a lot of the shadows. I've used this method before and I like it a lot. If you want to play with this yourself, you can find the option in your toolbox that displays the layers (it defaults to the right side of the screen) You'll find a place near the top where it says "Layers" - click the drop-down menu that says "Mode" right under it. Have fun!