Actually, it's not my favorite color...

You know, because of the colors I'd used for my online avatar, I think I've given people the wrong idea that my favorite color is green. It's not, actually. I have three favorite colors, in fact, and they're all present in this picture. Can you guess what they are?

So if green isn't my favorite color, then why did I use it for my avatar? Well, why not? When I came up with the dragon character, I wanted it to be all black. And glowing green looks cool against black. It's as simple as that :)

Had some fun with the Neon effect here. I think it's been one of my favorite filter effects on Gimp since I ran across it, partly because it gives such a nice touch to glowing components and partly because I'm lazy. Hey, if the tool is there, use it!

P.S. And my character's markings are still green :) I just decided to play with a touch of Tron stuff here.

Cloud speed paint 2

Another one, this time based on what the sky outside actually looked like at the time. It's been raining off and on today, and rainclouds always make for a nice sunset, in my opinion. I glanced up at the sky, thought, "Hey, I can paint that!" then grabbed my laptop and tablet and hauled fanny to the back porch to sit down and paint. It's not as great as what the sky actually looked like, but this is the first time I've attempted to sit down and hurry and sketch something I'm looking at with my tablet.

I really enjoy sketching things quickly like this before they're gone. I've done some pencil sketches of both cats and people, neither one of which is inclined to sit still for very long, but there's always a thrill when you successfully get something down on paper before it moves ..... or on screen, in this case.

I think even a year ago, I would have felt strained if I were to attempt an exercise like this. It's been enjoyable (and encouraging!) to see how much I've been able to grow in my art in the last several years. Even in highschool, my range of what I was comfortable with drawing and what I was capable of drawing was fairly limited. It probably helps that I've felt more enthusiastic lately to try different techniques and challenges.

Cloud speed paint

Needed something to draw.

White pencil play

I'm a scavenger. I admit it. This is the leftover cardboard backing from a ream of timesheets that got used up at work. I wanted to try doing something that was just ink and white colored pencil on brown "paper", since I've been seeing a lot of that kind of thing lately and it really interests me.

So all in all, this was pretty fun! This is the first time I've tried this coloring style of art. Acrocanthosaurus and Stegosaurus were my specimens of choice here, and while I'm pretty sure I did a couple horrible versions of stego's when I was a kid, this is my first time trying an Acro :)

Rather than try to look off of someone else's interpretation of certain dinosaurs when I'm trying to draw them, I've instead been looking up skeletons and then sketching out my own interpretation of the dinosaur. I really like doing this, not only because it's fun to watch the dinosaur kind of flesh out as I draw it, but it's so much easier for me to go off of a skeleton and have that base to build on, whereas if I tried to look at a full-bodied dino and draw it, I suffer from no end of confusion anatomy-wise. It must be the whole shapes/skeletons-are-your-friends thing. I'm glad I've finally become more comfortable with using them.

Gerine Dinofied

Done as a commission for v-e-r-a. I put up a little add offering to create custom dinosaurs for people on Livejournal, and she asked to have her tangerine albino iguana drawn as an Amargasaurus, a species I haven't had the pleasure of drawing before this. I enjoyed the bright colors of the character quite a bit, and I hope to be able to do more things like this in the future.

Done in micron pen and colored pencil. Character belongs to v-e-r-a.

Rilus

This was done as a birthday present for Djinni (Tod Wills) over on Livejournal. The character is from an online comic he has, which you can find here.

Done in micron and archival pens with some colored pencil for good measure. Rilus belongs to Tod Wills - no stealie!

At the Heart of the Matter

You know it wouldn't be a Friday night unless I wasted three hours of good sleeping time on art........And thank you to everyone who helped me on this by giving your comments and opinions!

Here's another of the projects that have been sitting on my to-do list; hooray for knocking another one down! I think I could have done much better on the lighting of the wings, but I was getting overwhelmed with the different tones. I'm more accustomed to working with silver-colored metals when I do shiny things like this, and you wouldn't think it's that much of an adjustment to transition between gold and silver, but for me it's been hard. I think the cooler colors are more comfortable for my eyes.

These creatures are a special creature I designed for a scene toward the end of The Rebirth Trilogy. They are not, in fact, dragons. They're a mythical guardian beast called Xhuahan (pronounced SHOO-uh-han) The gist of it is that they are the servants of one of the goddesses, and while the ones here are golden statues, they've uh, animated on the three little travelers in their realm. Nothing like fighting a massive wall of metal to round out your quest!

The Xhuahan are supposed to have the body of a lioness, tail of a crocodile, wings of a raven, neck of an eagle, horns of a rhinoceros, and an indistinct head vaguely similar to a brown bear's.