Sketching a Dragon for a book cover from start to finish.

Sketching the head of the dragon.

Countinued down the neck, body and wing.

Adding details to the head and starting dawn the neck.

More details as I continue down the back and wings.

Finishing the tail. At this point the pencil sketch of the dragon is complete.

Time to color the dragon. I typically would paint something like this by
hand using watercolors like I do my wildlife painitngs. This
time I decided to paint this dragon in photoshop. Here I clipped around
the dragon for a clean selection and simply filled the selection with
the color indicated in the story. In this case red.

I erased where white should be left (teeth and eyes).
I then used a cloud filter in Photoshop to create the
darker blotches on the skin.

Setting the layer to Multiply in Photoshop makes that layer transparent
allowing the pencil sketch to show through while still keeping
the vibrant red.

Bringing the layer back to normal now I decided that the wing needed some type
webbing for support. Like tendons to help keep the skin together.
I masked off the areas that I did not want the webbing and ran a
photoshop filter to create a stained glass effect to produce the look I was looking for.

I then brought the layer back to Multiply to once again show the
pencil sketch through the solid color. I also darkened mid and shadowed
areas to help with shading a little more.

Finally on the top layer I painted in some white highlights
giving a sheen to the dragons skin & scales.

My appologies for skipping a few steps, but atleast this gave you
some idea of the work that goes into a simple illustration and how
I got from start to finish.

This dragon was then dropped into a scenery that
I created mostly in photoshop for the final cover
illustration for Gladius and the Bartlett Trial by J.A. Paul.

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