Happy New Year!
I'm almost finished with Arthur, well aside from his base. I took care of the highlighting on his hair and then the cloth around his lower legs. I'd previously done the metal work on the sword, but it needed something more. So I took some of the Andrea inks and tried to create a gradient, darkening it towards the hilt. With that finished I turned to the shield. I first did the red background with some simple shading, then the gold border. Then the tough job of painting on the design. First I worked out how I wanted it to look on paper. I wanted to do a dragon and modeled it on the rampant lion, a common heraldry image. Once I was happy with how that looked I moved on to the figure. Using a medium yellow I sketched in the long curve for the neck, body, and tail. Then I drew in the finer details: head, arms, legs, wing, and spike. I switched back to the background red to draw in the fine lines along the belly, arms, legs, and wings (and to clean up the basic shape/outline). Finally I went in and did some shading to the design so it fit with the rest of the shield.
I'm almost finished with Arthur, well aside from his base. I took care of the highlighting on his hair and then the cloth around his lower legs. I'd previously done the metal work on the sword, but it needed something more. So I took some of the Andrea inks and tried to create a gradient, darkening it towards the hilt. With that finished I turned to the shield. I first did the red background with some simple shading, then the gold border. Then the tough job of painting on the design. First I worked out how I wanted it to look on paper. I wanted to do a dragon and modeled it on the rampant lion, a common heraldry image. Once I was happy with how that looked I moved on to the figure. Using a medium yellow I sketched in the long curve for the neck, body, and tail. Then I drew in the finer details: head, arms, legs, wing, and spike. I switched back to the background red to draw in the fine lines along the belly, arms, legs, and wings (and to clean up the basic shape/outline). Finally I went in and did some shading to the design so it fit with the rest of the shield.
I was on the fence about doing a design on his chest, but decided to give it a shot. The strap makes is tough and the size needed to be about half what I did on the shield. But, with a few minor simplifications, I did my best to repeat the design on his chest.
Fantastic work as always, David! So glad to hear that you are planning on attending the Crystal Brush. This is a trip that is long overdue :)
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