- This topic has 6 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 10 years ago by .
-
Posts
-
I am going to paint a PYO. I’m very excited about it. But I need to finalize a color scheme before I order one so I can get the right shade of eyes and jewel.
So, I was wondering, how do you guys decide how to paint a dragon? Where to put stripes, how much of the body should be a color, etc. I’d really appreciate a glimpse of the painting design process! Thanks.
Most of the time, unless it is a commission, I just kinda pull out my stuff and start painting what ever pops into my heads first. Like whatever just seems like the piece would want to look like. 🙂 Good luck on your first piece.
Sometimes I try doing a google search for nature pictures to get color ideas. I done volcanic pieces in the past and would like to do a waterfall scheme some day.
Recently married to the ever lovable BiPolarBear (little John)
www.weaselsoneasels.com | www.facebook.com/weaselsoneaselsAs seen on This is Life with Lisa Ling on CNN (2018) !
Always open for pyo commissions, repairs and fine artwork! Email me for current prices! awier(@)weaselsoneasels.comHi Nienoriel, For the applying of paint, (and what kind of paint) there are good threads which may take some work to fish out, but are well worth it.
For deciding what to paint, there are a few techniques.
One is to take a line drawing of a dragon and color it, as a test run. Always a safe bet.
Another is to copy an idea from nature, or pick and choose things from nature. I’d recommend grabbing some photos and seeing what’s common, and what’s not. For example, look at a monitor lizard, and a falcon. Pretty different on the surface. But they each have (depending on the species of lizard to some extent) a dark stripe running up to, or across from the eye, and both have a paler belly and darker back. The eye stripe either protects from glare, or helps the eye blend in for camouflage. When you look up, the sky is bright. When you look down, the earth is dark. A paler belly blends in more when a creature is above you, when a creature is below you, a darker back blends in. And paler bellies and darker backs are extremely common in nature. Once you learn the basics of what markings are useful for animals and why, that’s half the battle.
Then let’s say you want to make an amethyst themed dragon. Following the above theories, the belly might be a pale lavender or white, the back might be a darker purple, and maybe there’s a chevron pattern on the wings (or on choice scales) that the dragon might use for courtship, or instead, maybe there’s eyespots on the wings in a contrasting color to frighten predators.
For choosing the eye and gem color, there’s two schools of thought, to make it blend in with the color scheme, or to make it contrast. Both look nice. I’d recommend getting the eye and gem color in a very similar color to tie the piece together and make the design process easier. Different color eyes and gems can be done well, but it complicates things.
This is a bit rambly, but I hope it helps. I’m sure some other people will chip in with their favorite techniques. (Edit: when I say other, I don’t mean to discount 96307’s post, but I didn’t see it till after I posted!)
I usually plan something in my head after I’m inspired by something. In general, I recommend looking for something that grabs you (colors, animals, scenery, concept, story, etc) and then hashing it out on a line drawing or picture of the sculpt you want to work on.
You can check out my work on dA & Redbubble!
https://prezaurian.deviantart.com/
https://www.redbubble.com/people/prezaurian?ref=artist_title_nameGood advice so far here! I can also use some of these tips. When I painted my two of my own dragons for others I was told what to base them on so one was based on a tiger lily flower and the other was based on autumn leaf colouring. I actually used my production Windstone dragons for reference to see how the colours were arranged over all. With mine I decided to use different colours for one like a rainbow and different shades of one colour for the other.
With the tiger lily one with different shades, I started by picking 4 main shades from dark orange to yellow and dividing the dragon into vertical sections visually. I started by painting a dark orange stripe starting at the back of the head of the dragon, going down the body in front of the wings and then working my way towards the front with orange and light orange stripes and then painting the chest yellow. I would do the wings seperately with the darker colour at the top of the wings working it’s way down to the lighter colour at the bottom of the wings. Then once I had a couple coats of paint for each stripe I would blend all the lines together with shades in between each so it looked like a seemless transition from dark to light from the back of the dragon to the front. Both my dragons turned out good I thought for my first and second try. I can find pictures to post too if that helps but mine were also posted in the last two pyo swap picture threads. This is a good technique if you want different shades or colours but if you want a solid color or maybe two colours like a darker body and lighter wings and chest that looks good too.
Looking for rainbow or pink & teal grab bags!
Hey Nori….
One of the first Windstone ‘Quest’ challenges was to do a YouTube video of 5 minutes or less about how to paint a Windstone PYO. All of the videos were done by Windstone Forum members and Windstone put them up on YouTube.I’ve watched every one of them, some more than others, and each video is very informative and worth looking at. They cover a variety of tips for doing the PYOs from paint selections and technique tips to step-by-step illustrations of the artist painting their PYOs. Take a look at these and you definitely will get some GREAT Information and Inspiration from these fellow forum members and artists! Another thing you can do is go into the Paint Your Own forum topic section and look at some of the other members’ PYO threads – you might find some step-by-step instructions and/or spark some ideas for your own designs.
Below is a link to the ‘Windstone PYO Painting Tutorials’ YouTube page with all 10 tutorials. You’ll probably also recognize some of the forum members’ names… Have Fun! 😀
IN SEARCH OF MY NEXT GRAILS:
Black Peacock & Butternut Adult Poads
Kickstarter 'Rainbow Tiger' Bantam Dragon*~*~*~* Ela_Hara: The DragonKeeper *~*~*~*
*** Come visit me on deviantArt at http://ela-hara.deviantart.com
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
