#rachaelmayo

[glarnboudin]

HOLY FUCK

Today, I'll turn the spotlight on Jasper Storm. He's part of the Stone Dragon series.

I have a treasure hoard of visual resource books from Dover Publications that I've collected over the last 30 years or so. I'll often leaf through them before I start design work on new dragons, and I did so in this case, too. I caught sight of a Japanese kite that inspired this dragon's wings, and I worked the rest of the design elements (his face, his dorsal ridge, his belly scales) around the kite wings.

Prismacolor pencils and gold paint pen. Super-limited palette, too - I think there are three reds and black, and that's it.

[sysirauta]

It took literally ten years to get these awesome art pieces up together but finally, finally they're there!

Art is by @rachaelmayo Dragons-of-Every-Dawn and Dragons-of-the-Twilight-Dream, fine art prints. I got first one when I lived on the other side of the country and there was only on tiny art shop in town and got it framed. Second picture was finished only when I had moved myself to yet another location. No matter if the frame is simple black one, I didn't find exactly similar ones until now after like seven years later after having the art, and finally they can be there together.

[rachaelmayo]

Song in the Sky 3 was among the first large, layered pieces I attempted, and also one in which I had only started to scratch the surface of additional 3D elements.

This piece was accomplished with watercolor, Prismacolor pencils, acrylic, tiny star and moon spangles, and some pearly bits that you don't see here. Since Photoshop is a big player in the presentation of the final image, I'll include Photoshop as a member of the medium list.

What you see here is a digital composite of a physical artwork. I was managing all of my large artwork this way for a couple of years, as scanning a 24x36 inch thing on an 8.5x11 inch scanner is a seriously serious PITA. So I scanned in each element before I assembled the physical artwork. Then I assembled the art and rebuilt the thing in Photoshop to be very close to what I had assembled with the physical bits and pieces.

With this image, I found that I didn't like the way that the halo things around the birds' heads looked, so I made super-simple glowing disks instead. The alignment of all the rectangular background bits is also much more precise than it is in person.

After this project, I did a few more that were both physical objects and digital composites. But it was almost as much work to build the composites (especially if there were a lot of 3D elements) as it was to build the physical art! So I started finding ways to scan large images with my standard-size scanner using rulers and piles of books to keep an image stable during each phase of the scanning process. One of my largest ones - Dragons of the Twilight Dream ( https://www.tumblr.com/rachaelmayo/702647783300218880/first-is-dragons-of-every-dawn-followed-by?source=share ) - I actually did scan in this way. It took 12 passes, but I got it all pretty well aligned and only needed to do a little bit of cleanup and realignment in Photoshop as I stitched everything back together. Yes, I realize that's MUCH more information than you ever wanted to know about the behind-the-scenes process of digitizing physical artwork, but there ya go.

[sysirauta]

Look at this thing! Look at it and all those twisty limbs and subtle iridescence! I just got the original via mail on the other day and it is perfect.

Pride keeps giving and apparently pushes people out of dry art zones.

This is commissioned art that I made for DeviantArt buddy Sysirauta. The character is their Postcreated entity called Pride, a shape-shifter of mercurial temperament and exquisite taste. Sysirauta wanted Pride to have a cup of coffee, but left the rest of the composition up to me. They provided excellent reference material, so managing all the twisty limb-tentacles, wings, fur, feathers, and metal was no problem!

In fact, I really had fun with this piece. It was challenging and refreshing, and I worked with a color palette I have not used before. I've been going through an artistic dry spell - I have plenty of ideas, but insufficient energy to do much with 'em. The Pride project managed to crowbar me out of that mindset to a great degree, and the art process is coming along more easily than it has in the last couple of years.

I made this with Prismacolor pencils.

[rebeccawangart-reblogs]

This is mind-blowingly incredible!! The level of details and the smooth transitions of color just astound me!

This bit of weirdness from 2011 is titled Suborbital. Primordial Predator god does primordial Predator god things. I am pretty sure that I made this after seeing Disney's Atlantis for the seventeenth time. I like glowing rocks.

I made this with Prismacolor pencils over an ink drawing. It might look like it has digital enhancement, but I'm holding the thing in my hands right now and I can assure you the effects are all Prismacolor.