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Age Old Bad Idea

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My holiday piece is finally finished. This piece has dragged me through hell and back and then laughed at me for kicks. It has been a lot of fun though and has granted me some moments of discovery. I hope to get back into drawing a few more of my dragons for they have been a passion that I've let rot in the back of my head for the past year or two. Hopefully this will be a nice break into the new year. Happy New Years and a happy 2010 to you all!

Done in Corel Painter X
Time: 24+ hrs.
Art © Sean Martin (Me)

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Not quite what I thought

Granted, a winter theme of something licking something frozen and getting a tongue stuck could well have been a lamp post, or some metal railings, but a frozen river never crossed my mind as what the dragon might have been doing.

I'd have thought that the wings would have been closed, since the dragon is on land and is therefore not using them for flying. It might be that he is distressed by having his tongue stuck, so there might be a little more alarm on the face in this case.

I think the other thing I might have done is some sort of track that the dragon has left as it walked along to the riverside for the drink. All small details make all the difference to these pieces.

[Review Request Club]

Awesome!!

Wow, man, your artwork make me wonder so much, it's really a Fine Art, you know how to choose the colors, they're always perfect, you know how to draw, a very realistic kind of drawing.

The dragon is drawed perfectly here, the snow is awesome, you take care of the minimum details, like that little snow man and the (by the way, beautiful) clouds, i felt that they gave you a lot of work...

That's an awesome work man, it's too nice, i love everything you do, man...

Keep it up!!!
(Review Request Club)
Roger

Holy shrimp...

...Fro took all of the things I had to say, dammit...
Well, I'd better not read too much of his review before I end up simply retirating what he says. D:
...Yeah I really like this art piece, and I can't find many things wrong with it, which is why it gets a 10/10!

The colours are awesome. Perfect colour for the sky, for the snow, and for the dragon, although I think maybe the dragon's colour was a tad bit on the bright side. Could just be me, though. There wasn't really much shading, but I liked the shading you did under the dragon. When it comes to the texture, I was extremely impressed by the texture of the trees, particularly the one on the left. Still, the dragon lacked texture. It had no scales or anything, which made it a little bland to look at, especially since it's supposed to be the main focus of the picture.

The concept is pretty original. I haven't ever heard of a dragon living in snow before, and I also liked the contrast you managed to achieve with the humour and the dramatic/mighty part of this picture. We all know dragons are depicted as mighty and powerful beings, yet the fact that you added the hat on top of the dragon's head and you added a snowman next to him gave the picture a touch of humour to it.

As for the detail in the picture, I think this could do with a bit more detail, since it seems as if you could put more into it, such as more trees, some more animals, maybe an igloo somewhere in the distance or some rocks and stuff, etc... As it is now it feels a bit empty, as if there should be more to it. Also, the snowman next to the dragon (which I suppose was intended to make the dragon look huge) was a good idea, but the fact that the trees are even bigger than the dragon makes the dragon look weird inbetween the snowman and trees, so either those trees are massive or the snowman is just tiny, which was strange.

The background to this was great, and I liked how you made the picture sort of trail off into the distance, plus the grey sky was a very nice touch. What I'll complain about would be the dragon's pose. At first I thought it was sleeping because the eyes are so small (BTW, you should make the eyes a bit bigger :P) that only in full screen did I notice that they were indeed open and not closed, and then I thought it was drinking the water. I think you should try and make the pose you were going for look a bit obvious, because I'm not sure whether it's resting, drinking or has its tongue stuck on the ice and can't get it off.

In general this is an awesome art piece, with an original concept and some really nice textures and colours. If I had to fix anything, it'd be the lack of scales/texture on the dragon, the dragon's strange pose and the weird snowman/trees. Keep up the great work!
10/10
5/5

-Review Request Club-

~ Review Request Club ~

Looking at this as the size newgrounds gives it you really don't see the detail and effort that you put into it. I mean I would have still given it a 10/10, but when viewed at full size it really is done rather well.

The sky had a great combination of white, gray, and light blacks all swirled together. It gave the picture that feeling that it was about to snow, but as of now it was very peaceful. The calm before the storm. This is very representative whether you knew you did it or not. I'll talk about that later in my review after I go through all the visuals.

The two trees are very pleasing on the eye and they give it a bit of a balance. You did a great job using the white powder like snow on each of the trees giving the overall picture a nice calming touch again. The tree in which snow is dropping from almost gives the impression that somethings about to go down.

The snow that the dragon had it's one claw (or is it paw?) looks like it has your initials on it. I couldn't quite tell, but that's what it looked like to me. Whether it was or it wasn't, when viewed from further away you really get a nice feel that the snow pile is really there because of the shadow detail.

The hat on the dragon is really needed in my opinion. Without it you would have just assumed it was an older experienced dragon who was licking the ice. With the hat you realize that it's a younger dragon getting his tongue stuck on the ice. The dragon itself is done rather well and the colors/details that you used on it gave it a very innocent look/feeling.

What I really didn't like was the snowman. It wasn't very proportionate. At first I though, hey maybe the dragon is just really big and the snowman was made by normal size humans. I thought about it again as the trees, which are very close to it, wouldn't be that large to make the snowman seem that small. So yeah, I didn't think it was very fitting at all with it's size or location.

Perhaps instead, you could have moved it back towards the middle of the picture off centered to one of the sides to fill in the empty space of the sky. Either that or completely getting rid of it would make more sense in my mind.

Now to some technical things. I'm assuming the dragons tongue is stuck am I right? Well, don't dragons breath fire and everything? Even a younger dragon has hot breathe enough to melt the ice. Even if it's not one of those dragons that can breathe fire I'm sure it's strong enough to break the ice around it, even at a younger age.

Putting the technical stuff to the side though and still assuming that his tongue is stuck there is a lot of reference to problems or troubles ahead. Like I mentioned earlier in my review the calm before the storm type clouds tell me that everything may be alright now, but in the near future they also not be alright. Hence the dragon being alright now, but getting his tongue stuck causes a small problem.

Well, I really enjoyed this piece and I really enjoyed analyzing it. Great job all around. Like I mentioned before, the snowman being out of place was the only thing that I disliked about the picture.

5/5 and 10/10

~ Review Request Club ~

Interesting

A very interesting picture. Most of the time we can see dragons in heroic poses or fighting other dragons or dragon slayers. But a dragon in a snowy landscape is something new... at least for me.

I like the funny details you put in here. For example the woollen hat the dragon wears or the tiny snowman right next to him.

At first I thought the dragon was struggling to stay alive until I noticed he's just drinking some water. There's something about his pose that makes me think he's lying flat.
Maybe if his neck was bend a bit more downwards the impression of the dragon drinking would be a bit stronger.

{ Review Request Club }

Credits & Info

Artist
Views
5,804
Faves:
3
Votes
8
Score
3.88 / 5.00

Uploaded
Jan 3, 2010
3:39 AM EST
Category
Fine Art

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