Subtitles of the Movie

You see this picture of a dragon that I created in Painter. Well even though I had an idea of what I thought the dragon should look like I still used photography. I used reference, images that I found on the web to help me to construct this image. I hear a lot of moans and groans from my students every time I say or actually make them find reference before they even start to create an image. They don't want to do it. They want to simply just use their imaginations and go for it. And that's perfectly fine but having reference, images, helps a great deal. Now let's take a look at some of the images that I used to create this dragon here. I'll go ahead and just collapse him temporarily. And this is one of them, just to get a feel for the jaw structure and the eyes and where the nostrils actually goes. Of course I put the nostril where I wanted it by extending it, his snout out more, but this is just one of the images. I also used this one so that I can kind of get a feel for the eyelid, the thickness of it, and how the scales work and the spines. This one I used to get a feel for, let me move this down it's in my way here. This one I used to see how the wing folds because the dragon currently has his wings folded. And this one I used so I can see how the wings might look when he's in flight and also to see how the head actually droops down when the wings extend. So when you look at these images you really get to study the bone structure, what the muscles are doing and how the body is reacting to certain motions. For example, his head would go up when the wings go down, that kind of thing. And I use this image here to get a feel for the bone structure under the wing, so I can see these bones under the veins and tight skin. So I can kind of feel that the wing would kind of go like this when I draw it. So I can go ahead and sketch it out in my mind. And I use this guy here to get a feel for the jaw and what the teeth might look like inside the mouth and the cavity in the mouth and all other kinds of fun stuff. So reference is very important. And this is a study I did before I started working on the dragon. I also went to google.com, which I use quite a bit and I click on the images tab and then I enter what I am looking for. So I enter the search for bat, so I can get a feel for bat anatomy and how they behave and all that kinds of stuff, because what is a dragon? A dragon is a combination of a crocodile an alligator, a bat, a komodo dragon. All of those things can be melded together to give you a dragon if you take just parts and pieces from one part of an animal and another one and you combine it. I also carry a digital camera with me wherever I go. And the phone I use is a trio which has a camera in it. So if you have a camera phone feel free to take pictures of everything you might use for painting whether it's realistic or fantasy or anything, because that realism can help push the fantasy and make people who are looking at your image feel that it's more concrete and that it's more real.