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Nalusa ā Midnight Fight
Published: 2010-03-07 23:27:46 +0000 UTC; Views: 1729; Favourites: 76; Downloads: 0
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Description
This is one of my few attempts at a painterly-esque image. I have always found working with color to be stressfull at best, especially when doing it digitally.(my favorite medium being ink, perhaps you can understand why)This took about eight hours to do, including many, many, many uses of "CTRL + Z" and even a few deletions of entire layer slections.
I am moderatley pleased with it; however, you can tell that I withdrew back into what I am fiamiliar with doing on the tan dragon. I just couldnt resist the hatching.
As for the image itsef:
these are supposed to be two adult male dragons, fighting over rights to mate/dominance. They are not using fire, as that would be using up precious energy reserves they need for breeding.
The red dragon is older, and smaller and rather stiff with age. However his expereinces give him a distinct advantage over the larger youth, and his size makes him a harder target to hit. His dark coloration makes it easy for him to hide in the night sky, and amush the young male, diving down to hopefully scare him off with a startleing visual and vocal display.
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Comments: 28
I am very honored to be writing this critique e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/sā¦ " width="15" height="15" alt="
I love the poses you used, the are awesome and the perspective shots are great and it really shows a lot of talent and skill and severe determination on your part to be able to pull this off. Great backgroud, love the translucent effect on the wings. I greatly ennjoy the way the blue (cliffs?) look blurred so that the dragons are the emphasis.
Suggestions: on the tan dragon, be a little more careful with the wings joint because is popping inwards when it should be popping outwards from body. Study bid/bat anttomy to get a better sense of prescense for those wing joints. Othewise great job! We hopeyou found this crit. helpful, and if you didn't then please let us know how we may improve for next time.
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That's a pretty good composition you worked there, and the painting itself looks flowy, some would say it looks unfinished, I say it looks free.
What I don't really like is the wing's anathomy, your dragons look feline/lizard-inspired in the bodies but those wings look too much like a bat's wings with a human's shoulders.
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Thanks! I was really excited when I got the rough-draft worked out, and I just had to run with it.
I tried to find a way to make the wing look like it was set peoperly into a socket to enable flight, as well as provide anchor for the large chest muscles that would be required for lift. However, I do agree that it does look wonky. Perhaps when I get a chance to hit a natural history museum I'll go take a look at some of the skeletons of flying dinosaurs to see better how such an apendage would fit into a skeletal frame.
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Why I dont paint them a lot, I like sketching dragons and it's pretty awesome the kind of dragons you can make by coherently putting together the right animals
Sketch a lot and it'll look better every time
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dragons, love dragons!
they are very gracful
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This reminds me very much of Merlin's vision of the two dragons.
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Ah! Thank you very much! Its been years since I've head mention of that tale, let alone have it cross my mind.
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I see, well your piece absolutely screams that tale to the large archive of fantasy and legends that I happen to have in my mind.
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The red dragons wings are fantastic! The overall image is great, I'm just really excited about the wings for some reason. The hatching on the tan dragon is excellent! I agree with the other commenters that the colors could be toned down to make the dragons pop. I think a larger halo around the moon would be nice. I also agree that you should add some hatching to the red dragon too.
I really like it!!!
I have my last final tomorrow, and then I'm out on spring break so I will have time to come and hangout.
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Thanks Melissa!
And indeed! I look forward to hanging out with you again 
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Not bad at all. The picture overall looks good. However, it can look much better, depending on whether or not you are willing to revisit this picture and take it several steps further.
First off, the dragons look great. Their body expressions look reasonably realistic and natural. Interestingly how
the body positions of the dragons appear to work well together.
It looks like you intended to make the dragons move pretty fast through space by creating a motion blur on the landscape passing by quickly. If the static looking stars are motion blurred also, I guess the motion blur of the landscape may work work well.
I noticed that you put in quite a bit of texturing on the tan-colored dragon. That is good. However, it might be nice to add a bit of texture to the red dragon also (obviously not the same amount, though).
And as for color... it looks alright. However, I think the color scheme can be improved somewhat. Perhaps it involves playing around with the lighting and/or back lighting of the dragons. Nevertheless, finding a better color scheme takes quite a bit of experimentation, let alone time.
Okay, this "critique" is turning out to be a long rambling essay. I have more things to say, but I'll stop here before I say too much...
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Thank you so much for such an in depth critique! I belive I will have to go back and take a stab at your reccomndations and see how it turns out.
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Hey first off I'd like to applaud you as dismissing using fire as impractical. 
The poses are brilliant and I like how they interacted and don't just look like they were drawn separately, just close together. I also like how you put the big chest muscles on the tan dragon for the wings. And the cross-hatching on it as well, even though you sounded like you didn't mean to, I think that was a nice addition.
I would just suggest using duller, more neutral-ish colors for the background. That would make the dragons pop out more, I would think because the background is pretty, but they're kind of over-whelmed by it.
But I really like this
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Thank you very much for the thoughtful comment! I shall take your suggestions regarding the background into concidertaion on my next work!
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I'd first like to say, beautiful pose! You portrayed the aerial struggle very well. The only thing I can think about would be to nudge the red dragon up a little higher, to better portray the mid-dive down upon the tan dragon... but the current placing of the two give an air that the tan dragon is backtracking desperately because he's having trouble tracking him, which is another possibility, so it still works.
You seemed somewhat apologetic for adding the hatching to the tan dragon in your comments, but I think it gave the tan dragon boundless more definition than the red, he really pops with the added care to the shading and detail. In fact, speaking of the picture popping, the one thing that does need work is the focal point of your composition. As much as I love dragons, I can't help but have my eyes keep wandering towards that moon in the corner, and the highlights of the mountains.
I think it would be easily amended however if you explored the brighter highlights and deeper shadows on the two fighters, and blurred the moon and the highlights a little further in the background. The subject is the two draconic brawlers, they should be demanding the viewer's utmost attention.
But yeah! I still love this piece, you did a great job!
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Thank you very much! I'll take a stab at your reccomedations.
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Wow! love the poses and the colouring is wonderful 
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Thanks! All the wings on my dragons are strongly inspired by bats wings. I had the good luck a few years ago to find one in our firewood-pile (it had crawled in after some bugs) and got to look at the living thig up close with the help of heavy-duty welding gloves. I've tried to capture the awe I felt at actualy seeing how those types of wings work every time I draw a dragon. 
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Oh thats awesome, to actually get a close up look at how those wings work! you're brave too! i'd be too freaked out to get a good enough look at a bat's wings
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The thing was so cute, it looked like a small pug-nosed mouse with big ears. At first I was allong the lines of "OMG ITS A BAT!" But after I calmed down and took a look at it (and realised it wasnt going to jump up in my face) I found they were really quite adorible.
Heres a really good picture of one, and a blog: [link]
The Little Brown Bat is the type of beastie we have around here. And the one I found (unlike in the blog) was very much alive. I wound up having to toss it in the air so it could fly again, because they cant take off from the ground.
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Aww! that looked quite cute - shame that it died D: i think i was just put off by them after going through one of those rooms at zoos where they fly freely, though now i remember how good they are at flying in pitch black
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It dosent help the isse that mothers (at least mine) used to tell me that if I stayed out at dusk, they would get caught in my hair. I was afraid of them for a long time too, because of that.
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Now that would scare me! D:
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It never did happen, I think its just an old-wives tale.
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