I made this dragon slayer over a couple of lunch breaks.
I think that all in all it took slightly more than an hour.

Now, I don’t time myself, and I normally find those who boast “hey look what I did in just twenty minutes” quite silly.
I mean, good for you dude, your pipeline is very efficient!
But my friend Dave (who occasionally lurked behind my shoulder while I was doing this) and I were noticing that a while ago I wouldn’t have been able to finish a piece in such a short time. Which means that if not skills, at least experience started kicking in at some point.
Who-hoo! One more reason to think that turning forty doesn’t suck!

I have been trying to draw things under slightly unusual light conditions lately.
This scene is taking place late in the afternoon on an overcast day.
The light is mostly grey, with the occasional bright beam making its way from little specks of blue sky peeking out of the clouds.

To be honest I added some blue sky as an afterthought to justify the bright blue reflections on the Dragon Slayer’s armour and the dragon’s scales.
They shouldn’t be there under those light conditions. Planes in shadows turn blue when facing up, but only under clear sky.
One thing I’m particularly happy with are the wings of the dragon.
I had already tried to recreate that lovely thin, transparent lit from beyond skin effect in the past. Unsuccessfully, alas.

There was a guy at school with ears pretty much perpendicular to his skull. They shone as red as a traffic light when the sun was behind him. The other kids picked on him all the time. I thought his ears were cool, and they would have been challenging to draw convincingly.
This effort is for you, big-eared kid from my past whose name I can’t remember.

Anyway.

I know, I always end up drawing dragons and the like. What can I say? They are fun. Which is exactly what the dragon slayer in this illustration might be thinking.
So here he is, at the end of a long working day, tracking a dragon to his nest in a bog.
Would he notice how the delicate skin of its wing catches the low Autumn sun?
I like to think he would.

By Paolo Puggioni