This illustration actually took a while because I was experimenting with a new coloring technique and I was trying my hardest with it by starting out with an actual color sketch. I really did not want to vomit a rainbow again (though, as you can see, it happened anyway). I also encountered some issues that I didn't realize could happen with the lineart until later as I'll mention below.
The topic was "epilogue" and I had an idea to do an image of a heroine settling after finishing her quest and what the aftermath of the ending of a story would have looked like. I wanted to convey a certain nonchalance or boredom with the heroine as if she didn't have any other path in her life now. I also drew the dragon as a huge beast of a thing in contrast to show the heroine's impressive feat (like a typical fairy tale hero) and put in a sunset since sunsets are symbolic for endings. I think I tried to attempt a Rockwell storytelling, but seeing what I wrote already, I'm not sure if all that was really conveyed that clearly in this work. Also, on other news, I am full of clichés. Fear me! Haha.
So this time I had the intention to try lineart that only lined the outside of each background or foreground and shade in chiaroscuro-like inside the lines to create a softer form. Unfortunately, the lineart didn't work so great for the dragon scales or the smoke. It ended up forcing a strict form on objects that needed more fluidity and variation than that. On the other hand, I really liked how the clouds came out with all the shades of colors in it.
In conclusion, the end product looks quite different in coloration from the color sketch and I'm happy that it is. The sulfurous smoke from the fallen dragon was a bit hard to convey actually, since I didn't think of how I would make that bit of air distinctive from the pipe smoke or the clouds (as you can see I made them all the same colors in the color sketch--faaaantastic). Haha, funnily enough, when I showed the WIP to people and asked them about the dragon-smoke, they couldn't figure out what it was regardless. Aw, maaan. Still, I rather liked how the dragon came out and the painting.
But, I did learn a neat trick from tweaking the blending modes. I think I used Hue to create that opposite, oily hue that was originally the same color as the pipe smoke and the overall soft-rainbow, golden extravaganza that I ended up doing made the illustration quite pretty. Even with all the mistakes and the sort of unsuccessful lineart idea, I'm proud of this one.
tl;dr: it was a very long experiment that didn't come out the way I wanted, but came out well for now anyway.
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