Illustration Master Class: Working on Concept

Well, the Illustration Master Class (2011) is now less than 3 weeks away and I am still working on my concept sketch. It's getting there. I finally figured out what I'm going to do and how plan to do it. The rules that I have to work within are: 1) One Dragon (at least) that is showing some sort of human emotion, 2) 2 - 4 people with one person being detailed, 3) Sized for a hardcover book (front and back is optional).

So, I came up with the following image:

In this story, we have the main character destroying an egg. There'll be another person in front of the egg that will be on their hands and knees with the outstretched hand to try to stop the person. The egg will have a bright glow on the inside and clouds will be coming out of the egg top (The egg is sitting in a bed of rocks). From the clouds, you'll see the two dragons above the guy being emitted (They are part of what he has released within the egg that he is destroying). They also are angry about him destroying it and are trying to prevent him from destroying it.

So, there's still a lot of drawing to do on this. Once the drawing is done, I'll then decide the color scheme and value structure.

So, to get the posing right, here I am outside in my duster. Since I'm not very good about drawing out of my head, I decided that I needed some action/reference shots to see how the clothing flows and the body position. This was a bit weird, but kind of fun to do. My wife, Melissa, just kept shooting lots and lots of pictures while I hopped around on the deck.

You can also see the dinosaur toy that I used for the basic head structure. On the final drawing, I'll need to elongate the head, add some quills, and change the facial structure a bit so that it looks like a dragon, as opposed to the dinosaur.