Sepia Dragon!

Here's a sketch out of my sketchbook for a commission I am working on. It's just, at this point, a good direction and will probably change 60%, but the concept is to do a Hudson River type painting, with a dragon in it. All very foresty and mountainy, waterfalls and all. So, look back at my romantic castles and landscapes and waterfalls in the forest...and you see how it all ties into a bigger picture of what I am doing. I've been looking at Claude Lorrain lately, a French artist (1604-1682) who spent alot of time in Italy was an expert draughtsman at doing amazing drawings before executing large canvases. He used the medium of Sepia, which is in essence, brown ink applied with a crow quil pen, or brush. In this case I drew an ink drawing and wanted to give it some tone so I used sepia-Walnut ink. I like the "old" methods. This is abit sketchy but as I said, it's the first step in a larger commissioned work and things like this go through "stages" of development. This is sheerly compositional at this point, but, you get the idea. Enjoy! This gives you a peek into my earliest creative processes.

Something else...I have CONFIDENCE with my oil painting!! I have gained it back, thanks to this blog, and thanks to all the people who buy the little paintings here-I can't tell you how much it's helped me with my work.