Regina Venefica: 2nd Draft

So after the feedback I got from all over the net I took another pass at the image for Regina Venefica…

Here’s how it turned out. I’m interested if the Dragon (Y Ddraig Goch) Dewi is more immediately obvious as a Dragon (rather than the half-breed children of Shub-Niggurath and the Houses of Parliament/An Ent on PCP/ Mutant Whale / A cross between Jaws and a TV remote, etc).

To achieve this (if anyone is interested in how the artist’s process works) I:

1. Thinned the neck of the dragon, reducing the “Big Ben”-ness at least a little.
2. Changed the shadows around the neck of the dragon to emphasise the chin and throat.
3. Added a large ball of flame, nothing says dragon like a large ball of flame (and I had been skimping on the fire before).
4. Shading individual scales more, Big Ben isn’t scaly and so this should help…
5. Modified the cloudscape – although its still tricky to work out that it is clouds and not the sea in black and white.
6. Killed the large bird in Dewi’s mouth that looked a lot like a clock-face (no actual birds, dragons or monarchs were harmed in the making of this image).

So now the image looks like this:

The second attempt I hope is more striking than the last