Dragons WIP 1 (Patreon)

Dragons are big (usually) so often when I start drawing them on A4 sheets I run out of room on the page.

This one is a part of "Arches 4 Archers". The foot on the left was just an idea I was playing with since there are many ways to do dragon feet and none are technically cannon designs though there are a few more common looks that show up, usually as part of digitigrade legs so to match the size of this dragon I went for something chunky to help with balance.

Being segmented isnt ideal but piecing it all back together in Photoshop  leaves room for small tweaks along the way. 

For the wings I decided to go with an almost hand like design just to help set this dragon apart from the others in my gallery. One of the challenges with big creatures like this is how to go about restraining them properly. This along with the 16th century setting meant that I was limited to relatively simple tools, and thus I put 2 large logs together with a LOT of rope ^^
It forgoes the usual stocks and keeps the dragons head out of the way encase people wonder why he simply doesn't just turn his head and cook the archers in front or burn the ropes with fire breath!
Ive seen others use this set up since which is cool to see ripples of inspiration.
But rope isnt the only thing holding this dragon in place!

Some big chinned head designs later (cant always get it first try) and some big hands saw the need for some big cuffs. An unfortunate side effect of doing everything on separate sheets meant that it was only when I put everything together that I realised the cuffs would be mostly obscured!
These days I take greater care in showing off these sorts of key details as the type of bondage tends to be quite important for selling the situation. The material and thickness of a restraint can make a difference to the themes. 

The next challenge I ran into was how many ropes it would take on top of all this to make for a somewhat steady target for my archers. Turns out I needed lots of rope. Multiple loops and around every limb with anchor points to the ground. Just enough to see it holding tight but not so much that every important detail gets covered with knots and loops.

Once again I have a bunch of separate body's and heads just encase something got in the way of another thing.

It was very much a last moment decision to replace the sword with a paint brush as it made more sense in context and gave our wolf a reason to be on standby. His actual purpose is to give a sense of scale and distance, being about the same height as a single foot!
Another last moment decision came in the form of an Easter egg with the egret like bird.
His dress and colours match the disguise that Robin Hood used during the archery competition during the 1973 Disney adaptation we all love ^^
(With colour coded quills, you can see that he's also the only one to get a perfect bulls eye)

Link to final draft https://www.furaffinity.net/view/28058350/

One last detail to point out which not many people know about. I decide my dragon colours based on what I haven't already done. So this is the Red dragon of my gallery and every other primary and secondary colour has been used (counting Charizard for now until I do my own orange dragon OC). Got black and white in one picture which then lead to the decision to make my "Grey Scale" picture and cover yet another main tone.