There be Dragons. . .

On the floor, in my mind, on plywood. Oh, they are just everywhere. This is actually my *first* commissioned piece. The size of the shield (or canvas) is 2'x4' and it took me three coats of paint to get that black field *black*. Now I know they make primer for dark paints, I didn't when I was working on this though. *'d'oh* And plywood is thirsty stuff! Took I think two coats of primer on each side just to get the wood covered and the grain filled in (I didn't want a grain texture for the shield I wanted it to be smooth). Yes, the back is painted as well, this really cool effect I got with three different shades of silver is covering it from top to tip and it looks like beaten metal. Anyway, after I had the black field *gasp* I had to transfer the drawing of the dragon rampant from my gridded poster board to the surface of the shield. For that I used transfer paper (in this case yellow graphite paper sold only at art stores) and then painted the red over the black, sponging and layering and fussing till it looked just right. After that, it was time for the gold accents, the white bits, more shading, more cleaning up, and then packaging and taking to my client. I've wanted to post this somewhere for two months now (did I forget to mention this was a Christmas present commission?! No pressure there) and so, *ah* I finally have. Sorry the pic's blurry if you click on it, it's really the best one I have.