Xelrah
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xelrah.bsky.social
Xelrah
@xelrah.bsky.social
450 followers 560 following 150 posts
Hobbyist digital artist who tells himself that one day he will draw something other than dragons. One day. Also on: https://cara.app/xelrah https://www.furaffinity.net/user/xelrah tumblr.com/xelrah
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10/🧵 There's also a lot of shapes or features lining up, especially in head area that may help with easing drawing process or getting proportions right much faster.

This sums this up. I hope you enjoyed some backstory and my line of thought.
9/🧵 I also made some features deliberately huge or even a little over the top. For example extremely long fins that separate both sides of head are both for look and practicality – there's very few angles at which you will need to draw full length of both horns. Half the work, sometimes at least.
8/🧵 One of ideas was to limit scale patterns and large scale shapes. Another was to have clearly defined layers and have sketch presented separately without colors. Thirdly a classic – color picking colors nearby. And I was never opposed to artistic liberty either.
7/🧵 Another issue I came across was my drive to make it as detailed as possible. But it's a ref, shading it and adding insane amount of details could make it more annoying to work with for some artists, hell myself included as I of course planned to draw my character every now and then.
6/🧵 Things changed when I came across Wayne Reynolds' cover for for Pathfinder 2e - Gamemastery Guide which featured black dragon. It was then I realized I was missing curved, twisting horns in my design, something that was intended for previous ref but I lacked skills back then to show it well.
5/🧵 Head shape and horn design put a hard stop to my progress and for a time I thought I had a breakthrough but after looking at it again sometime later it was still not what I wanted. I went through a few designs I really liked but after a while saw issues with them.
4/🧵 My ideology from beginning was to improve shape language, at least as far as I could manage with my current art skills. Original design was very roundy and did not radiate aura of vile necromancer. So I narrowed it down to one shape that needed to be in more places - triangles (and spikes!).
3/🧵 If you have seen work of Alexander Ostrowski and his dragon redesigns for D&D you will probably immediately recognize where main inspiration for this one came from. If you somehow missed it go check it out now www.alexanderostrowski.com
alexander ostrowski
www.alexanderostrowski.com
2/🧵 Dropping that indecisiveness on artist would be long and tedious process for both of us. Also this OC was one of the reasons why I initially started drawing. It's huge part of my drive to push forward with hobby and find enjoyment in it.

Above you can see early sketches (some very rough).
1/🧵 First, a closer look at some parts of it.

And you may ask why not just commission artist to do ref for you?
I asked that myself quite a few times through this one. Problem with me is that I am very undecided and have to iterate a lot to get something across in a form I really want.
After several months a new version of my OC ref is ready. Work on this started sometime in late April and actual ref drawing in August. It's a first time I put this much effort and thought into a single project and it has been a journey.

Additional details, sketches and long thread ahead 🧵
Thanks, I'm happy that you like it 💙
After a few months of working on redesigning my OC I am finally done with it and wanted to celebrate by making illustration with use of a new design and I can say that I am happy with the results, especially not having worked on any complex scene in all too long.
Reposted by Xelrah
www.furaffinity.net/view/62677578/

Yet another birthday present for the lovely wuffwuff ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ from the sweet gorgeous bronze fren @tempestus-sc.bsky.social
Reposted by Xelrah
Finished commissions for SpectrumSpectralis on FA. Two black dragon siblings from DnD!
Reposted by Xelrah
Blue dragon in armor. Design for Tempestus from FA.

#commission #dragon
Reposted by Xelrah
Character display piece for Syha'h!
All the scales, all the shinies ✨
#art #dragon
Reposted by Xelrah
A piece of did for Eurofurence this year. Of course theme is sci-fi the year I end up being GoH, so this turned out quite the struggle lmao.
Reposted by Xelrah
Yeah they did not look very intimidating at all 😁