I was sketching dragons again recently, well I often sketch dragons but this time there was a purpose, the theme of the month over at john-howe.com for December was Dragons. As a certain dragon was on my mind with the Desolation of Smaug hitting the silver screen* I ended up wondering how Smaug would look after the black arrow had done its job 😉 This was a fun dragon to work on, well any character from Tolkien is fun to attempt – rather than use traditional medium I worked in Painter 12 so that I could tinker with the tint to try and achieve an underwater colour cast.
*Is it still a silver screen?