The Dragon Cave

~~ORIGINAL BY KEITH PARKINSON, READ HERE~~
The original painting on which this picture is based is called The Dragon Cave, by Keith Parkinson. He was a great artist and I'm grateful for everything he did for art during his life. He died in October 26, 2005.
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This drawing was started by the middle of 2003 and finished at december 2003, the reasons of why I made it are more or less explained in the following URL
[link] (very old page, by the way).

Everything started with the teacher's instructions to trace a grid over the reference work (a printed version of The Dragon Cave) and the paper on which one was going to paint, then one had to trace the reference's work lines on one's paper, to have the base of the work: the lineart.

Then followed the painting...
The technique I utilized was oil pastels for everything except the dragon. Her wings, however, were also done with oil pastel.
To obtain more colors than those I disposed, I blended the colors one over the other. The left side of the picture was painted twice, the first time I applied approximately 4 layers of color.
When the term to finish the drawing was over, I had to show it to the teacher, and it was still incomplete. After that, I left the picture under my bed, inside the block (for a definition of block look the links at the bottom). I started it during the autumn/winter season (april to september in the south hemisphery, where I live; I think I started around june), and during it, the pastels were specially solid and hard to work with, they scratched the color surface instead of painting on it; that didn't happen with all colors (white was specially soft), but the red color was a HELL to work with. To avoid that problem I had to turn on the calefactor for about an hour inside my room, to be able to color with the red and blue stick (red specially, red).
However, when I decided to finish this drawing (november 2003), after the class period finished (teachers were still going to be there until middle december), the days were warm, and the red colored stick was no longer a pain to work with, it didn't scratch the painting surface anymore (that was good).
So by then, I finished the rightest side of the picture. My technique improved so much since when I started drawing, that I didn't want to leave the left side of the picture with the old coloring, so I tried to color over. To my surprise, after so many months drying, almost half a year, the four layers of pastels at the left side of the picture were completely fixed, they didn't get removed when I tried to paint over them, so I was able to add 4 more layers of color on it. The second hand of colouring was much better than the former (in terms of technique), giving the picture a more equal feeling of quality from left to right.

The dragon was painted with a completely different technique; oil pastel sticks were too broad to make fine details on the dragon, so there I utilized colored pencils. Those colored pencils didn't achieve dark enough colors to match the variety of colors one can achieve with pastels, but to solve that problem, I dipped the tip of those pencils on water, and waited a while until it became moist. Wet colored pencils was something I had used before (take a look at my "Soulice and Helmeet" picture, all done in wet colored pencils, the same I utilized in this one piece, look at the bottom for material notes), and therefore I knew I could achieve darker and more saturated colors using that technique. The dragon took long, very, very long, she was the protagonist of the original painting and she was even more the protagonist of my one, so despite my back ached, after so many hours sliding those pencils over the paper surface, I continued, day after day D:

Overall 90 to 100 hours of work (I'm not counting hours of rest, eating, walking back and forth trying to alleviate the nerves of knowing most errors could not be erased so I had to do it perfect in the first try, etc...).


Materials:
The pastels I utilized were a 16 colors pentel oil pastels box, image follows: [link]
The colored pencils I utilized were a bruynzeel 12 colored pencils box, image follows: [link]
The paper I drawed on was a "doble faz" (double face) 1/4 Artel block. I couldn't find an exact image of the block, but a picture of the product family follows: [link]
(note: a 1/4 block is twice the size of a 1/8 block).

They are school materials. At the middle of the work I noticed how easier everything would have been if I used a 50 colors box of pastels for example, but I already started with a 16 colors one, and I wanted to finish using that same box, it was an 'honour' thing, call it whatever you want. It was my challenge.


Reason to Upload:
I was not going to upload this piece of work, as the original was made by Keith Parkinson and I don't see why should I upload this piece else than to please skeptics and to convince people I can do quality work if I take my time. If people wants to see The Dragon Cave, the original by Keith Parkinson clearly looks better.
Anyways, now that I think twice on this, perhaps this will help to motivate people starting on arts to try and put their hands on a big challenge; if you want to do it, you can do it, what could stop you? :]


~~IMPORTANT, READ HERE~~
What you see is a photo of the drawing held behind a rough glass, it is therefore not the best place to look at details on the technique, I recommend looking at the scans I will upload to the scrapbook to see in detail how does the surface of the drawing look like.

Edit:
Images uploaded, links below
[link]
[link]
WARNING: 1,9 Mb each
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p.s.: if I manage to put my hands on my mother's camera, I think I'm going to get a better shot.