January MOTM: smoke & glass dragon - concept sketch + design commentary // sfw

thanks again to coldau, verg of towels, and drakochan for the suggestions that led to this prompt!

... but holy shit lol, this was maybe the most difficult monster of the month design i've ever done.

deciding on some of the basic stuff was easy enough. i chose to make this dragon a beefy lesbian, simply because i was in the mood for it (i’m so weak to muscular monster ladies). i wanted her to be a veritable tank, all muscle and naturally armoured, the type of bulky dragon who looks like she could break you in half just by looking at you. i basically pictured a build that makes an impression similar to that of a bully breed dog, with a stocky head, strong jaws, a thick neck, and a powerful body.

in other words i had a good mental image of her silhouette and the vibe i wanted her to give off, and i thought i knew roughly how i wanted to implement the 'smoke and glass' theme, but i was sorely mistaken. a couple of evenings ago i sat down to do some concept sketches and it ended up being a rollercoaster of emotions, primarily frustration. it was the kind of situation where i could think of a lot of possible ideas, but for some reason i was really struggling with translating any of them into a tangible design, with turning words and concepts into visuals. on top of that, the problem with many of the mental images i eventually managed to conjure up was that they didn’t excite me, and i don’t want to force myself to draw stuff if i don’t enjoy working on it.

for example, i thought about simply giving my dragon lady glass scales, but it could easily look too much like ice. i've already drawn an ice monster, who also happened to be a big beefy monster lesbian, so i didn't want to design someone too similar. 

i considered themeing her on stained glass windows, but i dreaded having to work with the multitude of bright colours that decision would entail. i generally prefer natural-looking or muted palettes, and when i do work with bright colours i usually don't use too many of them at once. the whole point of stained glass windows is bright colours, so i wasn’t really feeling it. i also felt like the lines of dark metal framing the colourful glass panes would mess with the way i like to do my linework. (it might have worked if the body of the dragon had a muted palette but insect-inspired, stained glass wings... but i really wanted her to be wingless. i drew a winged monster just last month, but more importantly having to work wings into the equation would make it more difficult to properly see the smoke coming off of her.)

i tried giving her a body entirely made of glass, with smoke swirling inside it and leaking out, as if she was a living but hollow glass vessel full of smoke. but it was really tricky to convey visually, and quite frankly i didn't feel like tearing my hair out trying (and possibly failing) to draw something so challenging this time around.

i started several concept doodles, but none of them really did the trick for me. the only thing that stayed constant was the idea of smoke billowing from her figure, primarily from her spine and from 'cracks' in her body. other than that i just couldn’t figure out what i wanted her to look like. i was feeling frustrated, stressed out, and quite overwhelmed. it didn't help that i had way too much caffeine that day. 

then all of a sudden i thought of how glass is made from sand, so i literally googled 'melted sand' and came upon vitrified sand. next minute i also remembered how obsidian is volcanic glass, and before long the pieces started falling into place. (i reckon everyone kind of knows what obsidian looks like but if you don't already know what libyan desert glass looks like, googling some pictures of it will make it easier to follow this design commentary!)

when i hear 'glass' the first thing i think of is clear, see-through glass, and the second thing is blue, green, brown, semi-transparent glass used for bottles and art and such. but it struck me that the 'glass' part of this design didn't have to be either of those. it could be based on other types of glass, something more unconventional and lesser known but really cool-looking. i was trying to choose between obsidian and vitrified sand when i realised that hey, might as well do both. now, i'm not an expert on glass, and i honestly didn't do that much research on either vitrified sand or obsidian. for the sake of this design it was enough to know that obsidian is naturally occurring volcanic glass, and that vitrified sand is sand that's melted into something glass-like, whether by the forces of nature or by people. 

after years of archaeological studies i was already well familiar with obsidian, which was knapped and used for tools and weapons by several cultures of the world. as for vitrified sand i found myself especially attracted to the appearance of so-called libyan desert glass. some very superficial googling told me that these amber-like nuggets of natural glass are specific to the north-east sahara desert and that nobody knows exactly how they were created over 25 million years ago, but people seem to be leaning towards them being the result of a meteorite impact. (halfway through working on the painting i realised that they were probably the inspiration for the mysterious silica pieces you gather in the desert in assassin's creed origins...!)

basing my design on obsidian and desert glass had a purely aesthetic importance. sure, the fact that obsidian is an incredibly sharp material used for weapons and other cutting tools (including scalpels) goes well with the dragon's intimidating aura, and perhaps there's some mysteries surrounding her origins as well, but that synchronicity is a happy accident. this design is all about the appearance of the materials, and the contrasts between them in terms of textures, shapes, and colour. it 'depends' on the visual impact of desert glass as juxtaposed with obsidian, with the added feature of smoke to top it all off.

the desert glass forms the base of her body, with its warm yellow hues that range from solid to liquid honey. the shapes are irregular but rounded, as if worn down by the elements, it's semi-transparent, matte, and kind of cloudy. some parts of it are smooth while others look scaly, or like someone pressed rows of thumbprints into clay. obsidian, on the other hand, is sharp and shiny, deep black with contrasting white highlights. where flakes are knapped off it leaves a rounded edge and an interesting 'striped' texture, almost like tree rings. where the obsidian patches merge with the desert glass base, it forms sharp points that look like flakes or arrowheads. the colour scheme followed naturally from the materials, and luckily i absolutely love yellow/grey/black palettes. in the concept sketches the smoke is grey, but as you've already seen in the painting i ended up giving it a greenish undertone. 

deciding to draw inspiration from two materials with distinct features was like unlocking the key to this design. as soon as i knew i wanted to base it on obsidian and desert glass, i knew which textures, shapes, and colours to go with. it was incredibly relieving and from that point on, everything went smoothly. the end result is so much cooler than any of my initial ideas and i’m incredibly satisfied with it, not to mention proud of myself for powering through and coming up with something creative instead of just half-assing a design. i decided to write at length about what a challenge this was because even though i love designing monsters i don’t want to give the impression that it’s always easy for me. i guess the morale of this story is that when you feel stuck, try looking for unconventional ways to approach a design—you might find inspiration in unexpected places.

// art + character © me.