Anatomy of a Picture #6: Raurgoth, Star of the North

This is actually an incredibly old project, one which started over twenty years ago during the tail end of school. Raurgoth is the second oldest of my Vanguards. If Whiteblaze can be viewed as the mascot of the OAS, Raurgoth is the de-facto mascot of Age of Defiance in general. The guys find their resolve tested on an almost daily basis by a variety of villains. Most of the time they rely on their ultimates or the tried and true bonds of friendship to save the day. Sometimes the bad guy gets the upper hand or unleashes a debilitating new ability against which Armor cannot avail. In those rare occasions, sometimes the situation can only be resolved with an enormous *censored*-you dragon.
This particular image started out as an exercise for class calling to incorporate a S-shape in a drawing. The instructor provided examples with his own works, the subjects of which consisted primarily of Texan men and women. But being a fan of fantasy and old-school 90's aesthetic, I went with a different subject.

Black Book Thumbnail by Mardrena

Rough Outline on Large Paper by Mardrena

Full-Body Inked Outline by Mardrena

When I was young I had a green iguana. They were something of a fad pet at the time and not much written about them and sadly she did not live long, and that has always been an immense source of guilt for me. Characters such as Raurgoth, Iguadalupen, and Trakar are sort of a lasting tribute to her. I don't know if I'll ever allow myself to get another when I retire to the ranch and have the funds to set up a swanky specialized enclosure, but being that I have four cats currently, I think they amply substitute for the fickle attitudes of dragons.
I don't have a precise scale for Raurgoth other than he's big. REALLY big. Nowadays dragons seem to range from the size of a horse to the size of a draft horse to the size of a small house. Raurgoth is heavily inspired by old-school dragons-massive, majestic forces of nature, for example, the Guardian Dragons from Record of Lodoss War. Narse alone is as big as an entire CASTLE. Another inspiration is this very old Alchemy Gothic poster-I don't know the exact title of it I have it in my room-it's the one with an enormous red dragon hovering over a city with a burning castle in the background and his entire body big enough to eclipse the moon. Raurgoth can comfortably nap on the deck of an aircraft carrier. His head is the "size of a truck"-a big-ass truck not a wimpy one. His teeth are longer than a man's arm. Just one knuckle is bigger than a man is tall.

Dragons Know When Someone's Talking Sh** About Them by Mardrena

The Original

Raurgoth Unfinished Acrylic Painting

I started painting this twenty years ago and kind of forgot about it. Life took over and I just didn't have the time or energy to sit down and paint. It was originally done in acrylic and I have old tubes of Liquitex in storage that might still be viable. I've thought about dusting it off and finishing it but maybe when I move to the ranch and can set up a dedicated room for work. Also cats. I thought about taking it to the art class at the art store but its $25 a session and peeking in on sessions it seems everyone practices on the same subject. I'm not interested in painting bouquets of flowers. I'm interested in dragons. Someone once mocked my art "y you draw dragons all the time?" Because 1. THEY'RE DRAGONS. And 2. He's a CHARACTER. Other girls liked standard girl stuff, I liked dinosaurs, and Iguanas are basically living dinosaurs and Dragons even bigger dinosaurs that breathe fire and fly and can bench press entire buildings.
My longtime local friend Cassie-who did impeccable work on a previous project-would sadly be moving back home to Colorado, an entire world away. Apparently some friends of hers who came down south to help her pack wound up getting elevation sickness from traveling to Texas. I asked her to do one final project for me before she left and I could think of only one thing.
I've had mixed success properly depicting Raurgoth full-body, wingspan included. He's just soooooo BIG! I tried to commission Raven from Raven's Glass at TexRenFest to make a miniature glass sculpture based on my design and he gave up because even a small version he had trouble properly capturing in glass without it falling apart. I thought about making a mock-up with polymer clay to provide as a reference but it got sidetracked due to various factors at the time.
I have a partially-finished sculpt in 3dCoat that I kind of put on the back burner because I think the model is literally too big for the program. It became a hassle to simply rotate the camera because of memory and the high polygon count. I had partially started a box-model a long time ago in 3dsMAX back in the day but it's a lost project and I'd have to redo from scratch which is a can of worms for another day. I actually tried to make a life-size mock-up of him perched on a cliff in Satisfactory out of foundation blocks and I started to run into the hard-cap on objects in-game...

Fun With Painting!

I use Realistic Paint Studio often but hadn't really messed with the oils in depth. I wanted this to have a very messy but majestic painterly feel. Because I wanted to squeeze in as much detail as possible down to every last scale, I made the canvas as big as possible and used the original inked linework as a starting point. I wish I could post the timelapse but even compressed the video is 1.5 gb and 20 minutes long and I do not have a means to embed or link it. Maybe when I move and my internet is faster than the speed of molasses...

The Finished Result

Full-Size

Raurgoth, Star of the North by Mardrena

I thought about adding some happy little trees in the lower corner to add scale but decided against it because some of the brushes didn't do what I wanted and there was enough color on the canvas already. Time would be an issue with Cassie preparing to move in a matter of months. I literally haven't painted with acrylics in years and my style in digital painting tends to vary greatly. I really don't have a preferred method. Sometimes projects are just having fun with brushes and trying new things. I love RPS because of the look and feel of the UI and the default-enabled timelapses, but I notice it has this bug where periodically if you stop painting for even a moment or tab out the brush you are using at the time decides to pitch a fit and say "no, I don't want to recognize the wacom stylus!" I wanted to leave the palette knife strokes as-is but because the actual diamond painting itself was going to be much smaller than the previous one, I didn't want to cram in so much detail that it'd translate poorly onto the bead map. Speaking of which...

Diamonds Were NOT Her Best Friend...

Cassie had to tweak the saturation some to get the map somewhat presentable so sadly the sky lost the bit of purple. For whatever reason the site she usually uses to print custom images had a hissyfit with an enormous white dragon overlooking a sunset on a mountain because initial passes came out looking atrocious, turning my intricate painting into a blocky blob. Finally she was able to get a version that looked acceptable with minimal loss of detail. The process took roughly three months from start to finish, much quicker than the Solar Dragon since the canvas was smaller. She affectionately nicknamed the project "50 Shades of White"...

Even though this company has produced quality product in the past, for some reason the glue on the bead map just wasn't very good, or the stones refused to stay put. To work around this we went to the local art store (the same one where I had an unfortunate run-in with an obnoxious AI Bro...) to get some Mod Podge. She initially only wanted one but I recommended to get two just to be on the safe side....she ended up using both in the end just to get the damb beads to stick.

I came across an Inkscape tutorial awhile back showing a method to turn an image into dots and I wondered if this method could be used to create custom maps without having to order from a third party company, you'd just have to get the map printed out on canvas and manually glue the beads on. Cassie wasn't sure about it because it'd be difficult to tell which beads go where, but if I ever get around to testing this method myself, I'd like to see how well it'd do since it'd involve basically freehand "painting".

Halfway Done

The Power In That Tail!

Two Thirds Done...

Wings to Eclipse a 747...

The Final Product

I'm not sure if I'll be able to get Cassie to do another project for me. I don't drive or own a car and it's literally a 15 hour drive to Colorado, 10 of which is just getting out of Texas alone. It is sad that I won't be able to visit her as often as I used to, I am grateful for her help bringing my works to life and adding her unique touch. Also the payment for her hard work went towards her "Fix the car's AC so Cassie doesn't bake while driving"-fund. It seems everyone I know these days is leaving the big city to return to their families and it will soon be my turn in the coming new year. I will also miss...the Turkey, aka Rufus. (When he loafs he looks like a turkey in a oven pan...) Chonky cats are the best cats...

Rufus the Ruthless Taskmaster