As an artist, I primarily draw animals and landscape. Branching out into fantasy was difficult. It’s not just the dragons, but the people as well. Check out some of the early sketches. The first one is of the main character, Tomis. Tomis was really difficult to draw as I could not find the right child to draw from. Drawing a child was more difficult than drawing an adult becuse most portrait drawings focus on the dimentions of adult faces. A child’s face has a different structure which changes as the child gets older. I went through many a portrait book and life drawing book to try to find the proper dimentions to apply to a 10 year old boy. As you can see from my notes beside the sketch, I still haven’t gotten it right. His forehead is too tall. His nose is too long. His upper lip is too short. And his eyes are too far apart.
The next sketch is of one of the primary heroes of the story, Reyker. This is just an outline sketch. No shading has been done. It is sort of right, but still off. I am not quite sure what is off about it. This needs more study and more sketches
The next sketch is of the castle. This was almost as difficult as the people as I am not very good at architecture. I studied a lot of ancient and modern architecture but this came out very badly.
Here are two of the dragons for the back of the book cover. Tomis is The Third Dragon, so I wanted two other dragons represented. This is just a basic sketch. While I can draw animals pretty well, I am not so good at animals with reptilic skin. I think the forms of the dragons are okay for just a beginning sketch, but I need to work on their scales.
Fantasy/Sci-Fi Author Dawn Ross 