3 months in the making

Thanks for the great comments!

The dragon was an original 36'' by 48'' charcoal/pencil piece, see part of the original image here:
http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbutts/oddstuff/charcoal&pencil/gooddragonclipped.jpg

As far as getting tired of working on an image believe me NONE of you are alone... I at times opened this image only to close it again because I just didn't feel like working on it...but a couple hours later...I had it opened and was airbrushing like a mad man.

How:

first came the original hand drawn part...
then a good friend of mine put it on his drum scanner at his work place and scanned it in 4 pieces and put it on CD for me.
at home I put it back together and clipped out the part of the image I wanted to use..
to get rid of the white background and have just the pencil/charcoal outlines I used the magic wand tool to select a dark area and then used >SELECT>SIMILAR (2 or 3 times)
followed by CTR + J (new layer via copy)

now all I have on the new layer is JUST the hard lines of my original art....

start Painting!

Ok It is AMAZING, but What I want to know is what is this image going to be used for? If you worked so hard and long on it, I want to know why? :D

Sleep Deprivation. ;) LOL!

Nah, really...

I worked on it 20 minutes here, an hour there, 10 minutes here....for about 3 months...

I truly DO NOT sleep, this is what I do when I go to bed and get back up because I can't sleep....
and things like that pacify me...
also, I'm a sucker for dragons. I have a few more I need to do something with.

wow, thats a long time and a lot of time. though you can see a big difference between the first and the second. have you done any other work like this before torn? i mean like when starting with a plain black and white image then adding colour?

Yeah, actually I have done several things like that. Although, some aren't as good as that one...

I'm working on something now....its isn't anywhere NEAR finished, I don't have any of the texture layers in and I have only begun to paint shadow and highlights...

but it will give ya an idea of how I get the final result.

original: 35k
http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbutts/oddstuff/charcoal&pencil/the_path_we_travel.jpg


colorization: 52k
http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbutts/art_port/the_path_we_travel_color.jpg

Great job Torn. I remember when you posted the original. I know how easy it is to be working along and realize....damn....i have a lot of layersa here.
Lates,
Justin:D

wow, im sure that ones going to be just as good. nice job torn!

good work. looks like all is drawn by hand. nice work.