The Middle

Now that I have tried and discarded seven or eight little boys from my trial sketches I finally decided upon a pose.

  First I lightly sketched in a basic shape on the dragon. I decided the little boy wanted a ride.

The next step was to see the figures more clearly as they relate to one another, so I set the layers to

"Multiply" and started a new layer under that.

I am happy with the pose now, so I go ahead and refine the sketch of the child.

This makes me happy and I want to keep the sketch, but of course, it is too small for the large painting I am working on , so I measure the area on the painting and find out that the child needs to cover 8 inches across the back of the dragon.   I take only the finished sketch of the little boy and transfer it to a clean canvas and enlarge as needed,

The final image is now 8 inches across and so I print this one and prepare to transfer the sketch to the canvas where the dragon is waiting.

I have a couple of choices. I can sketch this in freehand or I can use tracing paper and graphite and transfer that way.  

Then, because the boy is being painted over the dragon's body I need to block in the image with a coat of white that will dry and be painted over later.