This will be my last painting before I have classes again. There is a number of things that really helped this painting work. First is getting the construction right. I wanted to make sure the 3d form looked correct and I could use the scales to form around the figure. This made sure I knew exactly where the planes of shadow were. Using a heat light reference really helped make it look realistic and just look cool overall.

It seems the key to making good paintings is just understanding how natural lighting works. So that will be my focus for now. Another goal I want to work towards is making nicely rendered fur. Which I'm not sure if I'm looking forward towards that because scales were pretty tedious.