Here, there be dragons!

I've been asked to do illustrations for a children's book (yay) that's to be self-published by a very nice lady, but I had to definitely finish this first :)  My usual medium, watercolor and color pencils.  About 14" by 20".

I had to do like, a bajillion composition sketches for it, most of which were too messy and unsightly to paste up here, but I shall post a couple anyway.  The first scan is the last page of three pages of ideas.  I had just decided to make the girl in the foreground with the dragon close to her, on the right.  The previous sketches don't look like the final at all, so I only scanned this page outta my sketchbook.

The second page is the final sketch before I started on the actual piece.  I always need a final sketch to look at and build my final off of, or else I can't finish the painting.  I envy those who can just compose and sketch off the top of their heads, grrr.

I'll update next with the layouts and character designs of the childrens' book, yay :)