A WIP

A work in progress, indeed! After working on that previous autumnal image and receiving some helpful critique on it, I ended up doing some more studies and thinking and decided to try a different scene, but keep the 'autumn forest' setting.

This is supposed to be a girl and her dragon friend sitting down for a soothing cup of Hot Drink™. The dragon tries to slip its tongue into her drink, but she pulls away and gives him a bit of the stink eye. I feel like I need to adjust the dragon's expression and/or body language in the head area to get a better feeling of 'was trying to sneak a taste'. What do you think?

I'm also having a heck of a time trying to draw the girl properly because, y'know, humans and the fact that I don't have a long history of drawing those, really. I was trying to put my own upper body in that pose to get an idea of how I could draw it, and was also trying to look for references of sitting positions, though it's been difficult trying to adjust the generic sitting poses into more of a 'recoiling' sitting pose.

So, I suppose at the moment, I'm mainly interested in critique on the character interaction, the anatomy/pose of the girl, and composition. She'll be wearing winter-type clothing in the end.

I'll also be adding a backpack or something on the ground leaning against the rock the girl is sitting on at some point, probably with a thermos poking out of it for handy storage of the rest of the previously mentioned Hot Drink™.

But, of course, critique on any aspects of the image so far are welcome!

Edit 06/11/11:
I've adjusted the pose of the girl, changed the dragon's head position, and altered its expression slightly...! Hopefully this is getting the message across better.

Obviously also, I added some scribbly base colours to show what sort of colour direction I'm going in. I haven't done much actual shading yet, but I'm planning on the light source coming from the top right. Or something.

Oh, and I'll probably end up changing the girl's clothing colours. I'm struggling a bit to think of something that works, so I might look up images of people in ~winter ensembles~ for ideas.

Edit 11/11/11: Considerable changes this time. I've added some foliage, refined lots of rocks, begun the process of shading the characters and so on, but still lots and lots left to do! Still have to add that backpack...!

Edit 08/12/11: Added grassy texture to the grass plus fallen leaves. I am trying to refine the girl and it's challenging...!