totally normal over here

I actually did the sketch for this piece quite a while ago, pretty soon after I finished my VCR dragon painting. My brain was still stuck on object dragon creatures and a dragon with a crane game for a stomach seemed like the next logical thing to do. plushies interacting with crane games are one of those things that kind of lends itself to weird situations lol ("Claw Machine" by Eddy Atoms is a good example) I'm sure this wont be the last time it shows up in my work.

The sketch sat for a few months while I got caught up on other projects. the first iteration of this piece actually had a "claw" on the end of its tail, but I felt like it wasnt really in line with the more toon vibe I was going for, so gloved hand it became. I struggled for a while on figuring out the colors (especially since I didn't want to just jump in blind on a piece this big) but I finally got a good rough color study in

I decided to keep the background pretty minimal, just kind of invoking a dark, dimly lit circus tent. once the background was blocked in, I filled the main form back in with white, and transferred my sketch back on to the board.

I figured it'd be best to get the airbrushing I wanted to do out of the way first, getting the speech bubble, sign, and interior for the dragon blocked in. Although for the speech bubble and interior, they both mostly got painted over, but I felt like it still helpful in getting the rendering I wanted.

(also the faux woodgrain I put on the sign is a really subtle thing, but I think it added a lil somethin to it lol)

the majority of the time spent on this was probably just on getting the rendering of the main form. blending from the dark blues to the more light teals. I actually used my finger to blend a lot of this lol I would just use my brush to lay down a bit of paint and then just blend with the texture of my glove. I find it works a lot better than trying to blend with a brush at times lol

(I REALLY LIKE PAINTING HANDS U⁠^⁠ｪ⁠^⁠U) In the color study you can see I was thinkin of going for a more bright vibrant blue for the dragons face and midsection around the claw machine, but I didn't really have any paint that matched that intensity. but I did have some good greens lol I think it looks a lot better actually and ties together the other bits of green in the piece overall I'm really happy with this one, I think the mood of the piece really comes through with the colors. I'm cookin up some ideas for some more interesting paintings and process stuff, so keep an eye out!

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