Well...for just a black background and a red brush, this turned out amazingly well! I love the detail and the scales on the dragon's face, and I think the eye is fine just the way it is. Great job!

Bwah, the big green eye is staring at me!! Very good Job, Kelsey!

*lolz at "Bwah!"*

more power to bordom!!! love the detail on it

Yeah, this pic is even better than the Eldest cover

....maybe, but I don't actually se it as replacing the album cover...and I don't think it really looks like Thorn. Thorn had red eyes, one, and two, this is an Aisian Dragon, though only I can tell ^^' I'm flattered you think that though

this is a raly great dragon head and i am quite jealous of your photoshop skillz, i can't even draw a line on that program let alone an entire piccy O.O

whats worse is that I don't own a tablet thingy. It takes forever to do my pictures on Photoshop. I usually never finish the ones I start. Pictures like this take weeks. I don't mind the hard work though if it keeps me interested long enopugh for me to finish it. Its not really difficult so much as time consuming. if you look up photoshop tutorials online, you'll learn a whole bunch of neat things. This was a combination of two tutorials on how to paint. Its done on a black background with 20-30 opacity red paint. You layer the paint strokes and you get more solid colors, so you're basically painting in the highlights. I also use the burn tool and the dodge tool to help darken/lighten some parts, and I use a dark burn tool to do the scales and define the lines. Thats the best I can describe it. I can give a link though to the tutorials if you like

*feels as if you are talking in foreign language* xD i don;t eve know what a tablet is xD

a tablet is kind of like a drawing pad for photoshop, or so I've heard...

oh kinda like a smart board? idk i'll just stick with MS Paint

I guess that would be another word. I've just always heard the word tablet. I found one of the tutorials http://black-ravyn.deviantart.com/art/Anti-Guide-Colouring-64285399 took me long enough XP I had to run all around DA and back to relocate this XP

perhaps i shall give it a go at skool.... well a smart board is this HUGE white board that teachers use to write notes and stuff on like a chaulk board....

I've heard it reffered to as promethian board. Yeah, I suppose they're the same. They're really cool

A tablet ( http://www.dragnix.net/Msg_Board/2009/pic136_wacom.jpg ) is supposed to be very useful to draw things. It can detect how much pressure you put in the pen but since the drawing appears on the monitor and not on the tablet itself, the results I got with mine weren't spectacular ( http://www.dragnix.net/Msg_Board/2009/pic135_tablet-try.jpg ).

lol. I wonder if the thing is really worth it after all. I guess its something you kind of get used to, like a mouse pad....I don't really know how anyone could draw without working directly on the piece *would possibly cry and give up and return to normal, traditional art in an instant*

Those thing are pricey but if you have the money, go for it. A lot of people I know can do wonder with those things. Even if the lineart is done with a usual pencil, coloring with a tablet is probably more intuitive (and probably provides more "natural" results) than with a mouse. But then again, everything I say is a second hand opinion as I never really put a lot of effort to learn how to use my tablet properly.

i'd like to just rent one or play with one for a while...might make doing the dreaded scales and fur details go a little quicker (though I do know a few cheats for doing scales...hehe, *copy and paste*) I wouldn't want to buy one otherwise. Just seems pointless jumping the gun on an expensive machine to find out it doesn't work well for you...besides, I'm still a starving artist highschool kid...I have no life or job, so no real money XD (tis what ebay is for)

I suck completely at all computer art, especially since I have such a hard time transferring mouse movements to artistic lines. traditional paper and pencil works best for me I guess...

well, I can't draw a straight or elegant line on Photoshop to save my life. I move very slowely with my lines as I color in figures, and I'm constantly editing. Once I have a complete solid color figure, contrast to the above method of painting, I use burn and dodge tool to add the rest of the highlights and details. Scales I do on a separate layer and just copy and paste the scales all over the place. (is way to lazy to do all those scales by mouse*) The finished picture is always far less perfect than it apears

*shrugs* It looks pretty perfect to me, so I guess that's all that counts.

Thats because I used a lot of short cuts on the scales, particularly the small ones. Pieces which I usually use lineart on I have a few other small errors that I'm good at covering up. Otherwise I spend a lot of time editing...

So? If the final result looks good, who cares how you got to that point? Now, granted, that logic only really works with art, and shouldn't be used across the board, lol.

lol, of course. one wonderful thing about photoshop is that every mistake can be covered or erased, and one wonderful thing about art is that there's cheats and shortcuts to almost everything, textures in particular

Yeah, but that doesn't always work so well with writing or music or anything else really. Tis the cool thing about art, lol.