About the Illustration - Hummingbird Dragon

With this blog post, I wanted to revisit an old illustration I created, and talk about my inspirations as well as the process of working from reference (not directly copying a reference, but bringing in a sense of realism with it).

For this piece, my idea was this: if dragons were to exist in real life, but were close to the life we’d normally find in nature, what would they be like? I wanted this design to be believable to the point where the viewer could see it being almost real, as if this critter could actually exist.

For this piece, this hummingbird dragon wasn’t modeled after a particular species, but took from a few of them, such as the blue-throated hummingbird, Rivoli’s hummingbird, Santa Marta Sabrewing, and making the wings and tail even more colorful than you’d normally find in nature. I wanted it to be something like a mythical hummingbird creature, where only one would exist and it would be exceedingly rare to spot it.

For the background, I wanted to illustrate a few flowers to scale, to show that this hummingbird dragon would be quite small and especially if it zipped around like any hummingbird would, it would be difficult to spot! Purple and pink, contrasted with the de-saturated greens, were colors I wanted to showcase in the illustration too. I made sure to de-saturate the background overall so that the vivid colors of the hummingbird dragon stood out more.

Lastly, I wanted to make sure the silhouette of the subject stood out from the background overall. Whereas in some areas I made sure to create contrast from the background, in others I emphasized backlighting, rim lighting, and reflected light in order to make the critte be easily visible.