Digital Art - "Dino-Rider"

Pencil sketch laid on simple digital background

Another of my entries for the Imagine FX magazine forum weekly competition. Unfortunately, I spent a good few hours working on this, only to discover a fault on their website just before the deadline, which meant I couldn't enter. So this painting is just for the portfolio...

Title: "Dinosaur Design"

Brief: "In an alternative world, Dinosaurs and humans have co-existed for millennia. Create a dinosaur with a human mount from any known time period (Roman, Medieval, Modern Day, etc) giving consideration to what it's role in society would be; Military, construction, transport, status symbol, etc."

Mostly completed dinosaur illustration

My thoughts were that many would go for Roman or Medieval riders. Some even did WWII versions. In order to be a little different, I went for a futuristic rider. I thought it would be interesting to imagine them used in modern/future warfare. Rather than go for the more obvious 'Velociraptor' or 'Tyrannosaur' types, I tried to think of a herbivorous dinosaur that was more horse-like, and therefore more likely to be a good mount. I settled on Parasaurolophus, as I rather like their unusual and sweeping heads.

Near completion, but lacking the leg armour

After finding a few reference images, I sketched the dinosaur and rider in pencil first, then scanned them in. I didn't have much time, so I kept the painting fairly rough, and tried to avoid getting caught up in details. Again, to save time, I kept the background to a (hopefully) effective minimum, with the suggestion of some other riders in the background. After painting it in a standard ratio (I was using A5, landscape), I decided to see how it would look with a more epic widescreen look, which I tend to like. As you can see, I chose to use that for the final painting.

Final painting

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