ALT

A watercolor painting of a swimmer encoutering some sapphic mermaids, edited slightly for tumblr. (The titty-out version is over on my bluesky at juliedillon.bsky.social )

I don't know if this is helpful, but here are some stages of my colored pencil illustration process. I'm not a planner, so I am intuitive with the colors and values, and just build up those things bit by bit and keep adjusting and layering until I'm happy with it (which, of course, involves many hours of Not Being Happy With It)

Someday I'll figure out how to comfortably video myself drawing, but hope this helps until then!

Here’s some process shots for the dragon shepherd. I wanted to try my hand at a soft sunrise scene – so lots of peachy pinks and soft greyed out blues and greens.

Somehow he still seems to enjoy basking in the sunlight and the quiet busyness of the birds and butterflies. They say necromancy is a dark art, but whoever reanimated the beast of the black swamp knew what they were doing.

It’s a great fishing spot but watch out, the…um, geese.. can be a bit territorial.

Don’t let them tell you that dragons don’t frolic in springtime meadows. They frolic alright. They frolic.

Just because you are a fierce and monstrous beast is no reason you can’t enjoy good roll in the grass.

Some process shots from the recent kirin piece – I’d been feeling like I was always using the same five colored pencils for all my pieces, so I made an effort to use a few that I don’t normally. Ended up channeling Lisa Frank, which is not a bad thing.

Little guy number one~

Little guy number two~