Yeah, my first upload of 2018!... Which I started in 2016.

Back in October 2016, I got a request from - A fluffy male dragon- black fur, feathered wings (alternating black and orange feathers) and orange tail, with some orange in hair- diamond necklace- sunset and forest in the backgroundAnd a few months later, here it is! Jony, I hope you like it. It didn't take nearly as long as my other two requ -Wait a second. It's not January 2017... it's January 2018!!! It didn't take me 3 months, it took me 15!! Uhhhhh... oops?Well, anyway. Yes, this has been a long time in the making for a number of reasons. I had initially planned to make a fully shaded and backgrounded image like my previous request:...But I realised the other day that I'd have to scale it back significantly. Thankfully, it turns out the graphic style I started embracing last year is actually a lot less time-consuming! So when I came back to this, it was just a sketch and most of the lineart (which had already been done over several months). Of course, since I drew it all a while ago, it didn't look as good as I'd like; I redrew the tufts on the tip of the tail, and redrew/modified/removed some details, but that was about all I could do without starting from scratch. The anatomy isn't as good as I would do it today, but I think it's serviceable. And just look at the pretty colours! It's amazing what a couple of filters can do. All this time, I kept thinking to myself that he'd look better in green, but now I think the black and orange look quite good in this light. And I kept the background simple - it's a lot more abstract than the other one, which to this day is my only serious attempt at a detailed digital background.While doing the background, I had, a pic from 2016, in mind:These two drawings are the only times I've done this sort of background (I'm pretty sure they're the only ones, anyway). I always loved how Latias came out in that one, but the background didn't really work, especially in retrospect. I guess this is kind of a spiritual successor - doing it again, but right this time! It certainly helped that I did the watermark properly this time. In Soar, I used completely the wrong font, and didn't know how to type it along a circular path, so I warped it, but it went all blurry. Well, now I at least know how to do the curved path, if not how to do it without spending 20 minutes wrestling with the controls. (sigh)Anyway, yes, I closed requests until further notice recently, so there won't be any repeats of this. 15 months?? That's kind of unbelievable, even for me.