More Shading Practice , This Time A Dragon Rider. I Haven’t Drawn A Dragon In Quite Some Time.

its been a while since I've painted a creature thing. Was working on this way back, but my old tablet broke and that kinda made me loose my enthusiasms to finish it. Its done now.

The Dram

A slight redesign of one of an older design, in color this time. These are the Dram, a mammal-like sophonts from an very earth like planet. On the left is a female and the right a male. They're the closets your going to get to a "humanoid" alien in the known galaxy.

Some bits on Biology

I call them mammal like but their not like placental mammals, they're really more akin to marsupials and monotremes in that young are hatched very underdeveloped and are nurtured in a pouch. While not depicted accurately here male dram are considerably larger than their female counterparts, and are around 2x times their size on average. They're feathers are display features which are used to express mood, and in mate selection. Oh and they're also venomous, they've got two fangs in their mandibles which in ancient times they'd use on their prey. They're aren't exactly immune to their own venom, but they are resistant to it.

The average global temperature on the dram home-world is considerably cooler than earth is while they are capable of regulating their own body temperature they do terribly in temps greater than 80 degrees fahrenheit, and often find room temp uncomfortable. When working in environments of other sophonts they tend to wear refrigerated chill suits.

Some bits on Culture

Dram family structures are similar to lions, so polygamy is the norm and their societies tend to be matriarchal. Their home-world is currently in its glacial maximum stage of their ice age so the northern hemisphere is largely covered in permanent ice sheets. Due to over industrialization by nations in the south their planet is unfortunately dealing with gradual global warming. The effects of which were much more intense and immediate due to their planets larger axial tilt than that of earth, so as you can imagine they're dealing with a lot of issues as a result. They were contacted by aliens , ~20 years ago and interacting with the wider galaxy has only added to their list of political and socio-economic problems.

In terms of tech, they're a little more advanced in some aspects and behind in others but they've got a comparable tech level to 21th century humans. (so us right now!) And they've already made crewed missions to other neighboring planets in their star system.

I really like the idea of the sort of role reversal, where instead of humans getting contacted by aliens its the other way around. Like I can imagine the dram equivalent of SETI discovering human ship or message and all the shenanigans that would cause. Would be a cool story i think.

PD Tarot Series

3. The Drone

The Drone is a pure-type monster in the shape of a human. They are relics of a bygone era and those that persist past ancient times often have an existence lacking purpose. The Drone is the holder of forbidden ancient knowledge and the keeper of hidden agendas.

The Drone represents servitude, dedication and obfuscation of truths. Those who wield the Drone will find their livelihood in the control of others and their future chained heavily by past transgressions.

This one is a bit unconventional but I wanted to maintain the sort of dream-like, surrealness of regular tarot card.

Sketches of Colonist, Fashion Ideas

Colonists are a subset of humans who ere genetically modified to adapt to exoplanets. Very few alien worlds in my setting Union Station, are habitable for humans and the ones that are tend to have issues with biological incompatibility, colonists use a combination of genetic engineering and cybernetics to bridge the gap between their own biology and that of the worlds they've settled.

This colonists is a descendant of early humans who adapted to low gravity worlds

Sezia, Veiled lady

Decided to do a bit of painting practice, tried a different technique, not sure how i feel about it, the colors are kinda dull.

A purple space dragon partially inspired by sea-slugs. I wanted to get some more practice using colors Ii don’t normally use. 

another sketch, haven't drawn a humanoid robot / cyborg in a while wanted to see if i could apply some techniques i learned the past few months

Old 3D model I made in zbrush years ago, unfortunately I lost the original file, but i managed to find an old screenshot, of this guy, my cursed D&D character Clarence Petch-Wayne-Smith III, a disgustingly rich eladrin (the highest of the high elves).

Learning to draw mechanical things, decided to make some cyborgs. They have literal face masks, its more of a stylistic choice on their part