The Dragon and the Boy

When Suryara and I first started talking about making a project together, something like 136 years ago, I didn't realize how much fun it would be. It's always tricky to work with another illustrator on a single image.. sometimes we don't have the same approach on something, or the styles don't go together all that well.. but so far it's going pretty well for us.

The first illustration that we made was this one, let me walk you trough the process..

I had this idea of a really small boy walking around on the bottom of the ocean sometime ago, he would be tied to a key so he wouldn't float around. After doing some sketches and landing on this one, and I sent it to Suryara to see what she thought.

Some days later she send me this really cute sea dragon on a wider view of the sea with a note: "Just not sure about that fish/octopus/something thing on the top of the boy", and then I broke the partnership.

After 4 months thinking about the break of the partnership over that note, I finally found the courage to say "Ok, I will take the fish/octopus/thing out". 

The next step was to arrange the composition and create the background that would work with it. Most of the elements were already on the first sketch so this part was pretty simple.

After a few color tryouts, we've landed on this one. Around this time I remember that I had read a few months ago the notes of composition from Dan Santat. I've always liked how Dan works with a dark foreground and lighter background, and I thought that it would be a good way to go on this one.

Now the little people that live inside the computer will make it nicer and... IT'S DONE! Now Suryara will go out to walk her dog and have an ice-cream and I will have some coffee.

Some details:

by Jovan
The Amazing Mustached Dog Illustration Project

Howdy, friends!

We make amazing illustrations, half of us wear a stylish mustache and we love dogs. We're The Amazing Mustached Dog Illustration Project!

Long time friends and with a similar taste for beautiful artwork, we finally got together on the internets to join our skills and challenge each other to produce our best illustrations. Our goal with this project is - along with having a good time - making cool and beautiful illustration experiments, with freedom to combine our visions and artistic approaches in very unique artwork.

In the next posts we'll show you and talk about some of our experiments, workflows and finished illustrations. Stay tuned for some amazingness!