Progress on this piece has been slow due to college. I finally decided to follow the same style for the tentacles as for the snakes on her head. So now it’s just grunt work from here… I’m trying to get a few hundred scales drawn every night. The image below (which is only showing the layer I’m working on) shows my progress right now.

(click the thumbnail below to view the full-size image)

I recieved a question about how I created the scales on the snakes. Asking what “method” I was using. All I can say is that unfortunately there are no shortcuts or “magic” behind it.

I create the scales by first drawing guide-lines in a separate layer which marks the “spine” of the snake. I then just draw the outlines of the scales – all the time paying attention to the angle of the surface I’m drawing. (to make the scales look 3-dimensional) Finally I block in the dark areas around the scales. The process is extremly simple, but painstakingly slow. This gives the result which can be seen in the above image. For the snakes on the head I skipped the 3rd step since the scales were so small.