Swamp/Forest Dragon 2

Sketches

  

  

After experimenting with twigs and leaves instead of horns, I changed the idea to that of a dragon who doesn’t just live amongst trees but has a sort of symbiotic connection with them, basically a dragon that looks half-tree/half-drake.

With the tree dragon hybrid idea I went from dragon that has tree like elements, to dragon that is semi-consumed by a tree, which was fine and worked well enough and that was going to be the end of development. However then I had the idea that instead of this being a dragon with tree like elements, it would be more interesting if it was the other way round, i.e. a tree that took on the appearance of a dragon.

This aspect helped flesh out the his backstory and from that point I definitively knew who this character was and what the tree theme had to do with him. Specifically he was a dragon who gave his life protecting a great tree; sadly the tree was uprooted and died anyway. After the dragons sacrifice however the husk of the tree was reanimated, and started to take on the appearance of a drake.