I suck at dragons.

*click picture, i thumbnailed it. -erwt

So give me a break. Though this is the first time I attempted painting a dragon, I'm quite dissapointed. Also, the scenery was rather badly done. I have this innability to make interesting landscapes, all I ever have is mountains and cloudy sky. Any suggestions to make this painting better; I'm all ears.

and now you want us to tell you, that the dragon looks cool?
meh. ill do it:
the dragon looks cool.

looks like a whelp. but you are right everything is plain and the landscape/clouds are monotone but the lightning seems to be right for me.
there are lots of clouds in the sky... i have never seen that big clouds, but thats ok.
you could "texture" it ...i dont mean 'put an overlay layer on it with a texture'... i ment draw details

and maybe add some trees on the mountains, snow on the top of them, a sun someweher in the sky or light beams eluminating the clouds in a more interesting way, and add skales and tuff on the dragon, what reflects the light. ... details ;P

for the first dragon, you ever painted, its really good. the anatomy and the pose seems to be as it could be realistic.

duuuude I told you before, make it more contrasty. All the colors are rather pale. Also it seems that you paint the light areas of objects with the same color as the shadow one, only with more brightness. I don't know, that's what it seems and it ain't good. There are so many factors that influence the lighting of things, so many colors. This seems like an overcast environment, so the lighting on those mountains is not right, it should come from the top and there shouldn't be a side more lit than the other. I don't think I'm making any sense here...

I understand what you mean TDR, but having a dark side of the mountains seemed the only way I could make them look... not flat.

well here's a photo of some mountains with overcast sky:
http://www.maion.com/photography/_photos/made0935.jpg
As you may notice, the trick is to darken the deeper areas. Though they still look kinda flat even in reality, well...that's reality. You could, however, make some holes in the clouds and have some pools of light on those mountains and maybe also on the dragon.

Ehhh... that link isn't working on my computer for some reason.

I did update the mountains and dragon somewhat, is this what you meant?

I thumbnailed your images, they where way too large. I like the dragon design though, the image needs a better composition. As you can see by the thumbnail, there is just simply too much boring wasted space.

Thanks Erwt.

I think it needs more variation of colour, and maybe the sun behind the clouds to counter the monotonity.
I also think the flap on dragon tail looks odd.

either more color variation or a more fitting color for the mountains, they're jsut so much out of place with that coloring (and composition)