I made a habit these last few years to hand-make my son’s birthday cards. This year I did something new: asking HIM what theme he wanted me to explore. Toothless, from the movie “How to train your dragon”, he said. Ok! I love this character: he’s in fact a cat. With scales and wings.
![Grey toned paper taped with masking tape and the pencil sketch of a sitting dragon with a fish in his mouth](https://blog.koalie.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/img_5636-1024x768.jpg)
I started with a pencil outline on toned thick paper, the size of a postcard.
![Dark blue gouache paint applied in the background](https://blog.koalie.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/img_5638-1024x768.jpg)
Then I mixed my Holbein Artists gouache paint: Prussian blue and ivory black and added titanium white (just a teeny bit), which I laid on the paper. I made sure to be as precise as I could
![Darker blue and lighter blue applied on the dragon and where there is light on him](https://blog.koalie.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/img_5639-1024x768.jpg)
I mixed further my blue mix: more blue and black for the areas of the dragon that were in the shadow, and more white for the parts of the dragon that were illuminated.
![Yellow paint in his eyes and on the ground around his feet](https://blog.koalie.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/img_5640-1024x768.jpg)
Then I used leaf green mixed with with to paint the grass underneath and his eyes.
![Thinner yellow in the background to represent light rays](https://blog.koalie.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/img_5641-1024x768.jpg)
Here, I had a very precise idea of what I wanted to achieve and it turned out I just could not! I wanted rays of golden light falling in the background. I mixed some yellow watercolor paint (I don’t have yellow gouache) and white. And there was no way I was able to get the yellow to play well with the blue background. I had thought that once the background was dry the new layer was never going to be change by it: big mistake.
![Brown and light brown added to the rocks](https://blog.koalie.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/img_5642-1024x768.jpg)
So I ignored the yellow rays mess, mixed a bit of black and white and painted the dark parts of the rocks. Then added more white to the mix and painted the light areas of the rocks. I used some of those mixed on the ears. I added details using black for the pupils, white to accentuate the illuminated areas.
![More yellow added to darken the light rays](https://blog.koalie.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/img_5643-1024x768.jpg)
At this point, I had wasted both time and yellow paint 🙂 None of the strokes would produce the gradient I wanted because either the moisture of the paint turned the layers to green, or the new layer was unblended and it was going to look bad.
![I covered the yellow rays after all and now the background is shades of blue](https://blog.koalie.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/img_5644-1024x768.jpg)
So, I returned to my early mix of blue, black and white and covered as much of the yellow rays as I could. It gave some texture to the background. I painted the bit of the fish that sticks out of the dragon’s mouth.
![Masking tape removed, white lettering added to wish my son a happy 13th birthday, dated in signed.](https://blog.koalie.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/carte-anniv-13-ans-crocmou-1024x767.jpg)
Final result with lettering done with a white Posca pen. I hope he likes it! His birthday is next Monday.