✨Get to know the Artist✨. I'm RJ and I'm a concept artist and illustrator. I like to draw monsters a lot. 🦖.📩 arvalis@mac.com .🎨 🎬ADG local 800

Thanks so much guys for checking out these dragons. I worked myself close to death to get these out the door in a month and a half so I really appreciate it. Previous dragon and book preorder link.

It was quite a fun bit to paint out an entire dragon made of sapphire without photobashing. It basically became a material study at a certain point. Harder to understand now with the material render but I’m really proud of the scale flow on this guy.

Finally the last of my dragons for Dungeons & Dragons The Book of Dragons. Unlike the others who are merely decorated with crystals, this boy is crystal to the bone; like a gummy worm made of rock. This is dragon 5 of 5

Here is both a link to the previous one I posted in this series as well as a link to preorder the book! . Come back tomorrow for the last one! .

More than any of the others this one had a lot of gem bits in the hide. I’m already such a fan of painting osteoderms that doing crystalline ones were a special treat, a painter’s delight 🤠

With all the Gem Dragons I did for Dungeons & Dragons The Book of Dragons, the crystal dragon probably had the strongest foundation to build from so I really made a meal out of painting the skin folds. This is dragon 4 of 5

Here is both a link to the last one I posted in this series as well as a link to preorder the book! . Come back tomorrow for the next one! .

Because it was the most traditional dragon shape of the bunch that actually made it the hardest. Had to find more novel ways to eke out a bit more juice in the design. In addition to the scale type, I focused on the more novel folding wing shapes.

Of all the Gem Dragon illustrations I did for Dungeons & Dragons The Book of Dragons this weirdly proved the most challenging. I pushed myself to paint a type of scales I rarely do here. This is dragon 3 of 5

Link to the previous dragon I shared in this series as well as a link to preorder the new book for yourself if you like! .

A lot of what I do when I post art here is talk about how I had some break through or whatever but man I really did have one here. The way I started thinking about specular highlights completely changed when I did these. I just understand how to paint better now I guess 🤷

Next in the Gem Dragon illustrations I did for Dungeons & Dragons The Book of Dragons is my favorite. You may have noticed the somewhat controversial design feature but instead of cowardly ‘fixing’ it, I leaned all the way in. This is dragon 2 of 5

If you're interested in grabbing the full book of cool dragon art from me and a heap of other dope artists, you can preorder it here

For some reason I really did not expect painting 5 dragon designs without any photo or 3d elements in a month and a half would be this hard. I was uh, very wrong. Very nearly reached my breaking point getting these guys done but I sure am happy with how they came out.

I got the chance to do updated artwork of the Gem Dragons for the new book: Dungeons & Dragons The Book of Dragons. I worked waaay too hard on these, I'm extremely proud of them. This is dragon 1 of 5

RT @lewislarosa: Cover to my first art book collection Carbon Based. Hoping people will dig it & hoping it’ll allow me to catch up on some….

the official render is up

cinematic parallels

Mega Dragonite bridges the design gap between dragonair and dragonite elegantly. I like him!

RT @arvalis: Look at this jumbo chunk. Spinosaurus in 2020 is basically a river dragon. Also as this was mostly based around the paper skel….