Manta

Looks like I am doing something new for once -- a request! No, do not ask me for requests, because I'll say no. DG-Sama was one of the winners for the "evolution" contest I hosted last month in our forums. The prize was a request, so here it is at last.

Meet my take on Manta, DG-Sama's RP character in true/astral form. I don't pretend to know anything about "astral plane" physics, so I decided to consider him as a water creature instead. Of course, I had to throw in a few liberties while doing so, such as his rear set of fins. I can probably attribute this to my own method for making a referenced drawing, which is something like:
1- Take a pen and paper and spend no more than sixty seconds sketching out the source picture.
2- Spend at least a week completely forgetting about it (including where I put the reference sketch...)
3- Go looking for the reference sketch, then decide I don't need it and throw it away.
4- Get a sheet of paper ready and draw the subject out completely by memory.

Like other scaled creatures I've done, I shaded using textures rather than solid color tones. Don't ask me how many of the little scales I drew (at least one thousand). It's really not as hard to draw interlocking scales as it might look.

I did the background behind Manta completely impromptu, spending about half an hour or so. And every section of the picture uses a mixture of at least three colors (his eye, for example, includes red, red-orange, yellow, and ebony).

Medium: Colored & ebony pencil, eraser
Duration: About 3~4 hours
Size: 9x12", fullviews at 75px/in