King of the Boiling Sea

This has got to be my most worked on piece EVER. I have been working on this for frickin' WEEKS....

I started this about a month ago when I was working on a seascape picture. I wanted to do fairly realistic waves in a kind stormy setting, get some real aggressive stuff going and it was loads of fun trying to capture the swell and froth of the sea in this state. I got a fair way into it and then ran out of steam because it was just water at that stage, so I showed it to my good friend *machine-guts and she suggested a dragon in it. I asked for a sketch, which she supplied, and out of her rough scribbles I started work on adding a dragon. After a couple of false starts which left me feeling it was all too much like hard work I left it for a week and came back to it. The rough idea was there, as discussed with MGutz, so I started the dragon again, only this time, instead of flying over the water, I had him bursting out like a sea-serpent and it worked great! So thats where the image you see came into light.

Unlike normally, I finally took certain peoples advice (u know who u r senior DA peeps ) and took some time over the end result. I'd get it to a point where I thought it was finished then left it for a day and came back and corrected all the stuff I hated about it. Quite a revelation in my work flow I can tell you.

The head caused me the most grief and I did use my deviation SACRIFICE as a reference for the finished head. Although this looks like a render IT IS BY HAND. Trust me it took me a week solid just on the head alone.....

All work undertaken in Photoshop with my Intuos2 (If I could shag it, I would, its that SEXEH). Original image is frickin' hooooge for print purposes.
Only thing that bugs me is the title.... oh well. Think u get the idea ayway.

Wallpaper version very soon