It has been a few months, but I finally managed to find some time to finish a piece from my BDO fan art sketch idea log. With university taking so much of my time and energy, it's been hard to find any for my art (not to mention actually playing the game...).

Last summer, I got the inspiration to recreate the Dragon King of the Sea Palace, in my style. As I fell into a huge rabbit hole of research and sketching, I slowly started designing a dragon Dragon King - both in my personal style and in something resembling the traditional Korean Daoist paintings. With the king in the BDO world donning golden robes, I deduced I should paint the dragon itself golden, somewhat like the paintings of the Yellow Dragon (but just, uknow, golden).

Here's my interpretation of the Dragon King, with acrylic and air-dry clay on canvas.

And yes, ofc I had to make the yeouiju (the dragon orb) a cron stone. :D

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I have a really big problem with using colors in my art, as I tend to prefer black-and-white drawings and toned down, more "realistic" colors. With the whole point of the piece being to try and mimic the traditional Daoist art style in my own personal style, I needed to find a color balance between the vivid golden and azure blue. I cannot really visualize colors in my mind, so testing out paints for the dragon (and the clouds) was probably the part that took the longest, with me changing the shade and re-mixing paints at least four times, with a lot of time to cry in-between.

As for the materials, I wanted to finally try this sort of a 3D-painting and texture painting style, where you mold air-dry clay into a canvas and then paint the kind-of-a-sculpture. Probably should have chosen something simpler as the concept for the piece, as I quickly found that my planned techniques I was going to try out were not going to work. I like to define myself more as a drawer, so sculpting - with any material - is still new to me, and I took this painting more as a challenge to learn new techniques and how to work with more types of materials.

I mainly used two ways of molding the clay: Firstly, fusing a layer of the clay onto the canvas with water and sculpting tools, creating a texture for an area, or a better grip surface for the more 3D pieces to attach to later on. Secondly, molding the clay on, which I could then re-wet and carve more easily after it had already dried and attached more firmly, without accidentally destroying any of the parts I had already done.

This leads us to me figuring out that you cannot, in fact, mold the clay infinitely, as the more you introduce water into the mix the weaker it becomes.... and the more cracks and fallen pieces I'll have to hide as it dries. Pressing and molding the clay on the canvas (and it drying and changing in shape) also means that the canvas itself easily becomes disfigured and the frame may loosen, creating a whole new set of problems with how I'm going to try and frame or hang this, or even rest it against any flat surface.

Overall, I think this worked as a test piece quite well, but I am far too bothered by all the mistakes and oversights, with me having to come up with ways to fix parts afterwards or just having to deal with the weird textures, to call it successful otherwise. In a way, it was an interesting experiement on what I could do with painting on clay, but for now I'd say I'm done with sculpting for... a very long time.

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I really should have chosen something with less details...

Your art is amazing, wow

OMG what a wonderful art my friend, I LOVE IIITTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks, my carpal tunnel appreciates it. :)

hello man , could you make the real form of Allan Serbin while he is stopping the twillight at Mediah with his followers ?

Very wonderfull art, mate. Congrats <3

wow it looks amazing

wow, awesome work! <3

I'm not sure what you mean, you have like a specific scene from the lore/game cutscenes in mind or..? Otherwise, that could sound like a good idea/concept for a fan-art of bdo...

Also thanks all!