Spirit of Earth: Deer Dragon

Here is my second elemental dragon: the spirit of earth! He was made with both the BuyHandmade Elements contest and the CRArtisanCrafts October monthly challenge in mind, and I've been waiting foreeeever (ok, like, a week) for it to be October so that this submission would count (I think it was pretty obvious that 'fall colors' was going to be the monthly theme for the October challenge).

I've got all sorts of ideas going on with this guy! Since I based the fire dragon on a bat, I thought it would be fun to give this dragon animal traits too, so he's based on a deer. I wanted the dragon to be earthy, but more in a forest/nature way than in a dirt/rock sort of way. Also, I had this idea of theming each elemental dragon along with a season, so I've assigned this dragon to autumn. The fire wyvern is supposed to represent summer due to all the warm colors, but I think it ended up looking a bit autumnal too, due to the body color being so close to brown. Guess I failed on that count. Anyway, this dragon checks off a few more things from my want-to-sculpt list - improved leafy wings, antlers, and inlaid spots!

Oh my gosh, so much work went into this. I went through three rounds of antlers before settling on this pair - I had a lot of trouble getting the shape and size right, plus I wanted the antlers to actually look like bone, so they're just a teeny bit translucent. I also wanted to make some nicer leaves than what I made for my forest dragon, and in all sorts of different fall colors. I was inspired by Alkhymeia's work, because I love how she makes her leaves, but I didn't look at any references when making this dragon, so they ended up looking rather different (and not as nice! xP). Also, did you notice that I textured both the front and back of the leaves? That was probably unnecessary. x_x Next time, I'll make some different-sized spots on the dragon's flanks too. I think it's weird that they're all the same size. Next time, next time.... I definitely feel like I could do better if I tried making this dragon again - I learned so much while working on it!

This dragon has been sold, but you can still see additional pictures on Etsy.

My other Elemental Dragons