After reading the Mage Wars series by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon in middle school, my notebooks began filling up with griffin drawings. (Griffin? Gryphon? Is there a difference? Does anyone know?) Most of these are now either lost or consigned to the scrapbook thanks to the notebook paper lines in their backgrounds, but I’ve never lost my love for drawing these creatures.
This started as an experiment in shading with only an ink pen, and then I added coloring with a digitized watercolor brush to his feathers. The background was then done with an airbrush tool, to help differentiate it from the character, as normally I do backgrounds in watercolor. It took a few attempts to make his eye color “pop” properly in relation to the yellow of his beak.