Ohh, gorgeous!

Thank you ^^

My god... that water is amazing.

Thank you ;w;

Tremendous amount of detail.
Interesting that it begot a discussion here about a tiny handful of details that are sore thumbs or missing compared to the others.

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean? If there's something you think I've missed, I'd like to hear it.

They are all such tiny things that they would be considered nit-picks. Nothing major at all.
- Wings are translucent, but the dark blue stripe is not visible through the underside of the right wing
- Upper wing (Shoulder to elbow joint) extension musculature doesn't carry a feel of "I can hold this wing extended". The wings look nearly skeletal.
- Wing leading web extends up onto the thumb, which also doesn't appear to have the musculature to keep that stretched taught (thus, sore thumb. Bad pun... sorry. ^.^; ) By comparison, the leading finger does appear to have more of the musculature needed to keep itself extended. Yay!

It's an astounding amount of detail that went into this and the latter two of those items only nag at two of us who know anatomy to a degree. They could also all be "Artistic license" items, so again, nothing glaring or huge. The sore thumb was a physiology pun. T^T

Oh you're right, I did miss that blue stripe... or erased it... I'm not sure which. I should fix that.
Yeah they're a bit skinny, I like the concept of long thin tendons, with shorter more compact muscles, but I've not quite figured out how to pull it off yet, I might continue reworking this one, but more likely I'll just bare it in mind for the next piece.
There are a LOT of issues with the wing in the foreground, and I had to re-work a lot of it just to make it look passable, that has more to do with my grasp on painting what's in my head right now than anything, but I see where you're coming from.
Thanks for the crit ^^ this was helpful.

Made some edits to the wing, based on bats, and fixed that missing blue line ^^ thank you!

Always welcome, and thank you for being so awesome.
Look at it this way: As long as you have room to improve, you can always get better. When you think yourself perfect, you can only go downhill from there. So you go from great to even better, and it's always a good thing.

For anatomy, if all else fails, take a peek at bone structure. Sometimes I think something and then I look it up and realize I was wrong, and sometimes I was right. Sometimes something works as Artist's Interpretation, and sometimes it can just use that extra little bit of "What's exactly inside there to make it that way?" bit that makes it better. I just know that the more one strives for realism, the more physics rears its ugly head. ;)

Stay spiffy!

That's exactly what I do =P

I make semi-regular studies, but I don't always apply it as well as I'd like and I certainly don't have the TIME to study as much as I'd like.
I use references for all of my paintings, this one was primarily sighthound musculature and bone structure, some horse.

yo that splashy texture is NICE

Thank you =D I was pleasantly surprised with how that came out.

That is beautiful. Inspiring to see the use of contours and reflection

Thank you very much ^^ I think I was channelling the inspiration of some art in an old sci-fi book of my dad's, but I can't for the life of me remember who the artist was. I do like that almost metallic look to organic creatures though.

Agreed... also very fitting for dragons in particular. Reflectiveness is an underrated form of camo :)