Edit: I made the image a little larger so you can see the details better and I also added some shading to the shore line.

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So what was originally just going to be a test of a simple background ended up being a full blown painting. It definitely taught me quite a bit about Sai.

The location is actually relevant to my upcoming story. The gryphons make their homes in the canyon around the central city of Valgard, and it's actually the location of Nita and Cyrus' first flight together in the story, so it ends up being a semi important location. I will need to do an environment painting of it sometime for sure.

As far as the character drawing goes, I'm much happier with how I've been drawing these last few times. I'm especially pleased with how the wings came out.