Boy Who Has a Name I Once Loved

I... I looked up and I'm pretty sure I've been painting for ten hours straight. I mean I stood up once. Or twice? The last session was seven hours straight. Plus there was the time before that. That puts this painting at around 20 hours and aslkjfalksjk THOSE SCALES those scales I can't--I can't see straight--but this is my first time painting a dragon ever, EVER, and--

Okay. Things:
1. This is based on a scene from volume 8 of the How to Train Your Dragon book series: How to Break a Dragon's Heart. 
2. I tried to combine movie!Hiccup and book!Hiccup, which is why Hiccup has red hair and a face tattoo. P.S. He is not supposed to have an enormous face tattoo, it's actually quite small, but I wanted it to be enormous and even more awesome, so I. You know. Did that.
3. In the book, this dragon is described as being so massive that each link in his chain is the size of a room. Since I wanted the dragon to fit on the paper at least a little, I scaled him down a lot. Also, he's been chained in the forest for a hundred years and literally has trees growing out of him (he is a blue dragon who has turned green with plant growth), but my meager skills reduced this fantastic imagery down to thorns and moss. I like the thorns and moss though. (The painting is too big for my scanner, so it cut off his awesome curving thorny claws over to the side there, oh well.) And I'm way happier with that gorgeous teal color I made than if I had just painted him green. 
4. Uh I forgot his laces and all that but don't worry, I did add them in, I'm just way too tired to rescan this right now, so take my word for it that his shirt is not hanging immodestly open and if we're all very lucky (?) I will rescan or take a photo of this someday. ;D

Augh LOOK at that chain, and those face scales, and that eye, and the folds in Hiccup's tunic, and basically, I am REALLY HAPPY ABOUT THIS, some things could be better (we should never talk about skin) but mostly AH I'M SO GLAD I FINISHED IT I need to go pass out


I used one of these images for a pose reference on Hiccup, and this really sweet tutorial for inspiration on the dragon's scales. And I think I googled forest fires for inspiration on the background or something, I dunno. 


Hiccup and this dragon belong to Cressida Cowell and Dreamworks and all that jazz.
This is done in acrylics!


I would tell you the name of this dragon and explain the title to you, but both of those things would be major spoilers, so instead I'm just going to say OH GOD THIS BOOK WAS SO TRAGIC

ahhhh I finally successfully drew a dragon, I feel so proud, did you see those scales