Wonderful stuff! I am impressed with the color scheme. The blue/orange contrast is one frequently used and abused because it's so easy to make look good, but you keep it fresh by reining in the saturation (except for that gorgeous, sapphire blue sky). The hints of gold are a nice compliment to the pinkish browns, too. I have no critique at all concerning the colors. They are impeccable, as far as I'm concerned.

The most interesting part is the values. This is something that I can see you play with a lot in your work, from a quick glance at the rest of your gallery. For that, I say brava. You pull out the shapes using light and sculpt them using the same substance-- no over-relying on line here, something I struggle with terribly. There's a nice pattern of sharp shadows and subtle gradients that bring interest to the piece and don't make it either too high-contrast or too muddy. My only critique is that I think i'd like to see the background, with the buildings and the sky, brightened up dome to show just how much glare there is in the desert, and to help delineate the dragon's back leg and tail a bit more.


Composition wise, the framing of the image using the rocky overpass is a good way to keep our eye from leaving the image easily (which is why it has such a high impact score; my eye lingers because it gets spiraled inward). The placement of the focal point in interesting and balances well with the empty sky in the opposite corner. Once inside the image, though, there are a couple of stray paths that don't really lead anywhere except deactivated space. The whip of the tail ends right in that window, leaving nowhere for me to go, and the path (literal roads or paths in an image are a guaranteed way to get the eye to travel) leads right, well, into the dragon's nether zones.

Anatomy/character design wise wise, dragon is interestingly shaped and realistically modeled. I have no trouble believing in his existence, nor that he is made for the desert. I could see his skull in a museum. Great work. The priestess is well dressed for the clime and has a fascinating face. Her breasts don't seem quite right, though, or, I should say, the cloth doesn't seem right-- it drapes around the side of her figure, meaning it should drape off the breasts too, and not cling to their undersides. It has the effect of making it look like it's sticking under there due to sweat or being wedged under drooping breasts.

Last thing for me to mention is texture. In short, I'd like to see more of it. The gold, the skin, the cloth, the sand all things have the same painted look, and that makes them seem to be made of the same material. I'd love to see some slick scales on that dragon, like desert snakes, or really sharp highlight on the jewelry, to show it's polished, or gritty, granite like stones, to show the damage wind-blown sand can do over time.

Overall, I think this is a really strong, really interesting illustration. I hope this critique helps. I can be a bit of a windbag sometimes.