Dragon rider concept art

So, this is a concept of how a dragon riding saddle might look, Inheritance style. I had no references, as this was also drawn on the catamaran, which is why the human anatomy may be off. And I'm very bad at drawing leather. I spent a bunch of time shading the dragon, and does it show? no. >.<

This particular dragon is my female OC, Storm. This piece came about from a series of conversations I had with . In a journal meme I asked what colour your dragon would be if you had one, and she answered "black". To make a long story short, we decided to try drawing ourselves with our dragons. I did not manage to draw myself well. I'm bad at drawing people from this angle, didn't have the right colours for my dirty blond hair, etc. Argh. I also only had a very light grey, hence why the cliff is brown, and I didn't have good grass colours. And I have no idea how to draw waves. Oh well, this was still fun to draw.

Trying to place the saddle on the dragon was very hard. I wasn't sure whether to place it before or behind the wing, and the spines posed an interesting problem. Paolini mentions Eragon worrying about impaling himself on spines infront and behind himself while riding Saphira. However, unless the dragon let one of its spines be sawed off (not likely) the spines would have o be very far apart to fit a rider and saddle in between, unless maybe the dragon was very large. Any input is welcome. I'll probably try drawing other versions of a dragon saddle later on.