Acrylic Practice

Now that Illustration is my hobby and not my career I've been thinking a lot about how the switch effects my art. One thing I've decided is that I want to try my hand at traditional painting again. Digital was nice for being fast and cost effective but I really miss the feeling of having a physical painting to hang on a wall. I also want to try painting large scale. 

However I'm not in any rush so I figured it would be good to start with a small acrylic painting (this will be 30cm x 40cm) I wanted to do something familiar so naturally a dragon made sense. I also didn't want to do something that required a ton of backstory. I'm definitely an illustrator not a writer. So here's what I've got so far.

It's been so long since I used acrylic, and I don't think I've ever painting in acrylic on a canvas (I haven't found a place where I can buy illustration board yet :/) So if anyone can remember some good ways to prep a canvas for acrylic that would be very helpful. Video tutorials would be even better. as of now I'm planning to do probably 1 coat of gesso, then do my transfer and enhance the drawing on the actual canvas and then do another coat of thin gesso to seal the drawing and go from there.

Also any comments or critiques of the piece so far are welcome and appreciated.

-Wes
http://westalbott.com/