How To Draw A Dragon Hard

How To Draw A Dragon’s Tail

While this guide lacks step-by-step instructions, it may give you some ideas as to what type of tail to give your dragon. Is it a seafaring creature in need of a fin? Or should it have a spiky ball on the end of its tail, similar to a medieval mace? Its its tail stiff or flexible, scaled or feathered? Use this dragon tails chart to help you decide. See the drawing tutorial.

How To Draw A Dragon: 16 Expert Tips

20 August 2020

Pros share their techniques for how to draw a dragon with personality.

Learning how to draw a dragon can be tricky. While a staple in fantasy art for decades, designing one of these mythical creatures from scratch is a skill. Taking inspiration from real-life animals can be a great starting point, however sticking a pair of wings on a lizard simply won’t cut it.

So how do you learn how to draw a dragon with character and personality? Here, top fantasy artists share their personal art techniques to help get you started. Read on for some expert advice on how to draw a dragon, and for more top tutorials to improve your artistic skills, explore our guide to how to draw animals.

How To Draw A Baby Dragon

Once you’ve mastered the cartoon dragon, why not give him or her a family? Now you can, using this simple, step-by-step baby dragon drawing tutorial. The drawing guide includes text, illustrations, and an informative video. This baby dragon is European in style, having four limbs and bat-like wings. See the drawing tutorial.

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Give Your Dragon A Face

Theres nothing like a smiley cartoon dragon!

One of the best parts of learning how to draw a dragon head is giving your creature a fun face! Some dragons can be terrifying, but well show you how to make your dragon drawing cute instead.

Fill in the facial structure with eyes above the cheek area and curvy eyebrows. Dont forget the large nostrils at the end of the nose just waiting for some fire-breathing! Finish the face off with a couple of bony spikes too.

How To Draw A Dragon 40+ Easy Dragon Sketches

For thousands of years, dragons have been involved in the arts and mythologies of cultures around the world. Fantastic creatures may not be real, but that doesnt mean they cant be drawn realistically. If you want to learn how to draw a dragon, you will love these easy dragon drawing tutorials. Lets start!

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How To Draw A Pernese Dragon

Video by Introducing Emy

Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series is perhaps the most influential of the modern dragon mythologies. Pernese dragons were genetically engineered from the much smaller fire lizards to protect the planet Pern from the imminent threat of thread, a voracious alien spore that rains down from the sky. In this video, a professional artist will walk you through the basic steps of drawing a Pernese dragon.

Drawing An Eastern Dragon

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How To Draw A Dragon Easy For Kids

Hey there kiddo? Wanna draw a dragon? Get your pencil and blank sheet of paper and get ready! Within a few minutes you will be ready with your own cartoon sketch. Make your friends jealous and parents proud. Are you ready?

Step 1: First make a round shape for the head. Then draw a line from the head below for the neck. Join that line to an oval shape which will be the body. Add a tail line at last and go to step 2.

Step 2: Since the outline is now ready. We need to darken the outlines of the head and add a shape as illustrated for the nose.

Step 3: Draw horns which are curved conical like shapes and form the eyes which are D like shapes.

Step 4: Now draw thin lines within the eye which represents the eyeballs and mark the nostrils.

Step 5: Now we will start with the body. Start drawing a line to form a thick neck and move along to form the back by following oval shape and make it curved to form a fluffy shape.

Step 6: Draw the front legs as illustrated and make sure each finger tip is pointed.

Step 7: From the left leg draw the belly and then draw the back leg with the foot. At last draw a curved bit thick dragon tail.

Step 8: Remove all the outlines and draw the wings.

Step 9: Colour the dragon you like.

Drawing The Dragon Shoulder

Create a nice large shoulder with a triangle shape going downwards toward the peak of the > symbol from earlier steps youre going to close the width as you go down. Once you get to that peak come out in a V shape to the right ending with a little tick inwards , then come back into the elbow so your claw is shaped like an upsidedown L. Now with a slight flick back to the right , were going to bring the line in the same direction as the guideline.

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How To Prep Your Dragon

Ahead of time, think about what type of dragon you want to draw, says Merien. Do you want to draw something cute like a cartoon dragon, or do you want to draw a ferocious beast like Smaug from The Hobbit? Is it a longer Chinese dragon or a more western, Game of Thronesstyle dragon? Figure this out ahead of time to save yourself some design trouble.

How To Draw A Chinese Dragon

Chinese dragons are much respected in the Chinese community as they are worshipped and considered as a symbol of luck and power. It is believed that they can fly even if they dont have wings.

Step 1: First of all we draw the body of the dragon, which is a long curvy line as illustrated.

Step 2: Now we build the dragons head and snout. We draw a round shape at the top of the line. Then draw a cubical shape protruding out of the circle.

Step 3: Now draw 2 pairs of small triangular lines from the main curved line which indicates the legs. Mark the joints and draw claws at each end.

Step 4: Now we draw the eyes and spiky eyebrows on the top two cubical edges. Use the outline of the cube to draw the mouth and snout.

Step 5: Next we draw small spiky curves below the mouth which shows the hair.

Step 6: Draw the teeth and whiskers as shown.

Step 7: Remove the circle and cube outline.

Step 8: Keeping the single curved line in between, draw 2 lines beside it which forms the body of the dragon.

Step 9: Follow the same steps for the legs. Keep in mind that the legs should be narrower near the claws.

Step 10: Completely erase all the outlines.

Step 11: Now we draw a line in between the body which forms the belly as shown in figure.

Step 12: Draw the dragon scales. There are various other ways to show the scales. I chose the simplest one.

Step 13: Draw some shallow curves around the back of the dragon, leg joints and the tail to complete the dragon.

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How To Draw A Dragon Head

The majority of dragon heads start as profiles since its pretty hard to draw a three-quarter angle that looks cooler. I recommend that you start with a profile first to get an idea of what the head looks like sideways.

Youll be surprised how realistic a flat drawing can become once you start adding highlight and shadow. But the first step is to decide the shape of your dragon head. Heres how to start.

Defining the outline

Dragons usually look as if they have beak-like faces, but this isnt always the case. As mentioned before, youll want to take caricature aspects of actors or people that you like to build-into your sketch. The best way to start is by sketching the overall shape. I like to think that the main facial outline looks similar to a souped-up muscle car. This will appear very low in the front and high in the back.

All of the faces are pretty-much going at a downward slope thats at 45 degrees. Try to put an overlay of the caricature onto the faces front part, seeing where facial features line-up.

I highly recommend to bring along the resemblance of someone you admire to enhance your dragon even further. Its also a lot of fun to see if anyone can notice that as well, making your dragon very unique looking.

Neckline

Once you have a side profile that you like, you need to draw an extended neck. Starting at the highest point of the back of the neck, your line can gradually arc downward.

Adding horns

Filling in teeth and scale detail

Time For The Back Leg Now

With the same theory as the front leg, find the beginning of the line you created earlier. This time were going to create sort of a butt looking muscle. Consider it a second shoulder, but for the hind legs! This will be much wider and larger than the front legs as the dragon carries its center of balance in the back. Create a triangle with the point facing towards the tail a good distance from the beginning of the guideline, we want a beefy leg here.

The ending of that triangle line should be a little bit away from the point from the < line we made earlier. This is the knee! Now match the direction of the line going towards the right, but dont go too far! We need to create a heel claw! For this one, youll want the underside of the claw to be an arc going downwards into the foot. Now finish off your foot with a few lines matching the guideline from earlier.

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Draw Line For Dragons Body

Starting from the middle-bottom of the circle were going to draw a squiggly line in a vague shape of a W. Dont make it pointy like a W though, the edges should be round and fluid just use the idea of a W for the general idea of where the peaks and dips should be. This is going to guide the body.

Sketching A Western Dragon

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How To Draw A Dragon With Scales

To take your drawing from an easy dragon drawing to a masterpiece, you can add some scaling details. Scales may seem intimidating, but having a good technique will make learning how to draw a dragon easy. The level of detail you put into your dragon scales is completely up to you.

It is crucial to pay attention to the structure of the scales you add to your dragon. We always suggest determining the proportions of your dragon as outlined above before attempting to add scaling details. Outline the main muscles in your dragons limbs, and then we can begin to consider adding the scales.

First, we must determine where the biggest and strongest scales will be. The scales of a dragon are its armor, and as such, the largest will likely be forward-facing. Mark down these areas, and then you can begin to add a regular pattern of scales. Once you have your largest scales in place, you can fill the skin around them with a smaller scale pattern. You can experiment with the shape and placement of your dragon scales to find what you like best.

You can use the same principle for scaling the torso as you did for the limbs. Place the strongest scales down the center of the dragons back, neck, and belly, where you believe it would need the most protection. Once you have all of your scales in place and you are happy with how it looks, you can use a fine liner marker to outline each scale.

We have also created a little web story for the dragon drawing tutorial.

Lisa Hustedt

Now Its Time For The Dragon Foot

For the foot, were going to start with another claw think of the type of extra claws wolves and dogs have. Create a small claw then from the bottom of it extend slightly downwards now bring that line horizontally across to meet where you planned out your feet! I like to create an arc on the foot here to remind myself where the fingers will be later this is optional

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+ How To Draw A Cute Dragon Step By Step

20+ How To Draw A Cute Dragon Step By Step. Students can look at the packet and follow steps to today i’ll show you how to draw a cute little dragon shooting cute little flames. Think in a tube cut in half that connects the upper part of the rib cage, we drew on the first step and gets.

Fantasy dragons usually have pointier snouts and are the most common types in western culture, while chinese dragons have boxier heads. Draw the horns on the top of the head step 9. For the first few steps, don’t press down too hard with your pencil.

How To Draw A Dragon Step By Step

Fantastic creatures may not be real, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be drawn in a realistic way. If you want to learn how to draw a dragon, in this tutorial I will lead you step by step. You can also use the tutorial to create a base for your own dragon, with the details of your own choosing. Muscles, wings, claws, scalesthis tutorial has it all!

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My Favourite Drawing Resources

General Drawing Courses. I really like Udemy if you are looking to develop your knowledge of drawing techniques Udemy is an excellent choice due to its wide range of creative courses and excellent refund policy. They often have monthly discounted deals for new customers, which you can check here. Use my link.

Sketching and Collage. Take a look at this sketching resource I have created. Use this link.

Proko. Is one of my favorite teachers who surpasses in the teaching of Anatomy and Figure drawing. Prokos course breaks down the drawing of the human body into easy-to-follow components aiding the beginner to make rapid progress. For this, I really like Proko.

Art Easels. One of my favorite ways to draw is by using a drawing easel, which develops the skill of drawing on a vertical surface. The H frame easel is an excellent vertical easel way to add variety to the style and type of marks you create when using a drawing board.

To see all of my most up-to-date recommendations, check out this resource I made for you.