Last Updated on October 2, 2019 by Kimberly Crawford
There are characters in our childhood make-believe world that will remain cool and unforgettable until we grow old. One of these characters would be dragons. Then and now, we can find dragon drawings posted in the walls of small boys’ rooms.
For grownups, our RPG games like Dragons and Dungeons and our favourite TV shows like Game of Thrones cannot be complete if graphic designers did not sketch them first as dragon drawings.
Famous stars like Angelina Jolie, Lenny Kravitz, and Pink with the dragon tattoo would not be as cool or charismatic without the dragon drawing etched in their skin.
Indeed, dragon drawings are as timeless as they can get. That is why in this post, we will learn how to draw dragon drawings and will check out some dragon drawings.
How to draw dragon drawings
Drawing dragons is not an easy feat. For beginners, you can start with the following steps:
1. Build with circles.
In a sheet of paper, draw one medium sized circle and another slightly bigger circle to mark the head and the body.
Decide the space for the circles depending on the desired size.
Draw another small circle on top of the slightly bigger circle to determine the space between the head, neck and body.
2. Draw arcs and contoured, angled lines.
Draw an arc shape on the small circle on top of the bigger circle.
On the medium sized circle, draw angled lines that will serve as the legs of the dragon.
3. The curve line.
To connect the head and the body, draw curved lines. And draw another set of curve lines for the tail. Decide the length of the tail for your dragon.
4. The other angled line.
Draw another angled line to serve as the outline for the wings.
5. Finalize the sketch.
Using a bolder sketch pen, finalize the frame of the dragon drawing. Connect the lines and erase the unnecessary circles.
For the head, draw the eyes, nostrils and teeth. For the legs, draw the claws.
For the body, draw some details that will either make your dragon drawing cute, fierce or cool.
For those who have more advanced sketching skills, you may need the following tips:
1. Imagine your dragon’s personality and story. Give context to your dragon. Your final dragon drawing must exude personality and story the moment someone sees it.
What would you want it to be like? Would you like it to appear as a friendly dragon? If so, make sure that you provide soft features for it. Do Would you like it to appear fierce and strong? Then make it detailed with rough lines and edges.
2. The silhouette is the key. For advanced dragon drawings, the silhouette is one of the most important. Like the circles and angled lines, you need this as your frame in deciding the final appearance of your dragon drawing.
You can tweak it in between and provide more details for it, but the silhouette already gives the first touch of personality to your dragon drawing.
3. Draw inspiration from the real thing. You can make your dragon drawing medieval like, RPG like and soft and fluffy for kids but all dragon drawings must always have the components of the real thing.
The huge nostrils would be one and the spiky tail would be another. Breathing fire is optional. Mostly, fire-breathing dragon drawings are used for graphic design, tattoo and poster inspirations.
4. Do not commit the most common mistakes. The most common mistake for dragon drawings is when in the end, they look more like dinosaurs than dragons.
They have the same rough features but they are never alike. Make sure that you do not commit this common mistake.
Cute dragon drawings
Cute dragon drawings can range from simple dragon doodles, dragon caricatures or just pen sketches. An example of artsy pen sketches for drawing dragons is this cute digitally rendered pen sketch from Flower Grower
Or how about this simple dragon doodle from the Clipart Library:
And this cute, funny dragon drawing from Pixers:
Cool dragon drawings
If you wish for more fierce-looking, graphic-art level dragon drawings for tattoo inspirations, for HD wallpapers or for anime-type sketches, there are a lot of cool dragon drawings for you to check. Take for instance this fierce dragon head drawing from Paint Valley:
For a heavy pen-sketch resembling the dragon characters from our favourite RPG games, check out this dragon drawing from Deviantart:
There is also this full-body pen-sketch from Idea Hatch:
Dragon drawing for kids
If you are looking for dragon drawings for kids, you might want to settle with the ones they can easily color or dragon drawings that are easily relatable like this Toothless dragon drawing which kids can recognize from the animated movie How to Train Your Dragons from Get Drawings:
You can also build from interactive dragon drawing by coloring this Puff the Magic Dragon sketch from Coloring Home:
Or just draw a caricature dragon drawing for them to paint like this one from The Frangi Panitree:
Chinese dragon drawings
For the classic Chinese dragon drawings which you can usually see in classic action films and calendars, you can make it more traditional looking like the ones we see in calendars specifically like this one from The Helpful Art Teacher:
You can also modify it a bit for the Chinese dragon drawing to be like an insignia or the ones we see in Chinese coat of arms like this one from Painting Valley:
In mastering how to draw the Chinese dragon, look at these basic details from Drawing Skill:
Conclusion
As you can see, dragon drawing is not only something that you can generically categorize because as have been shown, there is more than one way to actually draw it depending on your mood, level of skill, and even target audience for the drawing itself.
There are more dragon drawings out there which you could toy on or get inspiration from. All you have to do is look, take time to imagine or draw from a story and then sketch.