How to draw a dragon correctly? Of course, when you start drawing a dragon, you take a certain risk every time, because you’re going to draw an animal that you can’t see with your own eyes. If you fail, don’t feel bad – after all, the world won’t turn upside down if you ruin one or even a dozen sheets of paper!
It’s important that you have fun with your work, so draw your dragons not with disgust, but with admiration, and even better, love them. And if you happen to meet a real live dragon, don’t shout at him and don’t throw stones at him, rather break a piece of bread and give half to the dragon.
Table of Contents
How to Draw a Dragon (Basic Elements)
How to draw a dragon flame
1) Draw the flame with loose strokes of yellow gummigut. Apply The paint is not applied evenly, but in individual Strenuous brush strokes.
2) Add drops of red cadmium closer to the edges of the fireball using the “wet-on-wet” method, that is, applying wet paint to wet paint. Dry the drawing with a hair dryer.
3) Add some pinkish-purple paint to the red cadmium and draw some broken lines on the dried paint – remember that these lines should follow the direction in which in which the particles of flame fly away.
How to draw a dragon skin
1) Apply a thin coat of Hooker Green Blur. Dry the dye with a hair dryer.
2) Prepare a more intense blur of the same paint and apply it in individual speckles, quickly working in the desired area with the tip of the brush. Let the specks merge into each other, but make sure that the selected area is covered with specks of paint evenly enough.
How to draw a dragon scales
1) Mark the scales with a mixture of burnt sienna and dark red cadmium. Draw each scale separately, leaving a narrow white separating stripe between them – a light glare. Don’t strive for these stripes to be neat – uneven edges better convey the texture of the scales.
2) Deepen the color of the mixture by adding a little dioxazine violet to it, and draw a shadow with a brush at the base of each scale.
3) Deepen the shadows by adding a little more dioxazine violet to the mixture. Then add final highlights with white gouache. You can also use gouache to restore light highlights that were missed or highlights that were accidentally painted over.
What color to paint the dragon
Since the dragon is a mythical creature, its coloring can be absolutely any. Just remember that the figure should not be overloaded with too many different colors, and that you should always choose colors that go well with each other – the so-called complementary colors. Personally I prefer to paint dragons bicolor – darker color I painted the main part of the body dragon, and lighter paint draw the crest, abdomen and the inside of the wings. A few of these color combinations are shown below.
1) A classic combination of colors. The main body mass is painted with viridon paint, while the comb, belly and other small details are painted with yellow gummigut.
2) It’s a very lively combination of colors that always looks good in a painting. The main part of the body is painted blue, and the additional areas are colored in light… fuchsin.
3) A combination of burnt umber. and a mixture of yellow gummigut and yellow ochre.
4) The main part of the body is painted with Payne gray paint mixed with titanium whitewash. Additional parts of the figure are painted with yellow ochre mixed with a small amount of titanium whitewash.
Drawing Dragons
Algorithm of creating and transferring a drawing:
- Take a pencil and draw the pose and body parts of the dragon as simple ovals and triangles.
- Pencil the disparate parts into a single figure and add scales, claws, and other small details.
- Circle the drawing with a ballpoint pen, add the background and final fine details.
- Cover the drawing with a sheet of tracing paper and trace the shape of the dragon with a pencil. Turn the tracing paper over and trace the other side of the dragon with a pencil.
- Flip the sheet of tracing paper over again and transfer it to the watercolor paper. Take the polishing tool and trace around the drawing to transfer it onto the surface of the watercolor paper.
- Remove the tracing paper and draw the lines on the paper with a sable brush loaded with burnt umber. № 1. After that you can begin to paint the dragon.
