How to Draw Dragons

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Jay French from jayfrenchstudios.com and I'm going to teach you how to draw a dragon. Well of course from our starting point, there are essentially, it boils down to three types of dragons. You have the Asian serpentine dragon which are long, they have no wings, short legs, mostly like a snake, you have a Wyvern style which is much like a bat where the forelegs are the wings. But we have our very fun, what we're going to do here today, is the fore legged mythological, where they're all mythological, four legged and winged dragon. Think of a basic lizard shape, your body, we can start with the rib cage and sort of a couple of ovals. We have the rib cage and then we have the hind quarter. You always have a long serpentine neck, put a lot of curvature in to it for drama. We're going to get some sharp angles, again for dramatic effect. You want some photo sources, look up some pictures of Komodo dragons and other types of lizards, they give you some good ideas and how to do some of the body part shapes. Such as the any, just about any four legged creature has very long front legs, long and straight whereas there's a lot more, a lot more joints to the back leg. Toes are usually done very bird like as opposed to reptilian. Although you can go both ways, again if you look at the claws on a rafter such as an eagle, and you look at the claws on a Komodo dragon or other large lizard, monitor lizard, or even some dinosaur bones, you'll find the talons very similar. Long serpentine neck, and I've got this one curving around on itself, and of course you're going to want a tail. This is also again, good looking monitor lizards for references and dinosaurs, dinosaur restructures or bones. And of course the really tricky part, the head. And this can be done a lot of ways and however you like. I tend to like the very sleek look to dragons, where they have a very pointed muzzle and a little more serpentine. Probably again there is a lot of influence on, on monitor lizards here, Komodo dragons and the like. I have and affection for doing pupilless on dragons to make them look more mystical. But if you're wanting something that looks more like a real animal, then you might want to do snake like slitted pupils. I tend to give two very big horns. But you can do it as a single big horn or no horns at all. Some extra wings around the jaw line gives a nice touch. And then a good series of ridges that start maybe at the brow ridge or even at the tip of the nose. Go all the way down, this guy's twisting his neck so we're going to come back around here, with the largest across the back and go all the way down the tail. Again, look at some dinosaur shots for more ideas on this. And then we have our wings. Wings basically follow a bat wing. They have an elbow and then essentially fingers, all stem from the same spot. Again this is a good way to get it to look more like a real animal that way. You can do dragon wings just about anyway you want really, but they're depicted lots of different ways. And that's your basic lesson in how to draw a dragon."