Looking for simple dragon drawings are you? Well, my friend you are just in the right place.
I am going to show you, through this tutorial, how to realize a simple drawing of a dragon. I’d say a very stylized and fun one. So grab your favorite pencil and start drawing with me!
Simple dragon drawings – the backbone
Dragons are a bit complicated to draw, aren’t they? At least the Western-style dragons. They have the head of a reptile, the neck of a giraffe, and the body of a dinosaur plus a long and flexible tail not to mention the wings!
So I understand it may seem daunting to start drawing. Where to start??
Stay calm and breathe. As usual, we’ll start by defining basic shapes that we’ll use as a skeleton upon which to build our drawing of a dragon.
In the picture, I have drawn in red the very backbone of our drawing. With a few lines, I have decided approximately the size of the head, the body, and the length of the legs and even sketched a possible position for the tail.
A couple of lines are really important here: the spine, which continues in the tail, and the simple bones of the leg. Nothing fancy as you can see but enough to give me an idea of the pose and general proportion of the dragon.
Simple dragon drawings – adding the volume
In the second picture, I have “wrapped” the skeleton with a bit of flash, sketched in the shape of the head, and added the wings in green.
As you can see everything is super sketchy at this stage and you should keep it like that. Many things can and will change during the drawing.
However, now we have a better idea of the general layout of the dragon and how the various parts interact with each other.
Time to work a bit on the expression of our funky dragon. I wanted it to be happy and joyful. Happy to be a Dragon! Also, I wanted to experiment a bit with the size of the eye which is a crucial element of the final expression.
Being such a simple drawing the fundamental facial features have a crucial importance in determining the expression of the creature. A smaller eye would have conveyed for example a completely different feeling to the dragon’s expression.
Simple dragon drawings – Paws and eye
Now believe it or not I haven’t done anything particularly fancy in this step. I have just removed the skeleton (it worked perfectly so far) and started to play with the size and orientation of the paws.
Now this is a very important step and badly drawn paws can seriously ruin the final effect of the drawing. See how the right front paw looks away from us while the left paw looks almost toward our direction.
I decided I did not like the teeth in the mouth and I removed them. I have also given a bit of love to the rear paw and the eye. I have given it a bit of a highlight.
Simple dragon drawings – The tail
I told you that things would have changed. By observing my drawing I noticed I did not like the original curvature of the tail so I deleted it and redrawn it.
Before it was unnatural and compressed now the flow of the tail is much more fluid and natural and adds to the overall balance of the composition.
At this point, I have added a bit of detail on the head, and in the next step, I am going to add a line of scales running along the spine and tail of the dragon.
The trick to position the scales correctly is to draw clearly where the actual spine is in the tail. The red line in the drawing indicates exactly that. Once you have worked out the position of the vertebral line, positioning the scales is a child’s game! Let’s see it.
There you have it! See how I have placed the scales along the red line and how natural and effective is the look of the tail now! That’s a great tip! Now I just need to remove the red line and the drawing is finished!
Simple dragon drawings – The final touches
And there you go, a fun and happy little funky dragon! Hope you enjoyed this new tutorial from the Drawing Factory!
