Start Drawing DRAGONS Like This!

DRAGONS! 🐲 They come in many different forms: Wyverns, Drakes, Lindworms, Dragonborns, and so on! This short art tutorial goes over structural tips to help you break down dragon anatomy. At the end, instructor Jessie narrates her drawing process while sketching her D&D character, Puddles.

🕓 Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:15 - History of dragons
1:36 - Drawing dragon anatomy
3:42 - Wing structure
5:04 - Drawing a wyvern
5:48 - Dragon speedpaint

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Winged Canvas is an online art school based in Canada specializing in virtual art programs. We are known for our Art Mentorship program and quirky art nerd culture. Our instructors are professional artists and designers with a passion for teaching and nurturing creativity, sharing our artistic skill sets and industry experience with others.

Music credits:
霧と朝焼け @ フリーBGM DOVA-SYNDROME

Artist software used:
Adobe Photoshop

#wingedcanvas #arttutorial #digitalart

[samanthar]

When I draw dragons, I typically reference cats and snakes. Depending on the pose and the character, I'll use a crocodiles, horses, or birds as more references. It ends up being a collage of a bunch of different animals, which is the point! Dragons aren't real so don't need to have to be referenced on any singular thing.
The stream was really helpful in learning where the idea of a dragon came from, and I'll definitely look at dinosaur and bird skeletons in the future!

[Dragonfanatic]

I think cats can also be a fun reference for four limbed dragons :D but i often use a mix of snake, bird, crocodile or other predatory animals when i want to draw a dragon. Lizards can be a fun reference point for small dragons to. kinda depends on the look of the dragon i'm trying to make tbh.

[willowbird]

I have noticed that a lot of artists dragons are often inspired by which ever dragon media they consumed when they were younger (like HTTYD or Wings of Fire).
This isn’t applicable to EVERY dragon artist (my dragons are inspired by dinosaurs because I was a massive dinosaur kid), but I have seen that it can influence what people define as a dragon and how those different dragon’s anatomy is drawn. 🐉

[I]

Quick correction here: The sketches beginning at 2:09 have a critical inaccuracy in the legs. The thigh bone is completely missing and they claim that the knees bend backwards. The part that bends backwards is the “ankle” of the bird. Birds may look like they have no knees or thigh but it is generally hidden under the feathers or skin. The thigh bone is also visible on the skeleton reference they are using. On the final drawing however, the artist does remember to include the thigh bone on the wyvern.

The rest of the video is useful but another thing I feel that the video should have included is the importance of the large sternum. In birds, the enlarged sternum is called a keel. This bone supports the muscles that connect to its shoulders to power it’s wings. If a dragon is to realistically fly, it needs a large, muscular keel.

[TabithaRuf-vz]

Knees. Birds have knees. You forgot the knees on that bird. All vertibrates have forward facing knees.

[Vibgyor]

Long have I waited for this moment, the moment that my favorite art tutorial channel does a vid on dragons!! YES!!

[renealbrechtsen]

I never thought of using birds or dinosaurs for reference, but that makes sooo much sense

[mariaeduardadasilvaantunes]

dragons were created as protectors, so they mixed all the scariest animals there were. That's why the asian dragon is different to the european, it took inspiration from snakes and lions/tigers, whereas the european had some traits of lizards and the famous wings like bats (imagine some medieval peasant seeing a crocodile with lion paws AND it has wings on it's back)
so feel free to use a combination of creatures when referencing anatomy, and most importantly, if it doesn't make sense anatomically but makes your dragon scarier, you're doing it right

[silvertheelf]

Small correction;
Dragons actually started with exaggerations of snakes, dinosaurs later influenced the design of dragons along with crocodiles, wild cats, birds, and various other creatures, but it’s very very clear how serpent like dragons are the further back you go with Tiamat, Leviathan, Quetzalcoatl, The Rainbow Serpent, Jormangandr, and the fact “Serpent” is the common name people used to give dragons.

[leafy_forest]

this is just my opinion but, *the way someone draws dragons really just depends on something they grew up with. (like HTTYD, Wings of Fire, dinosaurs etc)* I read Wings of Fire so the way I draw dragons is like how the dragons in the books are designed. Because of the fact that they have 4 long legs in Wings of Fire, I look to cats for reference. For the tail, I look to lizards or so. Again, this is simply my opinion.

[johnathanmonsen]

Counterpoint: Snakes. A lot of creatures we refer to as dragons were more technically a kind of serpent; sea serpents, Amphitheres, Lung, etc. Some of the most iconic dragon-like monsters are aligned with the Chaoskampf mytheme, which appears to have originally been a fight with some manner of sea serpent.
That said, birds do lend themselves to much more interesting design, as their bodies aren't mostly taken up by a featureless curve.

[Munenia]

2:20 But birds have knees... And they point forward like humans, mammals, reptiles or dinosaurs... and not backwards, as you draw...
You can see this even on the reference...

[SouthernObserver]

Ah, this is very helpful! I've been drawing some art of one of my kobold (aka: drake) D&D characters, but using my bearded dragon as a reference point wasn't looking like what I want. The avian anatomy makes perfect sense in retrospect!

[TheCarmenStar]

waitwaitwait I am sorry and don't wanna be nitpicky especially since the video can be so useful but was anyone else bothered by the lack of actual *knees* on the skeletal sketches 😭

[Draconic_Lorecraft]

As a dragonogist
I would say this is really good wyvern
explanation on how to draw.

And I am pleased to say and note, there is a collective at anatomy for all the dragon species for a “fantasy creature”, reflective to their spine in ratio to neck and am skull. Which you displaced very well.

[IzzyNoir-upuw]

*1:02* is sragon from ljubljana, city i live close to. Happy to see it here

[nabuchodonosormcgalapatram]

"Imagine if we translated this into a dinosaur"
Well, you don't have to do anything, since birds *are* dinosaurs.
Also a nice reference for dragons can also be Pterosaurs, especially the earlier ones, like Harpactognathus, with their long tails and such.

I actually have Pterosaurs as a little bit of inspiration for the basic wing structure of my dragons, even if they are mainly inspired by Theropod dinosaurs because they are Theropod dinosaurs (I made them evolve from a group closely related to tiny arboreal dinosaurs nammed Scansoriopterygidae) and are very bird-like.

[idk]

4:48 "and then a wrym is just a danger noodle" 😭

[cosmicspacething]

Some Dinosaurs actually were reptiles too, they weren’t all from the same species. So feel free to reference both!

[minecraftphantom]

I draw dragons, wyverns, and drakes. I might need to add more fantasy dragon like creatures but with the three that I have is that the wyverns are always venomous, dragons can be venomous but less deadly then wyverns but they have a stinger or fangs like a cobra, for Drakes they are built like a dragon but they just can't fly. The only difference for a wyvern is the wings on the arms but the bat dragon species has wings for arms but have more fingers then the wyverns so that is why they are a dragon. Even though every species has lots of sub species they are almost all the same as there main species that they branched from. Though they can breed with other dragons from different sub species to make a hybrid. It would be more like making a new sub species entirely.