Drawing Dragon Heads
by Dee
Dreslough (www.dreslough.com)
As I sat down to plan this tutorial, all I could hear were the words of my many art teachers and advice from other artists: There is no substitute for drawing a picture from the real thing. Then I thought, "Well, where the heck does an aspiring artist find a real dragon head to draw from?" Not finding a handy answer, I sculpted a little dragon head, took out my trusty digital camera (great new toy, btw), and created some reference source for you-all. They're not as crisp as I'd like, but they give a good example of lighting and form.
Choose the pose you like best, and practice sketching that head on paper - OR, use the digital image as the basis for a drawing of your own. You can load the image right into your paint program, and then paint over it.
However, the only way I know of to learn to draw the form of a head freehand, though, is to practice drawing from a model. If you own sculptures of dragons, draw them! Practice, practice practice, and then try to draw a dragon from the memory of drawing the sculpture. Do this again and again, whenever you're bored. If you do a drawing a day, I assure you, you'll improve in leaps and bounds.
Other tutorials that will help you with this lesson: Drawing Dragon/Animal Eyes, How to Shade a Dragon Drawing
Okay..enough pep talk. You're here to draw, so we're going to go from this:
to this:
First Step - drawing the basic forms
Once you're here, see my other tutorial on putting details on a dragon drawing
All images (c) 1998 Dee Dreslough. Feel free to copy, distribute and use on your web pages however you like, though.
