How To Draw A Chinese Dragon

Okay, I'm going to show you how to draw a Chinese dragon, and really, you just need a pencil and a rubber for this because we're just going to stick to a pencil drawing. Okay, first of all, you want to draw a small oval shape and coming off that small oval shape, you need to create an S shape. So that's our first shape.

Now, you need to do an S shape in reverse. So first of all, we need to draw a line across here, and it is going to slightly overlap the original shape. But that's alright, we don't mind that.

That's okay. And again, you want to draw the outside edge and it doesn't matter if it's fat, thin, whatever, because you want it to have variety, anyway. Don't want to be all the same, okay, and then we've got a little tiny bit to finish off at the bottom.

But I guess it's kind of an S shape but a very distorted one and we're tapering it towards the bottom because the one difference between the Chinese dragons and the European dragons is that they are more serpent-like in shape. So, that's our basic body shape. Now, we're going to add some detailing into that.

Okay, we're going to add some fancy spine shapes down the back of our dragon and you can really have fun with these. Make them turn one way and then another. Make them look like flames.

Just be really creative, really. Come up with your own design for these. Maybe get some references of Chinese dragon as well, it may give you some ideas, and then obviously because our dragon is twisting, the spine continues on this side.

So, we carry on with our shapes running down the dragon, like so. Now, it's beginning to look like a dragon. Now, we're going to do the scaling on the front of our dragon.

Now, the way you do that is you make a little, almost like the tiles on a roof, really, sort of shapes like this, that interlock. This is a bit fiddly to do. Once you get started, you're just making the same shape over and over again, really.

Running down the front, they kind of remind me of the nibs of old-fashioned fountain pens. The shape I'm making, it's a little bit like that in shape. Okay, so we just have that bit showing there.

Now, we need to make the tail look a little bit fancier because it's a little bit plain at the moment. So again, I'm going to make some really nice swirly shapes just to really make it look as interesting as possible. Maybe extend it a little bit.

Okay, now, we need to look at the dragons face. Okay, now obviously, we've got the top of the head that I've got here. So we're going to do the muzzle, I think that's what it's called, down the front here.

That's indication of a nostril. Might need to bring that out a little bit more actually, like that, and we'll make it pointy towards the front and it's up to you if you want to put arms in or not. I'm going to add them.

Why not? So I'm just going to do a shape like this. At the moment, just keep it a circle, like in the end, with marks like that. Those will eventually become the fingers or the claws.

But we're not going to put too much detail in at this stage, just basic stuff. Now, we're really going to put the detailing on the head now. First of all, I'm going to put second nostril in, okay.

Then I'm going to put a bottom jaw in because at the moment, it looks it a little bit strange. So we're going to put in this sort of shape for the bottom for the jaw. And I'm going to put in some nice flame sort of marks behind it, and then I'm going to draw the tongue, teeth, let's give him some nasty looking fangs there, and then the eye, I'm going to put an eye in about here, I think.

And we're going to give this dragon an ear, but it's obviously a very fanciful ear. I'm just going to do sort of a shape like this. So I can see what's going on, I'm just going to rub out some of my original guidelines.

I can actually see this ear a little bit closer, a little bit easier. Okay, now, we're going to give him wonderful eyebrows. Dragons always have very wo