Picturing the many parts of the Dragon

The dragon's body parts are borrowed from many different animals in the world. As such, I found it best to focus on different segments at a time to understand the anatomy of the dragons.

 
Early sketches involved trying to recreate the correct anatomical build of the dragon, which included the upper body and the appendages. Drawing nodes is important, as it allows me to draw in the bulk of the body parts more easily. The main body of the dragon seems much harder to replicate.

 
The most complex areas were parts involving scaled patterns. These tend to have jagged shapes and are well crowded. These borrow from either turtle skin which is more pointy, or snakeskin which is flatter and glossier. Due to my experience with games and media, pointy dragon skin is far more familiar to me since it is more common, so my practices reflect textures that are derived from turtles. Pentadactyls, being the wings, are also a challenge to draw accurately. I found drawing the wire mesh for the bones helps with understanding the physics of the flaps of the wings, although it takes a bit of guessing work since there are little to no bones to work with when drawing the space in between.


The last stage of sketching was the diagram. I had little experience drawing a very large scale creature, so it was necessary for me to draw a side-on view when focusing on the entire creature at once. This gives me a better understanding on the dragon's anatomy, but it is worth mentioning that regional differences could have an impact on the general build of the creature. I have sketched western dragons, but eastern dragons are notably different to their western counterparts. This is also something I will investigate.

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