How to Draw Dragons

Step 2: Dragonology 101

To be able to draw anything, you must know what you are drawing. Here's a crash-course on dragonology. To skip this relatively important step and just draw a freaking winged lizard, head to step 4.

Here's some links to several sources of speculative dragon biology and a bit 'o dragon lore
Here be Dragons! <--Rather ok, lots of lore
D.R.A.G.O.N.S. <-- A wee far fetched, but very detailed and thought provoking
~~~DRAGONS~~~ <--Hasn't been updated in a decade, some good art though
Animal Planet: Dragons <--Oh My Spaghedeity! Awesome! Mostly video however, but gives you an idea how they move
Wikipedia, Dragons <--Good ol' Wikipedia

My Thoughts on Dragonolgy:

Origins? For starters, I feel that dragons, if the did/do exist, would be a highly evolved reptilian animal that either branched off from early theropod dinosaurs, or from early Monitors, or Iguanidae like-reptiles, for these species exhibit many dragon like traits (like, OMS those ickle buggers bite hard!).

2 legs or 4? My guess is 2 legged, 2 winged. However all gliding reptiles use flaps of skin, not wings like a bat. This suggests that it is possible for a dragon to have 4 legs and a set of glider "wings" but I doubt it could get bigger than 1 meter in length. This said, I go for the 2 legged bat winged velociraptor (but bigger).

Fire breathing Easy, flint stones are picked up and carried in mouth, and when fire breathing is desired, they are simply clacked about with the tounge whilst the beast reverse farts (through the mouth somehow, more of a burp really). Alternatively, flammable poison may be spat and lit in the same manner. Poison spitting + fire breath would be pretty awesome...

Coloration As you may know, some reptiles can change color. Much of my life I have watched with fascination as the lizards around my house battled for dominance, utilizing there ability to change color to intimidate there opponents. Color changing is not limited to anoles and chameleons, although I can't find any "official" documention, a wide variety of reptiles and amphibians can change with mood and body temperature. One fairly dull looking lizard, the Texas Spiny (<--fearsome up close), can turn it's underbelly a brilliant blue when excited. So in short, dragons can theoretically be any color.

Food Well, probably not human virgins, LOL i think that was pervy minstrels day dreaming. My guess would be deer, pigs, fish, etc... Feeding habits would probably bee akin to eagles, just larger.

Behavior In my opinion, like a great big bird of prey.

Intelligence High, able to understand most emotions, but probably not capable of speech. May be domesticated and capable of learning complex commands.

Comments

[sessions]

no ofence because because its quite cool what u've done but why go through all
the fuss when u could be teaching people how to draw cool things like dragons

[Grey_Wolfe]

Reverse farts? That's actually pretty creative. Some scientists have speculated that if dragons existed, and could breath fire, then it would have been done through simple chemical reaction. The dragon would have had a gizzard of sort, like a bird, for storing ground up metals, primarily platinum (this may explain legends of dragons desiring precious stones and metals). The dragon would also have a organ for producing hydrogen gas, this also aids in flight by adding lift. When the dragon needed to breath fire it would regurgitate some of the platinum then release hydrogen through the mouth, when hydrogen reacts with platinum, it ignites, producing flames. This also suggests that the more fire a dragon breaths in a short amount of time, this harder flight becomes. This would escalate to the point of being grounded if the dragon was not careful (which explains the stories that suggest dragons only used fire as a last resort in combat). If I can find a link to this info, I'll post it. But you can probably find it at discovery channel online, since the special was on Discovery Channel. Hope this helps, or whatever. Thought you'd be interested.

[Divendren]

Ah, I saw that, at first I thought they really found a dragon, but I was left hanging in my hopes. Jk, I'm not a dragon freak or anything, but I do think they did/do exist.

[PetBennett]

i am :)cuz they r AWESOME!

[wolfeh334]

u r right in two ways a dragon would eal metal like platnum to egnite metal and hydrogen but it would also need to have a strong gas pouch. sometimes two in euro drags. also i have a pet dragon... a komodo dragon. his name is bob and he is big and fat and lazy.

[kenny94]

no, it has flammable venom that is ignited using a spark pouck that contains a spark starting metal, the pouch is in front of the first row of teeth

[Foaly7]

You know exactly what your talking about! :)

[Grey_Wolfe]

Maybe you're right. Although, from a biological aspect, it would seem somewhat inefficient to need to create a spark. Even the bombadeer beetle relies on chemical reaction to create heat, not on physical spark.

[shadowfluid]

i saw that special, it had had computer animations of examples of dragons fighting for territory and young dragons being raised and trained by their mothers.

[Grey_Wolfe]

Yep, but it used real-world physics to explain how it would be possible.

[shadowfluid]

exactly

[KentsOkay]

Hmm, that's very interesting,

[Ratchet and Clank]

you drew that?! good job!

[KentsOkay]

Thanks!