September-November 2015 Week 1

It was good to see a full turnout on the first week.

Thank you for  braving the foul weather on week two.

A good effort from everyone so far.

Some of you have been absent from drawing for a while but even so, good progress had been made by week two.

Very encouraging.

 For those of you who would like another stab at the first drawing exercise, here are the breakdowns.

This is what you are aiming for.

 In the first week, I didn't want to get straight into constructing imagery using cylinders and circles etc, I wanted to see how you felt your way around  a drawing and transferred information to paper.

If you attempting this again, try and loosen up and think of the shape  the drawing makes.

Most drawings can be broken down into a dominant shape. Whether that be a square, triangle, curve or squiggle.

This  diagram shows the shape that forms the backbone of the  dragon and the rock it is perched on.

Very much like a question mark symbol.

This diagram shows how easily the wigs are formed.

When I am drawing a dragon, I often refer to the wings of a bat.

Apart  from studying a drawing created by someone else, you will be hard pressed to find photgraphic reference of a dragon, because, they don't exist. 

However, If you study the wings of a bat, you will notice that they are not that difference to the wings of a dragon, as depicted in storybooks or films

Most fantasy art is based on something that does exist in reality and used as a foundation to build upon and distort to create exciting imagery of things that do not exist in our world.

Here you can see that the limbs have taken shape and detail is added to the head.

You can have fun designing your own dragon. It doesn't have to follow min exactly. You could draw a less aggressive dragon.

I tend to use real life reptiles or dinosaur  anatomy as reference for the dragons I  draw.
Dinosaur skeletons are a very useful reference .
Dinosaurs no longer roam the earth but the skeletal remains and of course, real life reptiles can offer  a
 solid base to start from.

Here is a finished drawing I created using white pencil , crayon, and white gouache on black card.

Some more dragon sketches