Fantasy Art School

Practice by Drawing Dragons

One of the biggest lessons I can teach you is the lesson of practice. It is really quite amazing how good you will get at drawing just by practicing. And if you keep a notebook of your drawings you will be able to see the difference over time.

And one of the best ways I like to keep track of my progress is by practicing on the same kind of drawing over and over again. For example, I really like dragons so I thought that it would be fun for me to spend time drawing different dragons.

The dragon you see here is one of my favorite drawings. It only took me a few minutes to draw it but it is the result of me sketching around with lots of ideas for dragons. When I first started drawing them I had no idea what I really wanted so I drew lots of them in various shapes and sizes.

Here is another dragon. You can see how this one is very different than the one up above. That is part of the process of drawing anything. You try different things. Try different shapes and different colors and keep making lots of sketches. Draw slow, draw fast and just let your creativity flow.

Here is a look at a page from my sketch pad. You can see that there are a lot of very different shaped dragons here. This page is obviously one of the early pages where I was just trying to figure out how I wanted my dragon to look.

And here is another page from later on in the sketch book. You can see that I am really starting to get to the final dragon that I like.

So This Lesson: Is all about practice and doing the same kind of a drawing over and over again. As you are doing this your eye will start to see things differently and you will start to make big improvements in your drawing.

It's a really great idea to pick one subject and work with that for a while because you will be able to very clearly see how your drawings improve over time.

I did dozens and dozens of sketches of dragons over the course of time and that is part of the normal process that an artist takes. So don't feel bad if your first dragons don't look too good or don't look the way you want them to! That is ok. They, and you will get better.

And for me and my dragons? I still have lots more of them to draw!

Continue on to Fantasy Art Lesson 20 Drawing from Memory

This is a Storm The Castle Website

Fantasy Art School HOME PAGE

Fantasy Art Lessons

1. lesson 1 - Holding the pencil and getting a feel for it and warming up with lines
2. lesson1c how to draw a straight line
3. lesson 2 - Drawing some simple geometric shapes
4. lesson 3 - Understanding and using Perspective
5. lesson 4- foreshortening in perspective
6. lesson 5- Drawing depth and distance
7. lesson 6-Using lines of varying thickness
8. lesson 7- drawing form and shape with a medieval mace
9. lesson 8- Drawing metal - We draw a medieval helmet
10. lesson 9- drawing our first human form
11. lesson 10- Distorting the human form to create fantasy creatures
12. lesson 11 - doodling and creativity break
13. lesson 12 - a Morning star mace - drawing textures
14. lesson 13 - how to draw chainmail
15. lesson 14 - How to convey action in your fantasy drawings
16. lesson 15 - How to draw sword shapes
17. lesson16 -draw an armored knight
18. lesson 17 - Draw a fantasy dagger using the Five-S method
19. lesson 18 - Creating space in your drawings - A Dragons Lair
20. lesson 19 - Practice by drawing dragons
21. Lesson 20 - Drawing from Memory
22. Lesson 21 -Draw a Catapult
23. Lesson 22: A Guest artist discusses pencils, his technique and building a library of images

Fantasy Art Lessons from Guest Artists

1. How to draw a magical genie using Corel and Photoshop

Art Books & Supplies

1. Art Kits
2. Art Books
3. Fantasy Art Books

Stormthecastle.com
Castlefiction.com
The Telescope Nerd
Epic Fantasy.com
The Medieval Armory
THe Fantasy Guide
The Heroic Dreams Blog Knight-Medieval.com willkalif.com
make-video-games.com

---------
All Materials, unless otherwise stated are Copyright©
Kalif Publishing and StormtheCastle.com check out my copyright page for information about how to use any work on this site

If you have questions
or would like to
contribute you can contact me as customer support

---------