#it went over 10 images and I don't use tumblr desktop so I kinda gave up on it

[httyd-art-requests]

HELLOO!!! I just stumbled upon your blog and I admit that I already love it. While looking at some fanart, a question (or curiosity, depending on how you put it) came to me: how do you draw dragons? Or, more precisely, do you have a method for figuring out the shapes and sketching the different species? AND do what program and brushes do you use (especially for sketching)?

I'm sorry that's a lot, but I'd like to get familiar with drawing dragons, I hope you can answer<33

-☄️

Hello, welcome to the blog!! :D

I can definitely answer your questions!

I recently bought a new tablet with a pen, which is part of the reason I haven't posted in a while. I'm a little overwhelmed and hesitant to start drawing dragons for the blog again, so I've been focusing on personal art to get comfortable with the new equipment. But I can absolutely tell you how I used to draw on my previous tablet!

It didn't have a pen or any sort of pen pressure, so I used IbisPaintX and its basic opaque brushes for both sketching and coloring. I used the same brushes for sketching, lining AND coloring, I just changed the opacity as needed. I never used any of my brushes on 100% opacity for the lineart, I just layered my lines to give them some texture. I did also make a custom fuzzy textured brush by messing with settings, but I didn't really use that for the dragon posts as far as I remember (except for the Liberated Duskcutter drawing)

As for drawing dragons specifically, I use a LOT and I mean a LOT of references for every drawing, especially for species I haven't drawn until that point. In my experience, tracing helps you get familiar with the dragon's shapes and helps to build muscle memory on the long term. Part of my process is to find good reference images, break them down into shapes by drawing on top of them, and then use those shapes sort of like building blocks to figure out a new pose that I can then refine.

The shape of the head is always the most difficult for me to get right, so I tend to focus on it even when the rest of the body might look a little wonky (don't look too closely at the toes and fingers)

I'm not very good at explaining my process, but I love answering questions, so feel free to ask for clarification as needed. I do hope this helped though! I wish you luck on your dragon drawing journey <3