This is my second tip about dragons, and I’ll show you how to touch up on your dragon’s face! I will cover eyes, nose, mouth, and other common features.

Eyes

There are several different styles of eyes to choose from. I commonly use a cartoon style, but I will show a different style in this tip.

So eye anatomy can be pretty simple, but can get difficult with the coloring, shading, and lighting. I’ll use probably the rectangular style, but the basics of coloring and shading are the same.

In my sketch so far, I’ve outlined the eye shape and pupil in thicker pencil, and the iris and tear duct in lighter, thinner pencil.

Now take your outlining pen and go over the darker pencil lines. This is the shape of the eye and the pupil.

Then add a color layer, and color in the pupil and sclera (the whites of the eye). You can use almost any color for dragon eyes, but here are the color ranges that would make the eyes look the most realistic.

The brown range is slightly different than the others as there is both brown and orange within the range. This is a basic outline, and what I’m saying is basically don’t make the color too saturated, too light, too dull, or too dark. Try to keep a nice, even balance between saturation and hue.

After coloring the iris, here’s what you should have.

Choose a color darker than the shade for the iris, and make a small oval/circle around the pupil.

After that, add some starbursts around the darker oval, in the same color as the oval.

I blended the eye a bit to fix the color and to help make it look slightly better, but you do not have to do this.

Now add some shading to the eye to make it appear more round.

Now add a small bit of pink/red to the edge of the eye:

Now add a light glint to the eye near the pupil:

And that should be about all for eyes. Hope this helped you!

Noses

Basically just on the end of a dragon’s snout and is a simple line/shape.

Noses are pretty simple, and sometimes a line is all you need.

Mouths

I’ll show the basic coloring and shapes I use for mouths, along with front-facing view and side-facing view.

You basically take half the mouth and draw it on the side of a dragon’s face to give a similar expression. You will also have to tweak the eyes a bit to create a full expression.

Coloring the mouth is pretty simple, with a red color for the main shade, a darker red for the tongue, and a white or yellow for the teeth.

Thats basically all I have for mouths. Basically just look up expressions and use these basic directions and you’ll be able to draw pretty much any expressions.

Horn Shape

Horns are easy, just start with some basic shapes like shown below:

There’s a few basic horn shapes, like slightly curved and straight horns, but there are also a few more complicated and difficult designs, like ram horns and antlers.

Ears

Start with a simple ear shape, like shown below:

Then use your outlining pen to draw over the sketch.

Use your dragon’s scale color along with a purplish-pink to color the ear. Add the lines on the sketch to the inside of the ear texture in a slightly darker color.

Now shade the inside of the ear:

For shading, I typically use a dark gray with the layer settings on multiply and an opacity of 70%-80%.

Thank you!

I hope this helps you as you draw dragons.

I’ll do some sort of limbs tip next, so watch out!

 

- AsteroidShoe70