Sketchbook Snack: Drawing Dreamy Dragons

1. Intro: Hi. Hello, and welcome to Sketchbook Snack Drawing Dreamy Dragons. In this class, we're going to relax, have fun, and play in our sketchbooks. That's what a sketchbook snack is all about, after all. It's perfect for when you're feeling blocked, overwhelmed or when you just don't know what to draw, but you know you want to draw something. It's also short. So even if you don't have a lot of time to be creative, you can always fit in a sketchbook snack. Hi. I'm Jenny Maclyn, the artist behind Tiny Leaf Press and the creator of sketchbook Snack classes. I teach sketchbook snacks to help artists like you have more fun in your creative practice while also making it easy to do. How does a sketchbook snack make things easier? Well, first of all, it's short. There's not a long time commitment to either watch the class or do the project. I'll give you the necessary information and then send you on your way to play in your sketchbook. Less time watching me and more time putting marks on the page. Second, it's low pressure. I will always encourage you to stay loose and let go of perfection. We aren't trying to win any awards with these projects. Just have some fun. There's no such thing as bad art in a sketchbook's neck. In fact, it's against the rules to label it so. And lastly, a sketchbook's neck is a little bit silly. Sketchbook snacks like this class will often include drawing something a little bit silly or goofy to help us enjoy the process and hopefully laugh a little bit whenever we look back on our project. They're meant to be joyful. And what's more joyful than giggling at a bunch of goofy dragons, right? In this class, as you may have guessed from the title, we're going to be drawing dreamy Dragons. First, we'll go over materials and talk about what actually makes a dragon and how to find references if you then for our final project, we'll create a double page spread full of dreamy dragons that are uniquely yours. You'll see my entire process, and I'll give you some tips and tricks, but this isn't a paint by numbers class. You'll be creating your own unique project in your own unique way. That's part of the fun of a sketchbooks neck. Just relaxing into the process and seeing what comes out naturally. Are you ready to have some fun in your sketchbook and draw some dreamy dragons? Join me in class. 2. Materials Needed: Here you can see all the materials that are used for the final project. And before we get too far into it, I just want to make a quick note that all the materials and colors you see here can be substituted for whatever you have available. There's no need to go out and buy new supplies unless you want to, of course. So for my paint, I'm using this Karen dash gouache set, which are paint pans of gouache. I really like how rich and vibrant the colors come. You can use any type of gouache, acrylic gouache, regular guash. You could even use watercolor or acrylic paint for this project. I have these three paint brushes that you can see. These are different sizes from the pigeon letters. I really like these brushes a lot. They're very high quality, high quality. I think it's eight, two, and six. I'll double check. I'm using this one hombo dual brush marker in a light purple color. I believe it's 620. I'm using these prisma color pencils in four colors. Just a quick note about the lilac prisma color pencil, that's been discontinued. So you won't be able to find that exact color if you don't already have it. But like I mentioned, you can substitute anything. So if you're doing these same colors as me, any light purple will work any brand colored pencil as well. You want to try and get as close as possible, I think the amethyst prisma color is going to be your best bet there. I'm also using this white posca pen that's optional. If you don't use mine to draw teeth on the dragons, but if you don't want to do that, that is totally fine. You won't need that. And last but not least, the sketchbook you see here is the one that I'm using in the final project, and this one is from odd orange. It's a hardcover cloth bound sketchbook. For your sketchbook, you just need something that can hold some paint. Mixed media watercolor would be best. Of course, you can always do this on loose leaf watercolor paper as well. Totally up to you. Alright. Are all the materials you'll need. Go ahead and gather them up if you don't already have them, and I'll see you in the next lesson where we'll talk about how to find references of imaginary creatures. I'll see you there. 3. How to Find References of Imaginary Creatures: All right, let's talk about how to find a reference image when the creature you're trying to draw is imaginary. So I want you to think a little bit about the types of dragons that, you know, pop into your head when you think about a dragon. You've probably seen them in, you know, animations, maybe movies, or illustrations in books, maybe on architecture or other historical art. So just think about what a dragon looks like to you, and then we're also going to do an optional little bit of research. So if you aren't really sure, what a dragon looks like or how you want to draw your dragon, you've got a couple of options. First, you can follow along exactly with me. I'm just drawing these dragons from my imagination. But if you just want to copy and follow along with what I'm doing, that is totally okay. Second, you can do a little bit of research. You can Google dragons, try to find some images from the public domain, some historic architecture or artworks. You could also research some dragons around the world. There are different iterations of dragons in different cultures all around the world. They have different features, typically, as well. So it's really fascinating to look into. This is not a research class, so this is not your homework, but if you're interested and you want to come up with your own unique version of a dragon, that's a great place to start. Then lastly, you can always go to Pinterest. And Pinterest is a little bit of a tricky subject when it comes to reference images because they're not always credited. So what we want to make sure that we're doing for this particular project, is finding a lot of reference images, so they're not copying one particular artist or, you know, version of a dragon. So as long as you're sourcing images from lots of different places and not just one or a few, you should be okay. And then, of course, this is just in our sketchbook. So if you have no plans to sell or monetize these images, you don't have to worry about it too much. It's just when you start to lean a little bit too much on one image for inspiration that you need to credit that artist, and that can be very difficult to do on Pintra. So that's how to find reference images for an imaginary creature. And really does come down to just finding a lot of images and using a lot of imagination. But now that you've done that, if you want to optionally go ahead and do a little bit of research, now's a great time to do it. And if not, I'll meet you in the next lesson where we're going to get started on our final project. See you there. 4. Final Project: Part 1: It's time to draw some dreamy dragons. We've covered the supplies that you'll need, how to find references if you need them. Now we get to paint some dragons. Go ahead and gather your supplies if you don't already have them. Alright, I have my sketchbook and supplies here, and the first thing that we're going to do is mix up some paint for our dragons. And I'm going to use one main color for the dragons bodies, which is this pink color from the KarndashPaint pan set, which is Guash, as I mentioned in the materials video. I'm going to mix that with some of the white guash that just comes with the set. You can use any white guash that you have if you're trying to lighten it up. But I just wanted to make more of a pastel color. So I'm going to go ahead and give this a little mix and just try and get it to a good color and consistency. And you may not want to use pink. You might want to choose your own color scheme. I went for a pink and purple color scheme because I think that's very dreamy and I really like that. But if you're following along with my color scheme, that's totally fine. But if you want to come up with your own colors, that's great. To, go ahead and mix those up for your main body color. I do recommend painting all of your dragons the same color just to start so you have more of a cohesive sketchbook spread. Okay, so to start, I'm going to just drag my paintbrush slowly across the sketchbook like this in sort of an S shape. And I'm going to draw all of my dragons like this. I just loosely go where the paint takes me. I'm just kind of casually drawing a stroke across the page, and then that's going to end up being my dragon body. And then once I have the initial shape like I've done here, then I'm going to come in and add a little bit more detail and sort of flush out the shape until it looks how I want it. I'm just going to go through in real time this first one with you, and then I will speed up the rest of the dragons on the page just so you can get to doing yours more quickly. But I did also want to mention that I like to draw or paint, I suppose, over the center of the sketchbook like this. In a couple of places, I just think it makes the spread look more cohesive as a double page spread, but you don't have to do that. If you don't like painting in the center, it's totally optional. And now I'm going to go ahead and speed up everything so that you can see the rest of these dragons being painted, and I'll meet you back here when I'm finished. And now that we've completed painting our base paint color for all of our dragons on the spread, we're gonna let that dry and then we're gonna move on to the next step in the next lesson. See you there. O 5. Final Project: Part 2: Now that our paint is dry, we are ready to add some details and features onto our dragons. So as you can see here, I'm adding some horns to the dragons using a new purple color. And to make that color, I just use the base pink color I used for the dragon's body and added a little bit of a cobalt blue from the paint pan until I got this nice hue. I chose a color that has a little bit of contrast so that it stands out from the pink a little bit. And what I'm doing here is just adding some unique horns to each of the dragons so that they're all a little bit different from each other. That's totally optional. You can, of course, use the same horn shape for each of your dragons or go without horns. Maybe you want to do ears. Instead, that's totally up to you. After the horns, I'm going to get started on drawing the spikes all the way down the dragon's body. And as you'll see, I'm going to vary those shapes. So some of the dragons will have a triangular shaped spike on their body, and some will have more rounded ones. I tried to mix it up just to have a little bit of variety, but it is a very time consuming process. Probably the most time consuming process out of this whole spread. So I am definitely going to speed that up for you. You can probably speed this process up by using paint pen or colored pencil for your spikes. The paint did take a little bit of time, but I really like the way that it turned out, so I'm pretty happy with it. And I will go ahead and speed that up now, and I will see you back in a second when we get to the next step. Now that all these spikes are complete, the next step is to add some more details. I'm going to do noses and legs, and I'm going to use the slightly darker purple by adding a little bit more blue to the paint that I was using for the spikes. And I'm adding these big round dog like noses just because that's how I like to draw my dragons. And even though they have this serpentine body, I like to give them some goofy dog features as well. And after I finish the noses, I'm going to go ahead and paint some legs, as well. And as you can see, I've sped up the process, so you don't have to watch me paint all this in real time because it took quite a while. But I just wanted to point out that these loose limbs are not anatomically correct, and that is okay. You can draw legs, no legs, wings, whatever features you want. And it's totally up to you because these are your imaginary dragons, and nobody can tell you that they're not anatomically correct. So I'm going to go ahead and let you watch the rest of this, and then we'll get into the next steps. Okay, now that we've added these other details, instead of waiting for those to dry and just coming back in a little bit of time, I'm going to switch tactics and go ahead and add in some of our background clouds. I'm using this Tambo marker to do the clouds on my painting. I'm just going over very lightly carefully around the guash because this is regular guash, so it can reactivate. So I'm just being a little bit careful along those edges. You don't have to use a marker for this. You could use watercolor, guash, colored pencil, anything like that. I want you to do is just add in some background features like this. It could be, you know, wind blowing around them. It could be water if you want them to be water dragons, maybe some flowers or leaves blowing in the wind could also be stars if you want them to be more celestial dragons. I decided to do these light purple clouds, and I'm just filling them in where there's some white space to tie all of this together and make it seem more like it's one scene. After I finish this one, I'll go ahead and speed it up again so that you can just see where I placed them and what the general shape I used was. But go ahead and do whatever background element you want here. Make sure that it doesn't compete with the dragons for attention, so you want to make sure you have a little bit of contrast in there. Maybe use a lighter color like I have here. Alright, that's it for this part of the final project. I will see you in the next lesson where we will wrap up the project by adding all of our finishing details and touches. See you there? O 6. Final Project: Part 3: It is time for the final part of our final project, where we'll be adding our finishing touches and details. So we have everything painted in, and now we're going to go in with our outlines and add in those final details that really bring these dragons to life. So I'm using a prisma color colored pencil here to just go around the dragon bodies and outline them. I will speed this up as I have done so that you don't have to watch this whole long process. But I just want to mention I do switch colors. I'm using a dark pink right now, but when I get to the legs, horns, and spikes, I'm going to be using an ultramarine blue. And I'm going to use the colored pencil to not only add the outlines, but also add a little bit of texture. So some scales along the dragon's body, and then just, you know, a little bit of an ombre effect on the dragon's legs, that kind of thing to make it have a little bit more texture and a little bit more detail. Okay. Enjoy watching this process, and I'll be back in just a second to explain the next Now that we've done the outlining and details on the dragons, I just wanted to make a quick note to jump in and say that I did a little bit of that with the backgrounds and the clouds, too. So it was totally optional, but I just wanted to give them a little bit more depth and texture. And then I'm going to move on to adding some facial details to the dragons. I'll put in some teeth with the white pen and then add our eyes for each of the dragons. And then that's all of our details done. So the next step is I like to go in and draw these little sparkles and stars in the sky with color pencil. You can see I'm spreading it around the sketchbook spread like this, so it's, you know, just in there a little bit. But I like to do that cause it just adds, like, a nice little finishing touch. Oh, and then one more thing, can't forget that we want to give our beautiful dreamy dragons some blush. So now that everything's nice and dry, I'm going to go over each of these dragons faces and just draw in a little circle of pink blush. And I'm actually going to go over in two colors just to mix it in and blend it a little bit more so it doesn't stand out so much. So I'm going to use this dark pink, and then I'm also going to go back in with this lighter pink to just blend that into the body color a little bit better. You did it. Congratulations on completing your very own dreamy dragons. I bet they're stunning and hopefully you had fun. I'll see you in the next lesson where we'll wrap up class and talk about next steps. See you there. 7. Next Steps: First things first, take a moment to celebrate your achievement. You made time for yourself and your creativity, and that's incredible. It's not always easy to carve out time in our days to play in our sketchbooks, but you did. Way to go. As for next steps. If you'd like to share your beautiful creations, I would love to see them. Be sure to share your project to the gallery here on Skillshare. Just go to the Projects and Resources tab and click Submit Project. Or you can also tag me on Instagram at Tiny Leaf Press. And remember, if you ever feel stuck or overwhelmed, you can always retake the class with different colors, materials, or characteristics of your dragons. It's endlessly repeatable whenever you need a boost. You can also try out some of my other sketchbooks net classes here on Skillshare, like drawn Goofy Dogs or catty cats. I'll leave a link to those below. I'm always working on new classes. So if you'd like to be notified when the next one drops, you can follow me here on Skillshare or sign up for my newsletter on Substack where I share free weekly creative posts. Thank you so much for joining me in class. I hope you enjoyed your dreaming dragons and I'll see you next time.