Dragonart: How to Draw Fantastic Dragons and Fantasy Creatures

I bought this book not to draw dragons, but for inspiration in sculpting them. As for its instruction for drawing, it’s top notch. So easy to understand and follow each step from the first line to finished scetch. There’s ample discussion on detailing as well. The basic structures for drawing work for sculpting as well, even though one is for 2D art, and the other is a 3D manifestation. Beginning with an underneath structure and building upon that layer by layer is well demonstrated for each project. The artwork is fantastic, too. It’s well written and well laid out.

My daughter loves to draw. At age 13 i found her one day pouring over a picture of a dragon and getting so frustrated. She said she could see the image of the dragon in her head but couldnt make it look the same on paper. I hit the internet and found this book. 10 years on and her drawings are amazing. She has a page on DeviantArt and sells her drawings there, not just of dragons but manga and chubbies. She has now passed this book on to a young family memeber who is following in her footsteps. It is informative and easy to understand. Great pictures and step by step guide.

As a kid, I looked at many how-to art books, and they just never really helped me with anything; I couldn’t follow them, or they were drawing in a way I didn’t enjoy. So when I looked at this for my son’s gift (thank you previews!), I dug deep into the meat of the book to glean just how useful it would be.

I was surprised to see that the tips were both useful and easy to digest, the style/look was perfectly style-neutral, the designs were cool, and the whole thing was presented in an easy to understand way…it even had some cute, funny jokes and silliness on the pages and such that almost felt like a friend was there walking you through the process.

My son loved the books (got several in the series at once), and enjoyed doing the practice exercises and designs. I wish I had these when I was learning to draw as a kid…

Well, this is one little book you’ll really like if you wish to learn the basics of Dragon Drawing. It’s full of details and lessons that will get you drawing a dragon with relative ease, and, if you practice enough, developing a knack for it.

I must say, however, this is mostly a practical “I show, you copy” kind of book, which is not wrong at all. The thing is you can only get so far by merely reading it. The tools that the author provides are enough to draw your own dragons, yes, but you gotta try them at your own pace and in your own terms to truly master them. It takes a while, unless you already know your pencil-handling, but it’s really satisfying to get it right.

Anyway, there’s a lot to be learned from this book: different shapes become different kinds of dragons, anatomy for an imaginary creature, different details you can add to your magnificent Wyrm, and enough examples to show how these principles merge into amazing art. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is taking the first steps into fantasy art.

And, if you combine it with other books by Peffer -the new one on dragons or the one about other fantasy creatures- you will surely get the most of them. Believe me, I have done it.